Pop star Shakira was to lead nationwide demonstrations in her native Colombia yesterday demanding the liberation of hundreds of hostages held by rebels in the jungle for years.
Around 80 solidarity rallies are also to take place in other cities around Latin America and the rest of the world, including one in Paris that will include recently freed Franco-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt.
“On July 20, I want to shout out, with you, for the independence and liberty of those who are still hostage of the FARC in Colombia,” Betancourt told the French parliament early this month.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) continues to detain an estimated 700 hostages. Up to 2,000 more are believed to be held by the National Liberation Army, another leftist rebel group. Yesterday’s rallies were to call for their immediate release, and those of prisoners held by other rebel groups.
Around 5 million people were expected to take part in the Colombian demonstrations to be held in some 1,000 towns and cities across the country.
The marches coincide with Colombia’s independence day celebrations, which were to be attended by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and his guests, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Peruvian President Alan Garcia, in the southern town of Leticia.
Shakira, Colombia’s global pop icon, was to sing Colombia’s national anthem at the start of that commemoration before launching into a concert in support of the hostage liberation demonstration.
Juanes, another high-profile Colombian singer, and other musicians were also scheduled to lend their voices to the liberation initiative.
In the capital Bogota, more than 50,000 people dressed in white were expected to fill the central city square.
Some of the 14 other hostages who were freed with Betancourt — reportedly through a ruse operation by Colombia’s military — will be present there and in other cities.
Three US defense contractors who were liberated at the same time are back in the US and will not be participating, however. It will be the third national demonstration of its type in Colombia. The last was on Feb. 4.
There is concern about possible terrorist acts. On Friday, police arrested in the capital two suspected FARC rebels, seizing from them about 30kg of explosives. The two allegedly planned to use them during the march.
Olga Lucia Gomez, head of the Free Country Foundation working to free the hostages, said the rallies “are to demand not only the liberation of the rebels’ hostages, but also all those being held against their will by whoever they may be.”
Julio Roberto Gomez, president of a workers’ union, told a media conference it was also an opportunity to shine the spotlight on the hundreds of hostages — many of them poor rural residents — who were not famous enough to generate individual public campaigns.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS