Ingrid Libre
envoyé par agirpouringrid
I invite you to watch and listen....
John Frank Pinchao’s account of his captivity with Ingrid Betancourt
The following is a translation by myself of excerpts from an article in the French weekly current-affairs magazine L'Express (dated 09/04/2008) & relates the accounts of John Frank Pinchao, a police officer who was held hostage by the FARC and was held in the same group with Ingrid Betancourt for almost three years:
Since the beginning of her captivity, Ingrid Betancourt has behaved as a resistant. In his recent book, My Escape Towards Liberty, the police officer John Frank Pinchao [who managed to escape in April 2007] describes his fellow hostage as a woman of unwavering conviction, who has remained faithful to her principles of humanism and democracy. Despite the intransigence and savageness of her gaolers, she has constantly refused the arbitrary, and earned the dignity and respect of her fellow hostages.
Pinchao describes how Ingrid acted as spokeswoman for her fellow captives and demanded that their captors remove their chains – which they did. On another occasion she organised a hunger strike in order to obtain an improvement in the quality of the food they were fed. She also attempts to preserve a sense of solidarity between her fellow hostages when, for example, they bicker due to the cramped space in their tiny enclosure (surrounded with barbed-wire) – she sermons them to remain united.
In other circumstances, Ingrid plays the role of advocate and also nurse of the weakest members of the group. When the ex-senator Luis Eladio Pérez is confined to a bed for several months due to acute diabetes – she remains by his side, each day washing him and emptying the container which acts as his bedpan. “I owe my life to Ingrid”, Pérez confided after his liberation in February; “while I was suffering from diabetic comas and a heart attack, Ingrid devoted herself body and soul to pull me back to health. She took care of me when I couldn’t even take a step. It was thanks to her that I was able to live once more”.
Four attempts at escape
This strength of character, Ingrid has also used to attempt to escape. On the 24th of February 2002 (the day following her kidnapping of the 23rd of February 2002), although still in shock from her capture – she starts preparing an escape plan with her running mate & fellow hostage Clara Rojas (kidnapped the same day & who was set-free in January of this year). A month later, at the end of March, the two women fool their captives one night by placing boots at the end of their makeshift mattresses, as through they were still sleeping, and manage to escape. Their plan is simple; reach a river and allow themselves to be carried by the current.
However, the dream runs short as the difficult reality of finding one’s way through the rain forest takes its toll. Once they finally make it to a river, they catch sight of a small boat making its way down stream and hail the rowers over for help – unfortunately, the boat’s occupants turn out to be guerrilla fighters….
Together, these two women attempt two further escapes – twice failing. They are separated in August 2003, Ingrid being placed with a group comprised of military, police, politicians and the three US hostages. It is there that she befriends the three hostages John Frank Pinchao (escaped April 2007), Marc Gonsalves (one of the 3 US hostages, still held captive) and the ex-senator Luis Eladio Pérez (freed in February 2008).
It is with Pérez that she attempts her fourth and last escape. After having helped her friend back to health, they manage to escape one night. All starts well and they manage to reach a river which they follow. However, by the sixth night Pérez, who has still not quite recovered totally, suffers from the cold. Ingrid decides to sacrifice her dream of freedom in favour of her friend’s health and when they see a guerrilla boat pass-by, they call it over.
On their return to the camp, Ingrid is very severely punished. Yet, she attempts to resist while being chained: “Hold this image in your memory, you shall regret it for the rest of your lives”. Finally, she is heavily beaten by her captors, who “leave her tied next to the latrines so that they needn’t be bothered to come untie her when she need the lavatory”, explains Pinchao.
Unremitting towards Ingrid
Her spirit of resistance, her attitude of defiance, her stoicism further hardens her captors against her. “They were unremitting towards her”, revealed Luis Eladio Pérez. “She was constantly punished”, confirms Pinchao. Any occasion was a pretext for harassment and humiliation.
When Ingrid fell ill, apparently from chronic hepatitis, the FARC rebels transported her in a hammock acted as a stretcher – they knocked her against tree trunks and dropped her to the ground, like a sack, whenever they stopped. To the guerrilla-fighters, the hostages are nothing more than merchandise. When they talk of them, it is with inhumane cynicism. “I can tell you that she is a coarse woman; volcanic and provocative”, wrote Raul Reyes [the FARC’s 2nd in command, who was killed in an army raid in March 2008] last February in a message which was found in a laptop seized by the army.
In spite of the harassment, the mud, the illnesses, the privations, the flame which drives Ingrid flickers but does not blow out. In the depths of the jungle, she continues to dream of the presidency and has drawn-up a 190 point political plan, some of which may seem idealistic.
In all circumstances, she encouraged her friend John Frank Pinchao not to give up. “She told me that I should look further than myself”, wrote the former police officer in his book. Ingrid gave him French lessons and taught him the French national anthem La Marseillaise. One day, she promised, he would see Paris.... Over a number of weeks, Ingrid taught him how to swim in the river. This later saved his life when, on several occasions during his 19 day long escape through the jungle, the young police man was forced to cross lakes and rivers. “She was my guide, my light in the darkness”, says he of this woman to whom he dedicates his story.
Video thanks to: voteforfreedom.nl & agirpouringrid.com
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