COLOMBIA: FARC Release Wounded Soldier

• by Helda Martínez (bogota)
• Monday, March 29, 2010
• Inter Press Service

On Sunday, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) handed Calvo over to a humanitarian commission aboard a helicopter loaned by Brazil, which provided logistical assistance for the operation.

The unilateral release took place at an undisclosed location in the jungles of the central department (province) of Meta.

Calvo was wounded in the leg and seized by the guerrillas in April 2009 in a clash between government forces and the FARC, Colombia’s main rebel group, which has been fighting since 1964.

His family gave him up for dead, until they received proof that he was alive two months after his capture.

The young man joined the army at the age of 17, 'because he considered it his best option,' his father Luis Alberto said.

The family had suffered forced displacement because of the nearly five-decade civil war, and settled in Tambo in the southwestern department of Cauca, a poor area with few opportunities for young people.

When he was recruited, the young peasant farmer’s dream was to join the Colombia Battalion that is taking part in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. But he ended up hostage in the jungle instead.

The government’s peace commissioner Frank Pearl said Calvo asked for respect for his preference to not speak to the press.

The commission to which he was handed over included opposition Liberal Party Senator Piedad Córdoba, who has mediated and served as a guarantor of all of the unilateral releases by the FARC since 2006.

It was also made up of delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Catholic bishop of Magangué, in the Caribbean coastal department of Bolívar, Leonardo Gómez.

When the helicopter landed at the airport in Vanguardia de Villavicencio, the capital of the department of Meta, a tense silence reigned. The FARC had stated that Calvo was in extremely poor health, but he was able to walk, leaning on a stick and limping, and did not use the wheelchair that had been provided.

He met with his father and sister in a private room, which he exited later wearing camouflage fatigues.

His father showed the media photos of people from his region who have been kidnapped or forcibly disappeared in recent years, and read letters describing their cases.

Córdoba thanked the ICRC and the Brazilian government for their cooperation, and said Calvo had been handed over in Santa Lucía, 'a community of people who are very poor, where children are malnourished and adults have no teeth.'

In the last few years, the FARC have released 13 hostages unilaterally, including politicians, police and soldiers.

The senator referred to a new call by the citizen movement Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paz (Colombians for Peace) for a humanitarian exchange between the government and the guerrillas, to secure the release of 21 hostages still held by the FARC.

'We are in the process of writing letters to President Uribe, all of the presidential candidates and the FARC,' Córdoba said.

The last hostage that the FARC says it will hand over unilaterally is 32-year-old Pablo Emilio Moncayo, who has spent 12 years in the jungle. His release is to take place Tuesday.

The rebel group also announced that it would deliver the remains of Julián Ernesto Guevara, a police officer who died in captivity in 2006, nearly eight years after he was captured by the FARC.

The insurgents 'told us they have his remains, but that they have not been able to bring them out of the jungle because of the continuous attacks by the army. They asked us to be on the alert,' Córdoba added.

Referring to the need for a humanitarian prisoner swap, the senator said 'yesterday it was very painful to me to receive a phone call from the boy Johan Estiven Martínez, asking me to help get his father released.'

When Moncayo is released, José Libio Martínez will become the longest-held hostage, having spent more than 12 years in the jungles of the south of Colombia.

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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