REPORTER: Giovana Vitola
It is 11 o'clock on Saturday evening but for Rafael and Miriam Mora the night is just starting.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): When we go to the radio station, we sometimes stay there till 3am.
The Moras are going to deliver a lifeline to their son, Juan Camilo. Five years ago he was taken hostage by a guerrilla group who never contacted the family for a ransom. Now the Moras' only hope of communicating with him is via a radio show hosted by this man, Huber Hoyos.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): How have you been?
HUBER HOYOS, RADIO HOST (Translation): Fine.
Huber Hoyos' programme runs through the early hours of Sunday morning, and inside the radio station last minute preparations are underway.
MARCELLA PUENTES, PRODUCER (Translation): Tati, you are going to send a message to your dad, wait a bit and I will call you from a phone at the radio station.
Marcella Puentes, the show's producer, is recording messages from children who cannot stay up any later.
CHILD (Translation): Daddy, God bless you and take care of you - Lots of kisses - Daddy, I love you very much, I just can’t wait to see you again, Daddy.
While they are waiting, Rafael and Miriam finish writing tonight's message to their son.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): We have come here many times, we have come for Juan Camilo’s birthday, for Mother’s Day….
When the final preparations are done, Huber Hoyos' radio show takes to the airwaves acrossColombia.
HUBER HOYOS (Translation): 12.14am, good morning, Caracol Radio listeners – we begin with Voices of Kidnapping, the humanitarian program that mitigates the pain of torture and overcomes the captors’ indifference. It’s time for our program to break the silence of the jungle with words of life, hope and faith from those on the side of freedom.
Civil conflict and kidnappings have been going on for decades here in Colombia, and many hundreds of people are currently held hostage by guerrilla groups. Marcella Puentes tries to keep track, but it is a difficult job.
MARCELLA PUENTES (Translation): The web page is…. It’s incalculable – look – 1059 kidnap victims are registered on this page.
As the show goes on, families call in, hoping that their loved ones can hear them.
MARCELLA PUENTES (Translation): We now welcome Mrs Teresa Duque de Silva, she is in Bogota and is the mother of Mr Silva Duque, kidnapped in Restrepo, Meta, on 7th September 2002.
The show runs until 6am Sunday morning, and the calls keep coming throughout the night.
HUBER HOYOS (Translation): An international communication from the united Arab Emirates from Mr Jaime Salem whose son Mahmud was kidnapped….
Eventually Juan Camilo’s anxious parents get their chance.
HUBER HOYOS (Translation): Miriam and Rafael, welcome to Voices of Kidnapping.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): My dear Juan, the most awaited time has arrived – that is –Sundays before dawn, when I get the chance to say how much I love and need you. It is now at this moment that you feel closest to me. I feel you are here, my love, when I look at photos or listen to your music - I feel nostalgic and start crying. The memory of you is so beautiful and you are so special, that every minute of the day we keep wishing and longing to hear you laugh, to get a hug from you, all of which I miss so much, dear.
RAFAEL MORA (Translation): Son, we come here, late on a Saturday night to vent our emotions and to give you hope via this one-way communication. Not a day goes by when we do not think of you. The hope of you returning and knowing that God is in control is helping us through this testing time, which is now 60 months and 17 days old.
HUBER HOYOS (Translation): Don Rafael, never lose courage, never lose hope. It’s 1.25am on Caracol Radio, this is Voices of Kidnapping.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): Help us find our children, okay? Thank you very much.
RAFAEL MORA (Translation): We never imagined such a thing could happen to us.
Back at their home, the Moras tell me about the day Juan Camilo disappeared.
RAFAEL MORA (Translation): He was delivering some documents after a business deal, they were waiting for him in the car park and he was taken away by armed men.
They do everything they can to keep Juan Camilo's memory alive. They have a Facebook page where friends and family send him messages each day and Miriam has filled notebook after notebook with her daily thoughts for him.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): Every time I write things down, I feel my life drain away, it’s hard!
The Moras feel abandoned by their government which they say has not tried hard enough to get their son back.
MIRIAM MORA (Translation): We don’t know who to trust, we have tried every tier of the judicial system but the government does not appear to have a real commitment – we can’t really say that we have had their support - that they are going to help us.
CROWD (Translation): They were taken alive, we want them back alive
The families of hostages do whatever they can to keep their plight in the public eye. This weekly protest in the main square of Bogota is held by the relatives of kidnap soldiers and police officers.
CROWD (Translation): Kidnapped friends, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, your families will never forget you!
Sylvio Hernandez Rivas has been coming to these demonstrations for years. His son's kidnapping is one of the longest running in Colombia. Elkin Hernandez has now been held captive by the guerrillas for 12 years and Sylvio is bitter that the government has not been able to negotiate his release.
SYLVIO HERNANDEZ (Translation): We don’t agree, I don’t agree with it – abandoning a human being who has not committed any crime or done anything wrong and leaving him or her to suffer like that. All this pain is killing us.
Sylvio and his family have watched anxiously as prisoner exchanges with the guerrillas have come and gone.
