on Ingrid Betancourt

Ingrid Betancourt, leader of the Colombian Green Party (Partido Verde-Oxigeno) has been kidnapped more than three years ago by the guerrilla of FARC together with her party friend Clara Rojas, while they were campaigning for presidential election. Since then, they are detained and no proof of their survival has been provided since August 2003.

Despite the efforts of the international community, of many governments, of the civil society and of the Green parties, the situation remains in a deadlock in Colombia for the opening of talks for a « humanitarian exchange » aiming at the liberation of the kidnapped politicians, police and military detained by the FARC and of the rebels imprisoned by the governments. Both the government and the FARC are systematically demanding such conditions for the opening of talks that they perfectly know unacceptable by the other side. As a result, neither the government nor the FARC want to assume the responsibility of the deadlock, but both are quite satisfied with the forced silence of Ingrid Betancourt, whose courageous voice was condemning their inhuman and criminal policies which are maintaining Colombia in armed conflicts and in violence for decades.

In order to strengthen the pressure for the liberation of Ingrid, Clara, and of the other Colombian hostages, and in continuity with the resolution adopted at its previous Council in Dublin, the European Green Party decides. 

• to call on the Green parties of the world for the organization in Bogota by end 2005 of a solidarity Conference of the Green Parties in favour of the liberation of Ingrid Betancourt, Clara Rojas and the other hostages.

• to send a delegation of the European Green Party, including a maximum of European Green Parties leaders to Bogota, by the end of 2005, where it will meet, in relation with the Partido Verde-Oxigeno,  all the authorities and organizations that can be involved in the fate of the hostages.

• to send a letter to the presidents of Brazil, Luis Ignacio da Silva « Lula » of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, asking them to increase their pressures on the FARC for the liberation of the hostages

• to send a letter to the Forum of Sao Paulo, which is gathering many leftist movements and parties from Latin America and Caraibs, among which the Worker’s Party (PT, Brazil), the PRD (Mexico), the Communist Party of Cuba and the FARC, requiring them to expel the FARC from its ranks until the liberation of their hostages.

• to call on its member parties to make all their efforts to obtain that each European capital, in their different countries, will give to Ingrid Betancourt the honorific citizenship, as it has already been done by Paris, Dublin, Brussels and Roma.