Interviews From The Short Century

Precisely twenty-four hours after the interview, while being driven from Florencia to San Vicente del Caguán, on the front line of the battle between FARC rebels and government forces, Íngrid Betancourt disappears along with a French photographer and cameraman accompanying her to document an electoral campaign fraught with danger. Everything points to a kidnapping.

A dramatic event which paradoxically, even for a country as pitiless as Colombia, “suddenly increases the likelihood of her winning the election”, Gabriel Marcela, professor at national war college ESDEGUE, knowingly observes.

It was Ms Betancourt's own decision to come back to this hellish place in 1990, aged just thirty and in the prime of her life.

A former member of the Chamber of Representatives she has founded the Oxygen Green Party “in order to bring clean air into the corrupt world of Colombian politics”, she explains solemnly. The party’s slogan reads: “ Íngrid es oxigeno ” [Íngrid is oxygen]. And the campaign poster shows the woman herself with an anti-smog mask and surrounded by coloured balloons. The one hundred and sixty thousand votes she received when she was elected Senator four years ago were the most for any candidate in a Senate election in Colombia. But it could be argued that she wouldn't still be in the headlines without her recently published autobiography, the Italian title of which leaves us in no doubt as to her current frame of mind: They’ll Probably Kill Me Tomorrow .

I put it to her that this might be a shade melodramatic.

“ The French edition was titled La rage au coeur [With Rage in My Heart],” she responds defensively. “But the Italian publishers wanted a stronger title, so that's what we went for. And actually, that’s really how I’m feeling. It's what goes through my head first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I don’t think it’s particularly melodramatic. The prospect of being murdered tomorrow is a very real one for millions of this people in this country.”

The French newspapers are portraying her as some kind of latter-day saint: Paris Match called her “The woman in the firing line”, Libération “A heroine”, Le Figaro “The Pasionaria of the Andes”. Le Nouvel Observateur wrote: “if Simon Bolívar, the liberator of Latin America, could have chosen an heir, he would have chosen her”.

Whereas the Colombian press have had a laugh at her expense. Semana , the country’s leading weekly news magazine, lampooned her on the cover as Joan of Arc, complete with horse, armour and lance. The truth is, her book is far more measured and dry than its title and reviews would suggest. Ms Betancourt makes no attempt to hide her privileged background. As a young girl, she would ride horses every week at a farm owned by friends.

But she is full of ideas and has no difficulty putting them into words. “Conservative estimates suggest that in 1998, Colombia's biggest guerrilla group, FARC, received annual funding of about three hundred million dollars, most of which came from drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion. Today, that figure is close to half a billion dollars, and its membership has increased from fifteen thousand to twenty-one thousand. This situation,” she continues, “is putting the Colombian government at a huge disadvantage in their fight against the rebels. In order to secure a decisive victory, we believe that the government would have to deploy three or four highly trained soldiers for each FARC guerrilla, whereas the most they can currently send out is two. And all this requires an economic outlay that my country simply can’t afford. Since 1990, the cost of suppressing the rebels has increased nearly ten fold. At the beginning, it was costing one per cent of GDP but now it is more than two per cent - one billion US dollars...it's astronomical.”

So is she a hot-headed fanatic, like her enemies claim, or simply a woman who wants to do something for her country, which is how she sees it? The political elite in Bogotá are trying to ignore her candidature, but they are gradually starting to fear her. Omar, her chief bodyguard, pipes up: “In this country, you can pay for honesty with your life.” Ms Betancourt interjects quickly: “I’m not afraid of dying. Fear keeps me on my toes.”

Fighting corruption is at the forefront of her campaign, closely followed by the civil war. “The State should have no qualms about negotiating with the left-wing guerrillas,” she concludes, “unlike the right-wing paramilitary group the AUC, which is responsible for most of the murders that take place in Colombia.”

So how does she live with fear and threats on a daily basis?

