FARC'S 'Human Rights' Friends

THE AMERICAS By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

FARC's 'Human Rights' Friends
July 7, 2008; Page A11

As we learn more about the Colombian military's daring hostage rescue last week, one detail stands out: In tricking FARC rebels into putting the hostages aboard a helicopter, undercover special forces simply told the comandantes that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious nongovernmental organization sympathetic to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission.

It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.

The Colombian military tricked the FARC into releasing their most valuable hostages. Mary Anastasia O'Grady, who writes the "Americas" column, talks with Kelsey Hubbard about how the once-powerful guerrilla group was duped. (July 7)

I am reminded of President Álvaro Uribe's 2003 statement that some "human rights" organizations in his country were fronts for terrorists. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got his back up over Mr. Uribe's statement, and piously lectured the Colombian president about "the importance of democratic values."

But as the helicopter story suggests, Mr. Uribe seems to have been right. How else to explain the fact that the FARC swallowed the line without batting an eye?

This warrants attention because it adds to the already robust evidence that left-wing NGOs and other so-called human rights defenders, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, are nothing more than propagandists for terrorists.

When passions over kidnap victim Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages were running high, these actors pressed Mr. Uribe to grant FARC demands. Now it is clear that the pressure was geared more toward strengthening the rebels' hand than freeing the captives.

Left-wing NGOs have made undermining the Colombian government's credibility a priority for many years. A 2003 internal report from the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá titled "A Closer Look at Human Rights Statistics" confirmed as much. It found that NGO analyses – for example by the Jesuit-founded Center for Popular Research and Education known as Cinep – of the human-rights environment contained a heavy bias against the government while granting a wide berth to guerrillas.

AP

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and ex-hostage Ingrid Betancourt.

Since the late 1990s, the NGO practice of dragging the military into court on allegations of human rights violations has destroyed the careers of some of the country's finest officers, even though most of these men were found innocent after years of proceedings. "Judicial warfare" turned out to be especially effective because under legislation pushed by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, "credible" charges against officers put at risk U.S. military aid unless the accused was removed. The NGOs knew that they only had to point fingers to get rid of an effective leader and demoralize the ranks. Given this history, it's not surprising that the FARC thought a helicopter from an NGO was perfectly natural.

As to Mr. Chávez, documents captured during a Colombian raid of a guerrilla camp in Ecuador show that, in his role as "mediator" in hostage negotiations since last year, he was advising the rebels as to how to best use their hostages as leverage to advance their revolution.

Last fall, Mr. Chávez and the FARC hatched an audacious plan whereby the Venezuelan would take "proof of life" of Ms. Betancourt to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, where the plight of Ms. Betancourt was a cause célèbre. The rebels wrote that Mr. Chávez was sure French pressure for negotiations would cause President Bush to "order Uribe to allow the meeting" between Mr. Chávez and the rebels on Colombian soil, something Mr. Uribe had refused to do. The rebels reported that Mr. Chávez was "super-motivated," because he viewed the rendezvous as a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC "continental and world renown."

That plan flopped, but Mr. Chavez had other cards up his sleeve. One involved Ms. Cordoba, who is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. She figures prominently in the captured rebel documents, and is notoriously close to Mr. Chávez.

She met at the Venezuelan presidential palace with FARC leaders last fall. From that meeting the rebels reported that "Piedad says that Chávez has Uribe going crazy. He doesn't know what to do. That Nancy Pelosi helps and is ready to help in the swap [hostages in exchange for captured guerrillas]. That she has designated [U.S. Congressman Jim] McGovern for this."

If the speaker of the House was working with Ms. Cordoba in this scheme, her judgment was more than a little misguided. The rebels write that on a trip to Argentina Ms. Cordoba told them, "It doesn't matter to me the proposal that Sarkozy has made to free Ingrid. Above all, do not liberate Ingrid." In short, why give up such a useful pawn?

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121538827377131117.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I want to forgive, says Betancourt

I want to forgive, says Betancourt

• Angelique Chrisafis, Paris
• July 12, 2008

Learning to adapt: Ingrid Betancourt answers questions during a news conference at a Paris hotel. Photo: AP

FOR the past seven days, Ingrid Betancourt has engaged in an extraordinary frenzy of tarmac reunions, presidential meetings and public speeches sparking an international outpouring of emotion, while readjusting to sleeping in a bed and smelling perfume after being held in jungle captivity by Colombian rebels for six years.

