Ingrid Betancourt freed after being held by Farc Columbian rebels for 6 years
- Thread starter HackneyE9
- Start date
Is it? I have a lot more sympathy for FARC than I do for her.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Oh, well I actually know little or nothing about FARC
Why do you have sympathy with them?
Because of their tenacious struggle against the Colombian military. I've been to Colombia, and everyone is petrified of the army.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
And why less sympathy for her? And by extension, for the hundreds of other hostages FARC has taken over the years - some murdered to stop them being rescued, others stilll in captivity?
In May 2003, the military had tried to rescue 10 political hostages held by FARC in the northern province of Antioquia. The rebels heard the helicopters carrying the 75 Special Forces troops and promptly executed the hostages, among them a provincial governor and a former defence minister.
Are not FARC just a bunch of terrorists, like the IRA who they paid for lessons, to be paid off whenever they realise they can't win?Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Quite a few people seem to be petrified of FARC. But perhaps they're the wrong sort of Colombians.
I wouldn't bet that they can't win, anything can happen in Colombia, and the current regime is deeply, deeply hated by most people. As for the supposedly civilian hostages most of them are in fact mercenaries of various hues. Betancourt is a politician.
They are the rich Colombians. The poor have far more to fear from the military and the right-wing paramilitaries.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Are things as simple as that in Colombia? I don't know the country but I know this country and things aren't that simple here. But hey, these are foreign parts and no doubt humans are different over there, with different values to our own about hostage taking and murdering of hostages.
As I say, most of FARC's hostages are about as civilian as the "contractors" we keep hearing about in Iraq, i.e. not at all. And yes, I think it's fair to say that class war is a lot more visceral in Colombia than in the UK, if that's what you call simple.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Is there a provable register that demonstrates that most people taken as hostages are mercenaries?
A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or a party to the conflict and "is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party" (Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of August 1949)
And surely a politician like Ms Betancourt - elected as a Representative and a Senator and presidential candidate through democratic elections - is better than a bunch of drug dealing terrorists?FARC still number 9,000 fighters, they still have plenty of money – allegedly around $300 million a year – thanks to the drugs trade and are still capable of inflicting massive damage on this war-racked Andean nation.
Colombia is not an Andean nation. And so you have chosen a very silly source indeed to cite.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
It's true though (not the Andean bit, the drug funding bit). And since when has it been acceptable to murder hostages? You haven't actually answered the things I said. Would you be prepared to endorse or carry out murders of hostages you took to make a political point in this country? Or are things different in foreign parts?
I'm sure there is. Many of them are Americans, attached to various shady agencies, notably the DEA. I have met several such people.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
They should've killed her 5 years ago. A politician like Betancourt in Colombia is only ever selling themselves to drug dealing terrorists.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
What, you met hostages?
As I've said several times now, most of the hostages held by FARC are in fact enemy combatants. Colombia is in the middle of a civil war, and it is simply foolish to label one side "drug-dealing terrorists," when all armed factions including the official state military engage in drug-dealing and atrocities. Rather than focus on the tactics employed you would do better to compare the ideologies which animate the various factions and the people they represent.
No, DEA agents who operate in Colombia. I had a very funny coversation with one of them, he insisted on referring to the right-wing paramiliataries as "the good guys," but he was at a loss to explain why they were "good." He also admitted that they were as deeply involved in drug-dealing as the FARC (not that this is news to anyone).
Col_Buendia
sort code
Your shaky geography makes me question the rest of your points, Phil. Of course Colombia is an Andean nation, both geographically and politically. Can you really have visited it without noticing the stonking great cordilleras that run through it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andean_States
Fullyplumped - how do you know those 10 hostages weren't killed in crossfire? How do you know they weren't even executed by the army afterwards in order to make a bigger propaganda blow against the FARC? It is generally a given that if you insist on a military rescue of hostages, you are putting their lives at risk. Uribe has often been begged by hostages' families not to take this risk, and yet he does. Whose interests are being served by this swaggering "war on terror" in Colombia? Not the hostages, for if the Colombian state was seriously interested in their welfare, its politcal class would have been prepared to negotiate their release.