“ I think, in a funny kind of way, you get used to it. Not that you should have to. The other day,” she concludes calmly, “I received a photo of a dismembered child in the post. Underneath it was written: ‘Senator, we have already hired a hit man to take care of you. We’re reserving special treatment for your son…’”.

6

Aung San Suu Kyi

Winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize

Free from fear

Following considerable pressure from the United Nations, Aung San Suu Kyi was released on 6 May 2002. It made headlines around the world, but her freedom was short-lived. On 30 May 2003, a group of soldiers opened fire on her convoy, killing many of her supporters. She survived thanks to the quick reflexes of her driver Ko Kyaw Soe Lin, but she was again put under house arrest.

The day after her release in May 2002, I used some of my contacts within the Burmese opposition to arrange an interview with Ms Suu Kyi vie email.

*****

At ten o’clock yesterday morning, the guards stationed outside the home of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), quietly returned to their barracks. And so it was, in a surprise move, that the military junta in Rangoon lifted the restrictions it had placed on the movement of the pacifist leader known simply in her homeland as “The Lady”, a woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and had been under house arrest since 20 July 1989.

So ever since ten o’clock yesterday morning, after a period of nearly thirteen years, Aung San Suu Kyi has been free to leave her lakeside house, speak to whomever she wants, be politically active and see her children.

But is this really the end of the period of isolation for the Burmese Pasionaria? The exiled opposition still do not believe the grand declarations from the military junta, which said it was freeing Ms Suu Kyi unconditionally.

They would rather wait and see. And pray. Indeed, since yesterday, the Burmese diaspora have already held prayer demonstrations in Buddhist temples in Thailand and other parts of eastern Asia.

As for The Lady herself, she too has wasted little time. She was immediately driven to the headquarters of the NLD, which had won a landslide victory (nearly sixty per cent of the vote) in the 1990 elections while the governing National Unity Party (NUP) secured just ten of the four hundred and eighty-five seats. The military government annulled the results, outlawed the opposition (imprisoning or exiling its leaders) and violently suppressed any protests. Parliament was never convened.

The Italian edition of your autobiography is called Libera dalla paura [Free From Fear]. Is that how you feel now?

Yes, for the first time in more than a decade, I feel free. Physically free. Free to go about my business and think, above all. As I explain in my book, however, I’ve felt “free from fear” for many years. Ever since I realised that the tyranny here in my country could harm humiliate or even kill us, but they couldn't scare us anymore.

You've only just been released, but you’ve said today that there are no conditions on your freedom and that the governing military junta has even authorised you to leave the country. Do you really believe that?

In a press release issued yesterday evening, a spokesperson for the junta spoke of “a new chapter for the people of Myanmar and the international community”. Hundreds of political prisoners have been released over the last few months, and the military has assured me that they will continue to set free those who, in their words, “do not present a danger to society”. Everybody here wants to believe, wants to hope that this really is a sign of change. A sign that we are back on the path towards democracy, which was so suddenly and violently cut off in the coup of 1990. It is a path that the Burmese people have never forgotten.

Now that you have been freed, are you not scared of being expelled and distanced from your supporters?

Let me be clear: I will not leave. I am Burmese, and I turned down British citizenship precisely because I didn’t want to give the regime any excuses. I’m not afraid, and that gives me strength. But the people are hungry, which frightens them, and that makes them weak.

You have strongly denounced, on several occasions, the military's attempts to intimidate anyone who sympathises with the NLD. Is that still going on today?

According to the figures we have, in 2001 alone the army arrested more than one thousand opposition activists under orders from SLORC [State Law and Order Restoration Council] generals. Many others have been forced to resign from the League [NLD] after being submitted to intimidation, threats and other wholly unjustified and unlawful pressures. Their meticulous method is always the same: unleash units of government officials who go from door to door across the entire country asking citizens to leave the League. Those who refuse are blackmailed with the threat of losing their jobs, or worse. Many branches of the party have closed down, and the military checks the number of people who have quit on a daily basis. This shows how afraid they are of the League. Every one of us hopes that all this is now really over.