But she admitted euphoria was beginning to give way to exhaustion. "I know that it's like the roaring of the waves, I know it's coming and it's getting closer, I know that it's time for me to just stop. I don't want to be submerged by depression."

Ms Betancourt, France's new Joan of Arc — and possibly Colombia's future president — was speaking in her first major newspaper interview since her rescue.

Since landing in Paris to a rapturous reception last week, she has rushed between plush Paris hotels and parliament buildings, all the time clutching the makeshift rosary that she made from string while chained up.

Her pallid skin and long, thin hair, and — under the cuffs of her smart suit — her skin scarred from chains, are hard-to-erase signs of her six years in captivity. She will not cut her hair until all the hundreds of hostages still held by the FARC rebels (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) are free.

Although she has so far refused to be drawn on the extent of the physical and psychological "torture and humiliation" she endured, she said that one day she would outline the truth. "I know that I have to give testimony about all the things I lived," she said.

"But I need time … The only thing I've settled in my mind is that I want to forgive, and forgiveness comes with forgetting."

She has said her captors treated her with exceptional malice because the Marxist guerillas saw her as coming from an established political family and because of their own treatment in Colombian jails. She said her treatment had shown that every human being had an "animal" inside them.

She learned how "in any situation like the ones I experienced, perhaps any of us could do those kind of cruel things. For me it was like understanding what I couldn't understand before, how for example the Nazis, how (things like that) could have happened."

Ms Betancourt, overcome with exhaustion on Thursday, was helped into her interview by her daughter Melanie, stepson Sebastien and her sister Astrid, who said Ms Betancourt would now retreat with her children to "fill in the jigsaw puzzle of six missing years".

The Colombian former presidential candidate, who has joint French nationality after marrying a French diplomat, will stay in France for the time being and will not say when she will return to Colombia, for security reasons.

When she was kidnapped in 2002, she had been campaigning for the presidency against the drug-trafficking and corruption that underpins one of the most violent societies in the world. She received regular death threats and her teenage children had to be sent abroad.

Even in France, her security is high. She has said she is taking time to adapt to beds, to hot water that "hurts", and particularly to the smell of perfume.

In the jungle she was often under foliage, unable to see the sunlight for days, or forced to march for up to 25 kilometres at a stretch, covering about 300 kilometres a year. She made five escape attempts, the first lasting only a few hours, when she realised she did not know how to cope in the jungle. When caught, she was chained by the neck and forced to stand for three days.

After that she was chained for 24 hours a day — the only woman with other prisoners who were male soldiers from the Colombian army, who often had not seen women for years.

She has said that obtaining a needle and thread or any small object with which to amuse herself was nearly impossible because the guards treated her as an enemy. Other hostages would pass her things. Her key possession was a Bible.

At the beginning of her ordeal, she was given a piece of cauliflower wrapped in a scrap of newspaper. Eager for something to look at, she spread out the paper to see a coffin and realised it was the coverage of her father's funeral. He had died a week after she was kidnapped. She has described feeling suicidal and racked with guilt over his death.

She learned a lot from her fellow hostages, including three Americans who joined her group after a few months. "It was very difficult for them. Only one spoke the language."

The Stockholm syndrome of identifying with captors is far from Ms Betancourt's experience. Those who know her in Paris say she maintained a startling clarity.

"I'm landing like a parachute in the lives of others. They have their own lives, their daily activities, and I don't have anything.

"Six days ago I was chained to a tree. Now I'm free, and I'm just trying to understand how I'm going to live from now on," she said, in tears.

On Monday, Bastille Day, she will receive the Legion of Honour from President Nicolas Sarkozy.

She has described how in the jungle she tried to wear red, white and blue on July 14, how she taught fellow prisoners the Marseillaise and gave French lessons.

GUARDIAN

Source: http://www.theage.com.au/world/i-want-to-forgive-says-betancourt-20080711-3dqm.html?page=-1