COLOMBIA: Four years ago today the Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and her campaign manager, Clara Rojas, were kidnapped at a country roadblock set up by guerrillas from the Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces (Farc).
Colombia is again in the midst of a presidential campaign - an indication of the years lost - but there is no movement on the hostage issue. The Farc demand a "humanitarian accord" to exchange some 60 "political hostages", including Betancourt, for prisoners held by the Colombian army. But the country's right-wing president, Alvaro Uribe, refuses to negotiate.
Betancourt's daughter Melanie (21) is a philosophy student at the Sorbonne. For four years she has campaigned to raise awareness of the plight of the Colombian hostages. "I would never have believed it would go on so long," she said. "It shows we've got to put a stop to it, that the international community must mobilise more." In the past, Betancourt's family and friends focused their criticism on President Uribe's intransigence towards the guerrillas. But Betancourt recorded her last hostage video in May 2003, and patience with the kidnappers is wearing thin.
"Almost three years without a sign of life; we're fighting in a vacuum, without knowing how she is, what conditions she's held in," says Melanie. "The Farc haven't made a single concrete gesture to show the families and the international community they have a genuine desire to reach an agreement, that they're not just into war, money and drugs, that there's a human vision behind it."
Several days ago, the Farc issued a communique in which they promised to send a video of Betancourt soon. The same document announced the death of an army officer whom they'd held for seven years in the jungle.
"People must realise that it's not just a question of waiting," says Melanie. "It's also a question of life and death. We're dying of fear."
Ingrid Betancourt brought the face of a Renaissance Madonna, great courage and a steel-strong will to her crusade against corruption and for a more egalitarian society in Colombia. That combination captured the imagination of thousands of people around the world who have joined Ingrid Betancourt support groups.
Anne O'Connell, president of the Ingrid Betancourt Committee in Dublin, has in the past brought Melanie and Betancourt's husband, Juan Carlos Lecompte, to speak in Ireland. For the fourth anniversary of Betancourt's capture, O'Connell has organised a travelling exhibition of photographs of Colombia, and a meeting at the Alliance Francaise in Dublin tomorrow afternoon.
Betancourt holds dual Colombian and French citizenship - Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is a personal friend - and she is well known in France.
A giant photo of her hangs from the Paris town hall. French comedians performed in her honour on Monday. The pop singers Renaud, Carla Bruni and Vincent Delerm will sing for her tonight at a gala in Rouen and her face will be projected on to a screen at the France-Italy rugby match at the Stade de France on Saturday.
Europeans are more motivated to campaign for Betancourt's freedom "because things are calmer here, people have more time", Melanie says. "In Colombia, hostage-taking has become banal." The rallies and concerts are important, she adds, "because people have to talk about it for things to move forward. The worst thing of all would be for them to be forgotten."