The final stretch of 2023 was marked by the living memory of the kidnapping in the country. Soccer player Radamel Falcao said this week that he was afraid of coming to play for Millonarios due to the history of the ELN kidnapping of the father of his teammate from the Colombian National Team, Luis Díaz.
This case generated widespread rejection in the country and left the peace process with that guerrilla wounded. But this is just one of 316 kidnapping victims this year. Yesaccording to consolidated figures from the Ministry of Defense Until November, 2023 is the year with the highest number of kidnappings in the last decade and the victims increased by 63 percent compared to the same period last year.
In the midst of the increase in kidnappings, the government of Gustavo Petro scored two victories in recent weeks: it reached agreements with the ELN and the Central General Staff of the FARC so that they stop kidnapping for extortion purposes. The new peace commissioner, Otty Patiño, drew this demand as a red line to advance in the negotiations for total peace. A red line that Colombian society itself set in response to the ELN’s attempt to talk about peace and continue justifying the kidnapping.
“That pressure played a fundamental role in this last phase of the negotiation so that the Elenos accepted that society could not stand a peace process that would allow kidnapping to continue as a practice inherent to war,” Gonzalo told La Silla. Sánchez, who was director of the National Center for Historical Memory and researcher of the armed conflict.
Now the challenge is for them to comply. Starting with the release of 26 kidnapped people, included on a list that the government delegation gave to the ELN and the monitoring mechanism to confirm their situation.
The year in which the country remembered the scourge of kidnapping
“They treat you worse there than an animal,” says Libey Danilo Bravo, an Army sergeant who has been in the institution for more than 20 years and who on February 14 of this year fhe was kidnapped by the ELN, in Arauca. “Since they caught me, they chained me and kept me blindfolded. When they made me talk, it was through beatings and total humiliation. “You didn’t know what time they were going to shoot you because they make fun of you a lot.”
In conversation with La Silla, nine months after being released and accompanied by his wife, Sergeant Bravo says that he feels fear again when recounting these events and that since then he has been terrified of traveling by road. “That caught me by surprise, even though one works at this. When they catch you, they don’t respect that you are a human being,” he says.
Sergeant Bravo says that the guerrillas took him to Venezuela, where they had an improvised prison they called “Alcatraz.” When he arrived, there were 10 other kidnapped people there. “There were four Colombians, they were wealthy people, people who had money and who do not report because they prefer to pay that extortionate fee so that nothing happens to them,” Bravo says about other cases that were never known, while his became national news.
The kidnapping of Sergeant Bravo was one of the first cases this year that generated widespread rejection against the ELN guerrilla, for persisting in this crime while sitting with the government to talk about peace.
So much so that the kidnapping was addressed in the sessions of the second cycle of the dialogue table in Mexico and the top commander of this guerrilla, “Antonio García”, promised his release. “He is a prisoner of war, his status as a prisoner and his victim’s rights are respected, as established by IHL,” Garcia trilled..
However, Sergeant Bravo says that he was also a victim of extortion during his captivity. “As they saw that I had nothing, at that moment they tried to bribe me. That in order not to receive ill treatment and so that they would respect the life of my family, then I would stay working with them,” he told La Silla.
Bravo’s release was finally arranged on the table and he regained his life on March 8. His case, however, would not be the last that would have to be discussed at the dialogue table with the ELN.
On October 28, the ELN’s Northern War Front kidnapped Luis Manuel Díaz, father of soccer star Luis Díaz, in La Guajira. A fact that plunged the peace process with that guerrilla into a crisis of credibility, as recognized by the same government delegation. It was also an event that reawakened the empathy of Colombian society in the face of this drama that had been forgotten in recent years.
Part of this forgetfulness was partly due to the decrease in numbers, especially as a result of the peace process with the FARC, which according to the Truth Commission report were the most responsible for this crime.
Between 2020 and 2021, the lowest numbers of kidnapping victims were recorded in at least the last 40 years: 162 and 160 cases respectively. This figure contrasts abysmally with the peak of this crime, which was recorded between 2002 and 2003, when 11,643 people suffered this drama.
For researcher Gonzalo Sánchez, the kidnapping was one of the crimes that showed the degradation of the conflict in the early 2000s and that generated massive mobilizations in rejection in that decade.
In that decade, both figures from the right, such as former vice president Francisco Santos, and from the left, such as Senator Piedad Córdoba, were activists for the release of the kidnapped and brought the issue to the center of the political discussion. In addition, there were journalists dedicated to keeping an eye on the situation of these people every day, like the late Herbin Hoyos.
