| Bogota | Music | 00:00 |
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| CAMPBELL: Colombia was once famous for its colour, its coffee and its friendly people. But for the past generation it’s been blighted by war. | 00:17 |
| Flor Hilda visits son’s grave | A year ago, Flor Hilda Hernandez lost her son to one of the dark sides of this conflict. He was picked at random from a poor slum and executed. | 00:33 |
| Photo. Elkin | Soldiers then dressed him in a rebel uniform to meet a quota of enemy dead. | 00:46 |
| Flor Hilda | FLOR HILDA: I ask how did he die? Was he tortured? What did they do to him? Why? He was never a problem for anyone. | 00:54 |
| Photo. Elkin | Music | 01:05 |
| City shots | CAMPBELL: For more than four decades, tens of thousands of Colombians have been kidnapped or killed in South America’s longest-running civil war. They have been terrorised by their own army as well as by the left-wing rebels and right-wing paramilitaries it was fighting. | 01:11 |
| Parliament building | Now Colombia’s hard-line president insists it’s coming to an end. | 01:31 |
| Uribe greets | Alvaro Uribe has vowed to smash the left-wing rebellion and re-establish law and order. His own father was murdered by Marxist guerrillas from the main rebel group FARC. | 01:35 |
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| URIBE: Of course this has been a great motivation in this task. CAMPBELL: And how close are you to defeating FARC? | 01:51 |
| Uribe | URIBE: We are winning, but we have not won yet. | 01:58 |
| Archival. FARC | Music | 02:04 |
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| CAMPBELL: FARC and its allies once controlled 40 per cent of the countryside and even threatened major cities. Under Uribe’s leadership, and with help from the US, the military has driven FARC back into the jungle. | 02:11 |
| Woman singing/Children dancing | Singing | 02:30 |
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| CAMPBELL: Colombians are now re-discovering a lost sense of peace. | 02:41 |
| Uribe visits Villavicencio | Every Saturday, President Uribe travels to a different city to meet the people. Today it’s Villavicencio, a three-hour drive from the capital, Bogota. Until recently, these people couldn’t leave the city without fear of being kidnapped by FARC. Now they see Alvaro Uribe as their saviour. | 02:49 |
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| CAMPBELL: They seem very happy to see you? URIBE: My happiness is to talk with our people. | 03:11 |
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| CAMPBELL: After decades of ineffectual government, Uribe is seen as the man who can get things done. But some fear he’s not just threatening FARC, but anyone who stands in his way. Because for Uribe, like his long-time US ally, you’re either with him or with the terrorists. BUSH: Colombia remains a nation with challenges. | 03:22 |
| Bush speech. Super: | But the future will always be bright in a country that produces such men as President Alvaro Uribe. Congratulations mi amigo! | 03: 49 |
| Bush presents Uribe with Medal of Freedom | CAMPBELL: President Bush saw Uribe as one his three amigos in the war on terror. In one of his last acts as president he honoured Uribe, John Howard and Tony Blair with the medal of freedom. | 04:00 |
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| BUSH: President Uribe's leadership has been resolute and uncompromising. Today in Colombia, homicides are down 40 percent, kidnappings are down more than 80 percent, terror attacks are down by more than 75 percent. The forces of violence are on the defensive, and the people are reclaiming their country. | 04:17 |
| Police in helicopter | Music | 04:39 |
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| CAMPBELL: The United States has supported Colombia since the 1980s, when it was seen as a battleground in the war on drugs. Police like this were trained to fight criminal cartels producing cocaine in jungle labs. Both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries battled for control of cocaine production. After 9/11, George Bush switched funding from cocaine eradication to counter-terrorism, and the effect in much of Colombia has been striking. | 04:47 |
| Police firing | Music | 05:23 |
| Bogota |
| 05:30 |
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| CAMPBELL: These days, Bogota feels nothing like a violent war zone. It has a vibrant business sector, a relaxed cafe culture -- it’s even becoming a chic tourist spot. | 05:45 |