SYLVIO HERNANDEZ (Translation): Others have been released thanks to Dr Piedad Cordoba, for which we are very grateful. We haven’t had any luck yet.
Despite the long wait, the Hernandez Rivas family have no doubt their son is alive.
SYLVIO HERNANDEZ (Translation): These are the first and second proofs of life, it was sent to us with some letters, telling us how he was feeling and giving all his family encouragement. I think it was 1999…. a good year and a half later. I think this one is from 2001.
Even though Elkin is still a hostage, over the years his captors have allowed him to send many letters to Sylvio and his mother, Magdalena Rivas.
MAGDALENA HERNANDEZ (Translation): These are his drawings - he made it for me on 14th December 2000.
SYLVIO HERNANDEZ (Translation): All this has been hell for us - we have been feeling this way and suffering for such a long time, that we are weary – we are spent – it is constantly making us ill.
LIDUINE ZUMPOLLE, HANDS FREE FOR PEACE: In spite of the fact that the President says we will be mobilised, we will be loyal to you, we will help you, but the reality is far more complicated.
Liduine Zumpolle is a Dutch woman who has worked on human rights in Colombia for over 30 years. From the relative safety of her home she runs Hands Free For Peace, an organisation which helps to mobilise guerrillas.
LIDUINE ZUMPOLLE: The majority of these people, it is a matter of forced recruitment to put people in the camps, in the mountain - a lot of them are women, they have girls of 12, 13, 14 years old and younger sometimes. Children are robbed from their homes, they are educated as killers.
Government forces have been fighting rebel groups like FARC for 50 years, on and off. Once upon a time, the guerrillas were fighting for the rights of poor farmers. But now they have resorted to kidnapping for ransom, and taxing the drug trade.
LIDUINE ZUMPOLLE: They are degraded to doing something very vulgar and criminal and we should fight them at any price.
But the guerrilla groups keep fighting back, and they continue to kidnap both military and innocent civilians.
ANA MARIA VALLEJO (Translation): The hardest things were the long walks, staying up all night, the beatings, the moral and psychological damage, being afraid of getting killed by the planes bombing us. They could kill you at any time and if you didn’t like something, they would get angry. There was a guy who had it in for me, but in the end, I got so tired that I told him “Just kill me, you would be doing me a favour.”
Ana Maria Vallejo now lives in Bogota with her fiancé, but she spent four years of her life in the jungle, kidnapped by guerrillas. When she was released in 2009, she was finally able to see her family again, but she had been able to hear them thanks to the Voices of Kidnapping radio show. It was one of the only things that kept her going in captivity.
ANA MARIA VALLEJO (Translation): Many people say “What is the point of all those messages?” Lots of people think it is absurd to be calling and sending messages when you don’t know if… but they do listen, I heard just one, but I still remember. I heard my mum and my niece one December 23, I hadn’t heard them in two years – I almost dropped dead.
I'm meeting Huber Hoyos in a cafe to find out more about the radio show. He tells me it was actually started by his brother, Herbin, but Herbin has had to flee to Spain after years of advocating for the hostages and their families. While we are talking, something unexpected happens.
HUBER HOYOS (Translation): Herbin is coming!
Herbin has just arrived from Spain. He is still being targeted by guerrillas, so for his own safety it is a surprise visit. To be safe, Herbin wants to talk to me inside his bullet-proof car. He tells me the radio show started from his own incredible experience.
HERBIN HOYOS (Translation): I was kidnapped on 13th March 1994, I was at the radio, on air, doing a program when a group of armed men, three men with machine guns, took me to a place in the mountains where my rescue took place during combat with the Colombian army. The guerrillas against the army – several guerrillas were killed.
While in captivity I met another kidnap victim who was tied to a tree. When he found out I was a journalist, he said “Why don’t you journalists do something for us hostages? Imagine if my family could speak to me over the radio, if they could talk to me. Why not do something like that?” He was the one who gave me the idea for a program like Voices of Kidnapping.
Another weekend at the home of the Hernandez Rivas family and Magdalena keeps a vigil by the phone, waiting for the radio station to call for her turn to send a message.
MAGDALENA HERNANDEZ RIVAS (Translation): Good morning to my beautiful boy, Elkin Hernandez Rivas, I hope you are finding strength in God and the Virgin Mary and you are praying to Our Lord for your prompt return, son.
For the relatives of the hostages, each Saturday night is bittersweet. It is another chance to reach out to their loved one, but also marks another week without their release from captivity.
MAGDALENA HERNANDEZ RIVAS (Translation): I’m always thinking of my son.
MARK DAVIS: Giovana Vitola reporting there and there is an interview with her, with more about the radio show in Colombia, plus links to some of the websites featured in that report. Go to sbs.com.au/dateline.
Reporter/Camera
GIOVANA VITOLA
Producer
AARON THOMAS
Editors
DAVID POTTS
WAYNE LOVE
Translation/Subtitling
PILAR BALLESTEROS
Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN
1st May 2011