GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – World headlines include the following, over the weekend:
- Clocks go back in the US, a week after Europe moves from summer to winter time – NPR
- Chinese mine workers, some 200-strong, pulled out 45 miners Saturday who had been trapped for more than 48 hours after an explosion – CBS, Xinhua
- Pakistan charges 7 in Bhutto death in 2007 – Aljazeera, Reuters Canada
- Syria: 553 of some 15,000 prisoners released, but 20 killed Friday – Aljazeera, Xinhuanet
- Colombia: Farc leader Alfonso Cano killed, but now what? – CS Monitor, Guardian, Jakarta Post
Piedad Córdoba, a Colombian politican, and the ICRC helped negotiate the releases - Photo Ricardo Bello
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Two hostages were released Friday 11 February by Farc rebels in Colombia. They released another hostage earlier in the week and have said they intend to free two more Sunday.
The International Red Cross (ICRC) based in Geneva, and a former Colombian senator, Piedad Cordoba, have mediated the releases.
Farc is known to be holding at least 15 other hostages.
The two men were released in separate locations near the jungle in Caqueta, a department in the south of the country.
Michael Kramer, deputy head of the ICRC’s Colombian delegation, says that Marcos Baquero, a municipal councillor, who was freed on Wednesday, 9 February, was the first of the group. Kramer details how what happens when a hostage is freed.
“When we receive them, we talk to them for a while at the place of the handover in order to prepare them for a return to their usual environment.” In Baquero’s case, “We are waiting until the ICRC doctor has examined him and has talked to him about his captivity, his family and his expectations. What is striking is the feeling of time loss experienced by people who have been in the hands of an armed group, not to mention the psychological after-effects and the exhaustion caused by captivity.”
Gontard case friction easing with Swiss, Colombian cooperation; $27 billion victim compensation programme high on Colombian gov’t agenda
Vice President Angelino Garzon listens to questions during a sit-down meeting with the press in Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – “Our goal is that in 15 years, lands can be given back to the farmers exiled from their homes and that social programmes will be in place to help them,” Vice-president Angelino Garzon of Colombia told GenevaLunch during a visit to Geneva Thursday 14 October.
The second highest representative of the new Colombian government elected earlier this year, was in Geneva furthering his government’s agenda with the Swiss government, the United Nations and international organizations.
One of the most-talked about topics on his agenda was the “victim compensation programme” that seeks to give land back to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by violence in Colombia. The UNHCR estimates that over 3 million people have been internally displaced, which is why land restitution is a top priority for the government.
The $27 billion dollar programme has already put 200,000 hectares in the State’s hands. “We are seeking to confiscate an additional 600,000 hectares from armed groups operating illegally in the country,” he added.
Although the long-awaited plan may still be far in the future, Garzon believes that in Colombia the “political will to make this a priority is on everyone’s agenda.”
Implementing a broad land restitution programme with deep pockets may be viewed with distrust in a country where government agricultural subsidies that were geared to fostering peasant land productivity became linked, in some cases, to shady deals for the rich.
Garzon thinks things will be different now. “The government is counting on additional laws to ensure that [once approved] the programme works well,” he says.
“Priority will be given to women who are heads of households, orphans, people with disabilities and the elderly.”
Colombia to “respect the judicial system” over Gontard affair, bilateral talks to start in January Read more…
Victor Julio Suarez Rojas, known as Mono Jojoy, has been killed in a military operation at his headquarters in central Colombia by Colombian military forces, it was announced 23 September. Suarez was the top military strategist in Colombia’s armed rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and one of the most influential commanders.
Government officials said that the killing was a severe blow to the FARC and predicted a wave of desertions. The killing is the last in a line of high-profile successes the government has scored against Latin America’s longest-running insurgency.
Links to other sites: Christian Science Monitor, El Tiempo (Spa), Xinhua
In an emotional interview on Caracol television from New York, former hostage Ingrid Betancourt defended her $7.5 million claim for compensation from the Colombian government for her six years as a hostage of the FARC rebels. She was released in a spectacular government rescue operation in July 2008. Her claims have unleashed astonishment and indignation in Colombia, where many feel it was Betancourt’s irresponsible behaviour as a presdidential candidate in 2002 that led to her kidnapping by the FARC rebels.
Betancourt says that her claim is “symbolic”, and that she was not irresponsible. She said she would not sue the government if the claim was rejected. Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos said her claim wins “the world prize for ingratitude”, according to Reuters.