“With the FARC negotiation, kidnapping obviously decreased and social militancy against kidnapping decreased, to the extent that the numbers dropped. This year cases increased, public figures were affected and there is a peace process underway, which generated a new social sensitivity to the issue,” Sánchez told La Silla.
The former commander of the Domingo Laín Front of the ELN, Carlos Velandia, agrees with this, who has been a peace promoter for years and monitors the peace process with this guerrilla. “I believe that society has won and has advanced in this last month, as a result of the kidnapping of Luis Díaz’s father. There was like an awakening of conscience and solidarity around ‘no to kidnapping,’” he told La Silla.
Society’s red line for peace negotiations
After the release of Luis “Mane” Díaz, the national government delegation expressed in a public statement, in a few words, that the future of the peace process depended on the end of the kidnapping. “This type of crime causes serious damage to the confidence of Colombian society in the possibility of achieving peace,” says the November text signed by the entire delegation.
Before that statement, former peace commissioner Danilo Rueda had prioritized humanitarian measures to free the majority of kidnapped people held by the armed groups with which he was holding talks, and has stated that 150 people were freed as a result of these efforts. However, the demand for an end to the kidnapping had not been raised as a red line to continue advancing in the negotiation.
In fact, the ELN’s chief negotiator, Pablo Beltrán, said that this guerrilla had not agreed to stop kidnapping during the bilateral ceasefire, because it was part of its financial actions. It was a position that tainted the ceasefire announcement due to the wave of indignation against this type of justification.
“It seems that the ELN is not aware that this is a society already warned about the degradation of these practices. They act as if nothing happened. “Society stopped being receptive to any type of justification,” says conflict expert Sánchez.
For Sánchez, the hearings of the last FARC secretariat before the JEP, where the former guerrilla commanders responsible for more kidnappings ask for forgiveness and say they regret it, are a point at which any type of justification becomes intolerable. “In that sense, the process with the FARC drew a red line against certain war practices. Society is no longer going to move that red line no matter how many more attempts to justify it,” he adds.
This is also understood by the international community that accompanies the peace process with the ELN, which celebrated the result of the last cycle with the ELN. “Regarding the issue that the ELN calls retentions for economic purposes, the parties managed to respond to society’s demands and the suspension of this very painful activity for those detained and their families was announced,” Carlos Ruiz told La Silla. Massieu, Head of the UN Verification Mission in Colombia.
“I think the ELN is feeling that it no longer has room to continue making these economic withholdings. They have neither space, nor oxygen, nor do they have the admissibility that was intended to be had in the face of these retentions,” says Carlos Velandia, who has an intimate view of this guerrilla.
A panorama with challenges ahead
Despite the achievement that the main armed groups with which the government is negotiating (ELN and EMC) agree to stop kidnapping for extortion purposes, there are still great challenges ahead on this issue. The first is to achieve the release of all those kidnapped. According to the Ombudsman’s Office there are about 91 people throughout the country, although it does not state who is responsible for each case.
According to the senator and government negotiator, Iván Cepeda, the delegation did rigorous work on this matter before going to the cycle in Mexico. He managed to collect information from different sources, reviewing the available lists of people allegedly in the power of the ELN.
“The list that we were able to make, once those lists were compared, is around 29 people. But during the fifth cycle of dialogues, three of those people were released, not necessarily by the ELN. The list then remained at 26 and now it is the ELN’s turn to respond,” Cepeda told La Silla.
In an interview for Caracol RadioPablo Beltrán said that there were not that many, but that in any case there is a commitment to free the kidnapped people. On the part of the EMC of the FARC there have also been positive gestures in this sense, such as the release of the former mayor of San Calixto (Norte de Santander), Yadil José Sanguino Manzano, who remained in the power of this group for 35 days.
Another pending issue on the table is the extortion of communities and merchants with which these armed groups finance themselves. A crime that is greatly under-recorded, but whose figures also increased in 2023. In the case of the ELN, Senator Cepeda says that the issue has already been addressed at the table but is not the subject of any agreement.
On the other hand, a challenge still pending for the government, which exceeds the total peace policy, are kidnappings by criminal gangs that are not linked to the armed conflict. According to a report from the Investigation and Prosecution Unit of the JEP, most of the places where kidnappings increased do not have the presence of the armed groups with which the government has sought to negotiate.
2023-12-22 07:00:59
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