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| Colombians bristle at the stereotype of a nation of violent drug-traffickers. The reality is that for the urban middle class at least, it’s fast becoming a normal country. | 05:59 |
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| Here in Bogota it’s sometimes hard to believe that in some other parts of the country a brutal war is still raging. | 06:13 |
| Moon | Music | 06:20 |
| Campbell in helicopter at base preparing for sortie | CAMPBELL: The battles are now being fought in remote outposts like this -- the Omega base at Macarena in southern Colombia. | 06:27 |
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| It’s 4 am and we’re about to witness one of their regular combat missions -- a helicopter sortie to a FARC-held village. | 06:37 |
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| To minimise the risk of being shot, all will fly in complete darkness, a dangerous exercise with four helicopters flying in tight formation. Soon after the lights go out, our chopper plunges to avoid a helicopter passing just a metre above us. Within minutes, the other helicopters land their troops to pursue FARC into the jungle. | 06:47 |
| Return to base | By sunrise, we’re heading back to base for an early breakfast. The atmosphere is coolly professional -- more like a day in the office than a deadly mission. | 07:22 |
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| The new strength of this US-trained military has convinced the president he can defeat FARC by force alone. | 07:37 |
| Uribe. Super: | CAMPBELL: What will they have to do to be able to be part of negotiations? URIBE: To cease violence. To release the hostages, the kidnapped people and to show good faith. CAMPBELL: So they have to give in before you’ll negotiate? URIBE: To cease violence is not to give in. To cease violence is to recognise the right of the people to live in peace. | 07:45 |
| Hostage rally | CAMPBELL: FARC continues to holds hundreds of hostages -- people held for ransom or snatched for being class enemies. Their families hold regular rallies in the hope their plight won’t be forgotten. | 08:17 |
| Gloria at rally | Gloria Polanco was released last year after being held for seven years in jungle camps. She’s come here to meet some of her fellow hostages who have only just been freed. | 08:34 |
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| GLORIA: We were in captivity for a long time and we formed a big family in the middle of all the pain and the sadness. | 08:48 |
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| CAMPBELL: She’s also come here to forgive. While she was in captivity, her husband, a former governor, was assassinated. Astonishingly, she’s found the strength to pardon his killer. | 09:00 |
| Gloria addresses rally | GLORIA: My sons and I are a family of faith, and we don’t want to keep in our hearts bitterness and hate towards anyone. | 09:14 |
| Military on boats | CAMPBELL: But President Uribe is putting force ahead of forgiveness. | 09:28 |
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| He’s not only refused to negotiate with FARC, he won’t exchange captured FARC guerrillas for hostages, insisting the guerrillas are terrorists. | 09:34 |
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| URIBE: We cannot speak about the exchange of prisoners. | 09:45 |
| Uribe | Those terrorists who are in the state jails are prisoners in the jails of one state of law and order. | 09:52 |
| Freeing of Ingrid Betancourt | CAMPBELL: The government won international plaudits last year when it rescued the kidnapped politician, Ingrid Betancourt. | 10:03 |
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| Soldiers dressed as Red Cross workers to trick FARC into handing her over. But in most other cases, it’s relied on force. | 10:18 |
| Police storming training house |
| 10:28 |
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| CAMPBELL: A US-trained anti-kidnapping squad operates throughout the country, tracking hostages and where possible mounting rescue missions. But former hostages say that’s the last thing the government should do in the jungle. FARC routinely executes hostages if a camp’s attacked. | 10:35 |
| Police training exercise | GLORIA: I don’t agree with military rescue. At no time did I approve of it. | 10:56 |
| Gloria | It’s a risk. And what one wants there is to get out alive | 11:05 |
| Gloria and family at dinner | CAMPBELL: Gloria Polanco’s oldest sons were kidnapped with her. She lived in dread of them being killed. Juan Sebastian and Jaime were held in a separate camp for three years before they were freed for ransom. | 11:13 |
