BOGOTA LETTER:Emotional fallout from the Betancourt group's release shows the life-long consequences of prolonged captivity, writes TOM HENNIGAN
WHEN NEWS broke this month that Ingrid Betancourt was suing her own government for over €6 million in compensation for her kidnapping by the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc, most Colombians were outraged.
Her claim was denounced as “infamous”, she was labelled an “ingrate” and the government seemed ready to follow the suggestion of many angry callers to local radio stations and sue the former politician for the cost of the July 2008 military operation that freed her from six and a half years of jungle captivity.
Ms Betancourt said she was entitled to the money because the government had left her vulnerable when it withdrew her escort as she headed off into Farc territory in February 2002 during a quixotic presidential campaign. The military says she assumed responsibility for the journey which it had advised against.
So hostile was the reaction that early last week, Ms Betancourt gave a tearful television interview in which she described the claim as “totally symbolic and does not represent anything” saying she only filed it in order to help other kidnap victims in their quest for compensation. By last Tuesday her lawyers had withdrawn the petition bringing to a close the latest chapter in the controversial career of Colombia’s most famous former hostage.
When Ms Betancourt re-emerged from the jungle with 14 other hostages following a daring military rescue, she was expected to resume her political career in Colombia. But today she lives abroad, dividing her time between Paris and New York, supposedly occupied with writing a book about her time in captivity.
Her marriage did not survive the ordeal and the revelation that she had several relationships with fellow hostages.
Her former husband Juan Carlos Lecompte published a book titled Ingrid and I: A Bittersweet Freedomin which he spoke of her "ingratitude" even though Farc made sure a gossip magazine containing an article about his supposed affairs reached her in captivity.
Other former captives held with Ms Benancourt have portrayed her as an arrogant, spoilt snob who thought her international profile entitled her to preferential treatment at the expense of other hostages. Clara Rojas, her campaign chief who was seized with her, describes in her memoir how her boss shunned her for much of their time in captivity while Keith Stansell, one of three US military contractors held with Ms Betancourt, calls her “the most disgusting human being I’ve ever encountered”.
But Marc Gonsalves, another of the US contractors who co-wrote a book with Mr Stansell about their ordeal at the hands of Farc, divorced his wife on his return to the US and has since started a relationship with Ms Betancourt.
The emotional fallout that has followed the release of the Betancourt group highlights how after the initial euphoria of freedom there is often a lifetime dealing with the consequences of captivity for both Colombia’s hostages and their families.
Often it starts straight away – the current foreign minister Fernando Araújo asked why his wife was not there to greet him when he emerged from six years in the jungle only to be told she had divorced him and remarried.
The emotional wreckage is perhaps best summed up by the title of a book by Lucy Artunduaga, who campaigned tirelessly for her husband's freedom only for him to divorce her shortly after being released. In The Loves that Kidnapping Killsshe writes "they gave me back another person from the jungle".
“The most difficult problems to treat after release are the family and psychological ones,” says Olga Lucia Gomez, executive director of Pais Libre, an organisation that provides assistance to victims of kidnapping and their families.
“During long periods of captivity the family changes and the kidnap victim changes and this creates much anguish. Parents were not around when children grew up. There is blame and recrimination. Freedom is the start of a very complex process and Colombian society does not understand this.”
In recent years Colombia’s government has worked hard to combat kidnapping. Fondelibertad, the state’s anti-kidnapping agency, says military offensives against the country’s guerrillas and the demobilisation of right-wing paramilitaries has seen a dramatic drop in kidnapping, from a high of 2,587 in 1999 to just 160 last year.
But groups working with families of kidnap victims say much of this decline is due to an accounting sleight of hand.
“The government’s number is not real because the state has changed the definition of what it means to be kidnapped,” says Huber Antonio Hoyos of the Voices of Kidnapping, an organisation that broadcasts messages from family members to hostages held in the jungle, many of whom are allowed keep radios by their jailers.
Mr Hoyos says his organisation has records of 3,000 kidnappings in the last three years.
Just this week an official from the vice-president’s office and three human rights workers were seized by guerrillas. Despite claims to the contrary, Colombia’s kidnapping nightmare seems to be far from over.