Columbia’s President Alvaro Uribe interrupted a televised news conference Sunday 13 June to take a phone call from his top general announcing that the military had just rescued two of the country’s top police officers who had been held by Farc guerillas for 12 years. The two, Luis Mendieta and Col. Enrique Murillo, were taken by the military in the jungle in the eastern province of of Guaviare, where combat broke out with Farc. Mendieto, the highest-ranking official held by Farc, turned 53 this week.
Danger sign for landmines
Updated 17:20 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The goal of the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-free World, meeting in Colombia 29 November to 4 December, is to eradicate the suffering caused by anti-personnel mines once and for all.
Colombia has had the dubious distinction until recently of being the country with the most casualties from anti-personnel mines. It was overtaken by Afghanistan in 2009. Colombia alone counts 8,081 casualties of landmines since 1990, but it also has 6,285 survivors, people who have lost a limb. Landmines caused almost 5,200 casualties worldwide in 2008, one-third of them children. The 2009 Landmine Monitor Report points out that deaths from landmines are steadily decreasing, down from an average of 7,300 a year for the previous 10 years. Landmine ban groups are keen to get rid of the mines but they are also focusing more on helping survivors.
In Colombia, too, the number of casualties has been falling: 777 deaths in 2008, compared to 895 the previous year.
In Colombia, rebel groups such as Farc and the ELN, as well as paramilitary groups, have planted anti-personnel mines on an estimated 60 percent of the territory. Insurgents increasingly finance themselves through the drugs trade, reported Human Rights Watch in a section on Colombia in its World Report 2009, published in January. They have been invading peripheral regions in the south of the country on the border with Ecuador, ejecting the indigenous populations, and protecting their territories from army incursions by the simple means of sowing anti-personnel mines, many home-made and attractive to children.
Two army soldiers and four armed rebels died in an ambush in a remote mountain area in the Peruvian department of Junin, east of Lima. The Peruvian army is fighting remnants of Peru’s Maoist Shining Path rebel group who have allied with drug traffickers in the Apurimac river vally, one of Peru’s most important coca growing areas, the BBC reports. In Colombia twelve native Americans were massacred in their houses by armed men wearing uniforms in Nariño department, southern Colombia. The area is also a drug-growing area and leftist rebels of the Farc movement and right-wing paramilitaries are contesting the area. BBC, El Comercio (Spa), El Tiempo (Spa)
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced economic sanctions against neighbouring Colombia which last week asked the Venezuelan government to explain the presence of arms traced to Venezuela found in rebel Farc arms depots. Venezuela has halted the import of 10,000 vehicles and canceled the participation of a Colombian oil company in an oil auction in Venezuela’s oil-rich Orinoco region. Trade between the two countries is worth about $7 billion. Venezuela imports almost all its food from Colombia.
The Colombian government announced last week that Swedish-made arms captured from the rebel group Farc had been traced to Venezuela. Chavez said 5 August that the arms had been stolen from a Venezuelan naval post in 1995. Tensions between the two countries remain high, with Colombia and the US negotiating a military bases treaty that would see US troops on Colombian soil to aid in the fight against drugs trafficking and the 40 year-old conflict with Farc, accused of involvement in the drug trade. Venezuela opposes the presence of foreign troops in Latin America. BBC, CNN, El Tiempo (Spa)
The government of Colombia said 27 July that it was investigating how Swedish-made weapons supplied to Venezuela were found in the possession of the rebel narco-terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). Colombia’s Vice-president Francisco Santos said “In several operations we have been able to capture arsenals of the Farc. We have found heavy weapons, including anti-tank weapons” that were purchased in Europe.
Jan-Erik Lovgren of the Swedish Inspectorate for Strategic Products, says that, based on the serial numbers, it appears that the weapons were sold to Venezuela in the 1980s. He told Swedish radio that arms sales to Venezuela had stopped in 2006 and that Sweden had never authorized arms sales to Colombia. The Venezuelan government, already embarrassed by findings linking it to Farc when Colombian troops overran a Farc camp in Ecuador in 2008, has rejected the claims. Venezuelan Justice and Interior Minister Tarreck El Aissami said it was a “media show” and “an aggression against our people, our government and our institutions”. BBC, CNN, El Nacional (Spa), Reuters.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) released their last known foreign hostage, Erik Roland Larsson, Tuesday 17 March after nearly two years of captivity. Larsson, 69, appears to have suffered a stroke during the time he spent captive and is being evaluated by doctors in the city of Monteria. Farc sought $5 million for his release, but it is not known if the ransom was paid. Al Jazeera
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (TSR, Fre) – TSR, Swiss public television, will run a documentary 5 February following its own investigation into charges by Colombian authorities that Jean-Pierre Gontard paid CHF500,000 in ransom money to Farc rebels in order to gain the release of Novartis employees taken hostage.
