FARCfilter

November 26, 2007 6:46 PM

Colombia's FARC rebels hold over 3000 current hostages, including soldiers, lawmakers, presidential candidates, Americans, Canadians, Japanese, a Turk, 291 children (including one born in captivity who is the youngest hostage in the world), and a disillusioned Dutch convert whose diary was recently discovered. Family members of the kidnapped can send messages to their loved ones on a popular radio show. More about Colombian kidnappings in Silvana Paternostro's captivating memoir My Colombian War.
posted by mert (8 comments total)

Damn immature FARCers.
posted by delmoi at 6:54 PM on November 26, 2007

On Chavez's role as negotiator: Chavez Can't Do Anything Right ... Or Else
posted by stammer at 7:03 PM on November 26, 2007

Thanks for posting this, I have a friend who is planning (against my objections) to head into Cali with expensive equipment and without any real sort of protection or hostage insurance in order to do documentary work.

I'll be passing this along to him.
posted by rollbiz at 7:18 PM on November 26, 2007

It's not NewsFilter, it's FARC!
posted by zippy at 7:55 PM on November 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

I've been haunted by the Tanja Nijmeijer story all day, after reading it on, ahem, Fark.
posted by M.C. Lo-Carb! at 8:22 PM on November 26, 2007

It would be interesting to see her masters thesis on the farc, twice as much if she escapes alive and expands on it.
posted by nervousfritz at 8:51 PM on November 26, 2007

nervousfritz: It would be interesting to see her masters thesis on the farc, twice as much if she escapes alive and expands on it.

Good luck with that. If she makes it out alive, both FARC and the Colombian government will be after her. Her odds in any case are pretty poor (especially so now that she's been a PR disaster for FARC, and she's still in their control.)
posted by Mitrovarr at 10:57 PM on November 26, 2007

I've voluntarily wandered into some dangerous conflict zones, though not yet rural Colombia. Then I realized what I was doing to my family when they told me "If you disappeared, we would never be able to rest until we found out what happened," and I started to worry about them worrying (more in reference to the Nijmeijer story).
posted by iamck at 6:45 AM on November 27, 2007