Er....I don't say this out of any slighted ego about my own thread-starting skill, but seven posts? That's pathetic for such a massive story. And there doesn't seem to be anything in World Politics either....
I agree. At the time I searched the posts but there was nothing. Then I read other posts with people acting so worldly and ladedah and it said it all for me. It was really telling.
Ingrid Betancourt and her capture and release are very important. I would have expected more people on these boards to be aware of who she was and what was happening.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
I knew nothing of her and had only heard of Colombia in terms of drugs and FARC. I had / have only a very basic undersanding. The world is a big place, we cannot be expected to know everything that is going on.
What he said.
At the risk of sounding callous, having been really upset by her plight for five years (she's on every public building here in France), and moved to tears watching her release, she's come across like a shit-eating chessy politician since being released - praising Sarkozy as "extraordinary" and immediately saying she'll run for president again (do we have to rescue her again?).
Should have realised her Daddy was an ambassador, she grew up in the swanky 16th arrondissement and is very well-connected.
Still, it could all be down the the elation and high of the release. I'll give her time. Bit odd how she was so gaunt in November, and now she rosy-faced and chubby-cheeked, though.
Col_Buendia
sort code
Not only that, she's praised Uribe, which is really quite astonishing for anyone with any idea at all of the man's bloody past & present. Even thinks his attempt to run for a third term is "interesting". When asked about it, she said:
Why not? Perhaps the Colombian constitution?
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
I think I'm doing just fine in deploring summary executions by terrorist scum wherebver they are. This approach helped me sort out what I thought about the IRA and UDA and all their hooded psychotic drug dealing little chums too.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Fair point that they maybe were killed in cross fire or by the army. But probably not - why take hostages if you aren't going to kill them? They took hostages and killed them is more the likely scenario.
A sensible government always presents captors with an assumption that it won't "negotiate" - anything else creates an incentive that taking hostages will produce a result. Of course neghotiations do go on, but with an eye to the bigger prize.
Observe the recent success of the UK government in N Ireland, where concessions were given, but to end the killing and bring the militants into the democratic process.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
That's the second time in this thread you've alluded to this. You clearly have something in mind - why not say it straight out?
She is very thin. Did you see her arms and wrists? Also she has aged and that is plain in her face. Who knows what other health problems she may have. I'd like to spend 6 years in the jungle as look as good as she does.
Fullyplumped
in a personal capacity
Maybe here's the explanation.
Ingrid Betancourt was so weak that she had to be fed like a child
Fellow prisoners who were released with her in last week's daring rescue mission by the Colombian army have described the harrowing conditions in which they were kept – and the way they helped one another to keep going.
Foremost among them was William Perez, a Colombian military nurse, who was praised by Miss Betancourt for saving her life. He has described how he spoon-fed her "like a child" when she was too weak and too depressed to eat.
In a moving interview in Bogotá, he described how he urged his friend and fellow captive to think of the children she had not seen for years when she told him she wanted to die – and vividly recalled the harrowing conditions they endured.
He told how she sank into a deep depression and threw away her food when she was chained to a pole by her rebel captors for no apparent reason last year.
Fellow prisoners who were released with her in last week's daring rescue mission by the Colombian army have described the harrowing conditions in which they were kept – and the way they helped one another to keep going.
Foremost among them was William Perez, a Colombian military nurse, who was praised by Miss Betancourt for saving her life. He has described how he spoon-fed her "like a child" when she was too weak and too depressed to eat.
In a moving interview in Bogotá, he described how he urged his friend and fellow captive to think of the children she had not seen for years when she told him she wanted to die – and vividly recalled the harrowing conditions they endured.
He told how she sank into a deep depression and threw away her food when she was chained to a pole by her rebel captors for no apparent reason last year.
Wolveryeti
Detty Pig
Very risky. I would have shot them for being cunts.
Similar threads
- Poll