Six “high profile” hostages, reports the BBC, will be liberated by Farc, the Colombian rebel group, in the next four days, according to Senator Piedad Cordoba who has been involved in previous negotiations with the group. The Geneva-based ICRC (Internaional Red Cross), reportedly involved in the release, has made no public comment. The BBC says this is the first voluntary release of hostages by Farc in the past 12 months.
The similarities are clear: Oscar Tulio Lizcano, a Colombian congressman is freed in Colombia after more than eight years with the guerrillla group Farc, thanks to help from one of his captors, in an escape similar to that of Ingrid Betancourt, released in July 2008. BBC
A moving amateur video carried by the BBC shows the moment when Colombian hostage Oscar Tulio Lizcano was brought out of captivity by his former Farc captor. The two travelled for three days and went without sleep for 72 hours to escape through the jungle. BBC story
The longest held politician-hostage in Colombia, 63-year-old Óscar Lizcano, escaped the Farc rebels who have held him, with one of his captors, making a three-day trek through the jungle. International Herald Tribune
Bogota, Colombia and Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Luis Carlos Restrepo, high commissioner for peace in Colombia, has reportedly said on a private Colombian radio station that the government is ready to hold peace rather than humanitarian talks directly with Farc rebels, and that the time appears to be right, with the new Farc leader open to direct contact.
Restrepo also is reported to have said that he has lost faith in the work of the European envoys, including Jean-Pierre Gontard, which has failed to achieve much over the years. Gontard was sharply criticized by the Colombian government 4 July, which suspects him of being linked to Farc funds.
He remains the Swiss envoy, the Swiss government confirmed Monday, saying that he is recognized by all parties and that Switzerland intends to continue its mediation efforts.
Photo, Jean-Pierre Gontard & Farc's leader Guillermo Cano - Image courtesy of El Espectador.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A humanitarian expert from Geneva is at the centre of a scandal surrounding the Colombian Marxist-guerrilla group, Farc. According to intelligence reports cited in Colombia, a Swiss envoy identified as Jean-Pierre Gontard carried hundreds of thousand of dollars belonging to the armed group.
Gontard, who is associated with The Graduate Institute for Development Studies (IUED) in Geneva, is being linked by the Colombian government to almost US$500,000 seized from the Farc in Costa Rica.
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos stated: “All I’m saying is that, that gentleman, Gontard, is going to have to explain why he appears in Raul Reyes’ emails“.
Santos makes reference to Raul Reyes, the Farc’s spokesperson and second-in-command killed recently during a Colombian military operative in Ecuador and whose laptop was confiscated. The minister refused to answer further questions.
The Swiss government reacted immediately through its ambassador in Bogota, Thomas Kupfer. In a press release printed in its entirety by “El Tiempo“, Kupfer says Gontard “is not a Swiss diplomat but an external adviser of the Swiss government seeking a humanitarian agreement.”
Kupfer recognizes that Gontard’s mission on behalf of Switzerland involves a great deal of independent work and “neither his actions nor his statements necessarily compromise the Swiss government.”
The Ambassador added that in 2000 Gontard successfully mediated the release of two workers of Swiss multinational Novartis who had been kidnapped in Colombia and that perhaps the money was related to a possible ransom payment and added that the Swiss government was “unaware” if this was the case or if Gontard had participated in such a transaction.
Updated, 10:35: Monday morning Daniel Vasella, head of Novartis, denied Colombian government reports that link Gontard to Farc money. Speaking to RSR, Swiss public radio, he says Gontard was only a “diplomatic intermediary” when the two Novartis employees were liberated.
Contrary to some reports in Geneva that cite Gontard’s role in operation “check,” the Swiss ambassador says Gontard did “not” play any role in the release of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages. Rather, he says, it was by sheer chance that the Swiss and French envoys were in Colombia at the time.
- Related story, 4 July: Swiss radio: Betancourt and hostages not rescued but released
