Since the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia in 2002, Belgium’s role in fighting for her release and other hostages has grown ever more prominent. Elizabeth Dickinson reports

On the morning she learned of her brothers death in June. Angela Maria Giraldo was just sitting down for a 9am meeting at the European Union Council in Brussels to plead for help securing his release, Giraldos mother called from her home in Colombia, and Angela Maria stepped into the hall. She returned in tears, relaying the news that her brother, Francisco, as well as 10 other former Colombian legislators, had been killed by rebels after being held hostage for five years.

Giraldo came to Brussels as part of a national delegation, but many of her supporters around the table that morning were Belgian, not Colombian. Since the hostages were captured five years ago as part the ongoing conflict, a community of people across Europe has grown up in support of their families, including that of the most well-known hostage, dual French-Colombian citizen and former Colombian senator Ingrid Betancourt.

First started in Belgium, today there are 65 chapters of the FICIB, or International Federation of Ingrid Betancourt Committees. Belgians of all stripes have been drawn to the cause by a sense of solidarity and a realization that getting the hostages back will take inter-national support — something they just might be able to provide from the home of the European Union. With the Committees help, Brussels has become a key pressure point for ending the crisis.

Hostage-taking has been a staple of the conflict since the crisis began in 1965. Two rebel groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), today hold as many as 3000 hostages between them. It was when the Farc kid-napped Betancourt in February 2002, that Europe, and particularly the French, started to lobby for her release and that of many others still in captivity.

The morning after Betancourt was kidnapped was also the morning that the Ingrid Betancourt Committees was launched, by accident, in Belgium.

At the time, Armand Burguet ran a website for schools from his home in Rosières. Burguet wanted to use the internet to expand the traditional reach of the classroom, so he posted online lesson plans on topics from Islam to the crisis in Kosovo. In 2001, a friend and teacher asked him to post something for International Women’s Day, March 9. He stumbled across the perfect example for his page: a woman named Ingrid Betancourt, who had returned to perilous Colombian politics from a comfortable life abroad. When Betancourt was captured the following year Burguet woke up to 75 emails from Canada, New Zealand and across Europe asking to know what had happened. Concerned Googlers found his site and e-mailed him in search of answers.

As he responded to each letter Burguet noticed something. Many of the e-mailers also asked him if there was anything they could do to help. I just happened to be the link between a lot of people around the world, says Burguet. In the next few days, his single page grew into its own site, www.betancourt.info. Each day as he posted recent news of Betancourt’s kidnap, it became increasingly impossible to turn back, He approached others in Europe and Quebec, including Betancourt’s ex-husband, French diplomat Fabrice Delloye, asking what could be done. The Ingrid Betancourt Committees were born.

There was something about Colombia’s situation that attracted Belgians of all backgrounds. Betancourt spent much of her late childhood in Paris, but she returned to Colombia when she was 28 in hopes of fighting corruption and bringing peace to the war-torn country. When she released her book, Until Death Do Us Part, My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia, in 2002, many European journalists asked her why she went back, to which she replied that if there had been no resistance from Europe in World War Two, life would not be the same today.

That struck André-Louis Du Bois, now in charge of the Brussels Committee, when he happened to see one of Betancourt’s last interviews, aired after her kidnap. “My father was put in jail by the Germans in World War Two”, he says. He knew nothing about Colombia and spoke not a word of Spanish, but Betancourt’s story was enough. Today, Du Bois wears a pin in Betancourt’s honour; his smart car carries a matching sticker.

‘The group’s message to the Colombian rebels was clear- the world is watching’

Although members like Du Bois founded the movement on their own, the Committees worked urgently in their first year to raise support and awareness. "We had one year to make this problem so visible on the international level that it would be difficult for the Farc to execute [Betancourt]", Burguet remembered. Within months, the Committees had organised 280 individuals in 89 countries willing to be listed as the leaders of Committees, such people as, in Japan, the translator of Betancourt’s book into Japanese. Although the list was false, the message to the rebels was clear: the world is watching.

The Committees approached cities and local governments, asking them to nominate Betancourt as a Citizen of Honour and a symbol of all those still in captivity. Far more efficient than courting individual support, Burguet explained; If its official, if there is a vote, you represent the whole city. Today, the list of nominations stands at 1,860, including nearly half the French-speaking towns in Belgium as well as large cities like Brussels, Paris and Rome. A wall in Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, commemorates the first thousand cities to sign.

As the movement grew, so too did their goals. “In the beginning, we had no special interest from the political world. . .but with time, interest came, said Du Bois. The Ingrid Betancourt Committees worked to raise the issue in Brussels offices of the European Parliament. In February 2005, the organisation distributed to each member of that institution a 10-minute video of testimonies from the hostage’s families with one message:

You in the European Parliament are our only hope.

The same message came from a benefit concert organised with French singer Renaud Séchan and 11 other artists in Paris in September, 2005.

The Committees have also pushed for EU support on specific issues, including a joint 2005 proposal by France, Switzerland and Spain for a humanitarian exchange between the Colombian government and the rebel groups to bring the hostages home.

This was one of the requests of the delegation of Colombians that included Angela Maria Giraldo and Betancourt’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, when they visited the EU Council, Parliament and Commission in June. Committee members who attended the meetings suggested that certain Parliamentarians were ready to monitor an exchange, although the Colombian government and the Farc rebels have yet to agree on the conditions.

Through all of their campaigns, the Ingrid Betancourt Committees in Belgium and elsewhere are as strong as the volunteers who fill their ranks. Today, Burguet works full-time administering their activities and site. Far from the political centre of Brussels on a quiet corner of Avenue Louise, Committee member Sylvie Ducci’s fourth floor apartment is decorated with a large poster of Betancourt which hangs on her window facing the street. The same posters are going up throughout the city as a permanent reminder of all the hostages in Colombia. Ducci, who is training to be a chocolatière, is also training for her second marathon, which she plans to run under both her name and that of Betancourt. It’s symbolic for Ingrid, she explained. She gave the medals from her first race, the Brussels Marathon, to Ingrid’s mother.

Today, like most days, ìs a critical point for the crisis in Colombia and the Committees that fight for action. Sometimes it’s as simple as just wearing a T-shirt, said Brussels Committee member Hélène Van Den Neste. As she speaks, her words ring true. At the next table, a woman turns around, apologises for overhearing, and asks how she can get involved.