Did the military's decision to release you take you by surprise, or was it something they had been planning for a while because they were conscious of their global reputation?

Since 1995, Myanmar has gradually become less isolated. The University of Yangon has been reopened, and maybe there has been a slight improvement in living standards. But the daily reality remains violence, unlawfulness and oppression against dissidents, ethnic minorities in search of autonomy (Shan, Bwe, Karen) and, more generally, the majority of the Burmese people. Problems are mounting up for the military, both domestically and internationally. In the meantime, they continue to traffic in drugs until they can find another, equally lucrative, source of income. But what will that be? Myanmar is essentially a gigantic safe to which only the army knows the combination. It won’t be easy to convince the generals to share this wealth with the other fifty million Burmese.

At this stage, what are your terms for entering into dialogue?

We won’t accept anything - there has been talk, for example, of the generals calling an election - until the parliament that was elected in 1990 has been restored. My country is still paralysed with fear. There cannot be genuine peace until there is a genuine commitment that honours all those who have fought for a free and independent Myanmar, but we are well aware that ongoing peace and reconciliation requires ever greater vigilance, courage and the ability to resist actively but without resorting to violence.

What can the European Union do to help the people of Myanmar?

Keep applying pressure, because the generals have to know that the world is watching and will not allow them to commit more heinous crimes with impunity.

*****

Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released for good on 13 November 2010. In 2012, she won a seat in the Burmese parliament, and on June 16 of the same year, she was finally able to receive her Nobel Peace Prize in person. Finally authorised to travel abroad, she went to the UK to visit the son she had not seen for several years.

On 6 April 2016, she became State Counsellor (equivalent to Prime Minister) of Myanmar.

While it is true that Myanmar is not yet a totally free country, and its dictatorial past weighs on both its history and its future, there is no doubt that freedom and democracy are now more than just pipe dreams in the Land of A Thousand Pagodas.

7

Lucía Pinochet

Death, torture and disappearance

Santiago, March 1999 .

“ Pinochet? Chileans see him as a cancer. A hidden and painful illness. You know it’s there, but you're afraid to talk about it...to even say its name. So you end up pretending it doesn’t exist. Maybe you think that by ignoring it, it will just go away without you having to confront it.” The waitress at Café El Biógrafo , a popular hangout for poets and students in the picturesque bohemian Santiago barrio of Bellavista, known for its colourful houses, couldn't have been much more than twenty years old. She may not even have been born when General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the “ Senador vitalicio ” [Senator-for-life] as he is known here, was either giving orders that would see his opponents “killed, tortured and forcibly disappeared” - as the families of the more than thirty thousand desaparecidos claim - or ruling with an iron fist to ensure that Chile was free from the threat of communism - as his admirers insist. And yet she is keen to talk to me about Pinochet, and she has some forthright views: “It’s all about Pinochet here. Whether you're a fan of his or not, you can't deny that he is present in every part of Chilean life. He's part of our politics, clearly. He lives large in everyone's memories, in my parents’ stories, in teachers’ lessons. He’s in novels, non-fiction books, the cinema. That's right, in Chile even films are either for or against Pinochet. And yet somehow we continue to pretend that he isn’t there...”

This stubborn old man, who faced up to the British justice system “with the dignity of a soldier”, this “poor old guy” (as whispered into my ear by the concierge at the Círculo de la Prensa , where during the shadowy years of the military dictatorship, people loyal to the General would come to “pick up” pesky journalists right in front of the Palacio de La Moneda, where Salvador Allende died in the midst of the coup) had become a lumbering giant whose presence was felt in every corner of every street of every quarter of Santiago, a city that seemed to me uncertain and inward-looking

He is the living memory of this country - a colossal, ubiquitous memory that embarrasses those who supported him and irritates those who opposed him. A vast, sprawling memory that clings to people's lives, hopes and fears, to Chile's past and to its future.