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| GLORIA: It’s negotiated… talking and dialogue, to reach what we all want. | 11:30 |
| Gloria | First is a humanitarian agreement, so that all of the hostages get out of the jungle, and the peace process begins. | 11:40 |
| Gloria hugging Cordoba in jungle | CAMPBELL: Gloria Polanco owes her release to a left-wing senator named Piedad Cordoba, who negotiated directly with FARC. Cordoba was herself a kidnap victim; she was held hostage in 1999 by right-wing paramilitaries. She insists the government should treat FARC captives not as terrorists but as prisoners of war. CORDOBA: This is a process where there are two actors -- the government and the FARC, | 11:54 |
| Cordoba | where there are prisoners of war as much from the FARC as from the government. To hand in the arms means to complete a process of negotiation. That means to understand the guerrilla as a valid and legitimate speaker in this country. | 12:27 |
| Alan Jara release | CAMPBELL: In February, she persuaded FARC to free the last politicians they were holding. | 12:47 |
| Gloria and sons watch hostage release | Watching their release has been an emotional rollercoaster for Gloria Polanco and her sons. While their mother wants negotiations now, the boys support Uribe’s hard line. OLDER SON: I think they have to keep fighting until they sit down and begin a true peace talk. | 12:55 |
| Older son | CAMPBELL: You don’t think they’re serious now? OLDER SON: Not really, like they were before, not really, but they will if the government keeps fighting them, they have to, that’s what we hope. | 13:16 |
| Soacha | Music | 13:28 |
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| CAMPBELL: But some Colombians fear the military more than they fear FARC. Up to four million people -- ten percent of the population -- have been displaced by the fighting. Hundreds of thousands live in the shantytown of Soacha outside Bogota. They’ve become targets for military death squads. | 13:41 |
| Flor Hilda weeping, shows photos | What happened to Flor Hilda Hernandez’s son almost defies belief. Colombian soldiers murdered Elkin and ten others from Soacha after luring them to non-existent jobs -- then dressed them in FARC fatigues. | 14:08 |
| Flor Hilda | FLOR HILDA: As you can see from his expression in the photographs, he was a very humble boy. Everybody loved him. I don’t know the cause or motive for his disappearance. | 14:28 |
| Soldiers in Soacha | CAMPBELL: The practice is so common the military has even coined a term for it -- ‘falsos positivos’, meaning false positives. CEPEDA: In Colombia there is an old practice that in order to be promoted to a higher rank of captain or colonel in the army, | 14:44 |
| Cepeda | it’s necessary to have a certain number of casualties in combat or present a certain number of people who were killed in action by the security forces. | 15:02 |
| Cepeda walks to mothers in safe house | CAMPBELL: Ivan Cepeda is a left-wing writer with the group Colombians for Peace. He’s been investigating the killings and advising the mothers of their rights. | 15:14 |
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| He has to meet them in a safe location away from the shantytown. Prosecutors are now examining hundreds of similar cases. | 15:25 |
| Mothers’ meeting | CEPEDA: We believe there are close to 1500 people who have been assassinated by members of the security forces or army | 15:36 |
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| and presented afterwards as combatants who were felled in the middle of the war. | 15:47 |
| Uribe. Super: | URIBE: In the case of false positives, we do not hesitate, whenever we know that this evident, that there is evidence, proving false positives will make decisions. | 15:53 |
| Soacha | Music | 16:10 |
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| CAMPBELL: President Uribe has sacked dozens of high-ranking officers over the Soacha scandal, including the army chief. | 16:16 |
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| But there’s little doubt this has been institutional practice for decades. Documents that have been declassified from the Washington National Security Archive show the US was aware of the practice from as early as 1990, yet it continued to dramatically increase funding for the Colombian military. | 16:25 |
| Military exercises | The biggest increase came from the Bush administration for the war on terror. It not only knew of the military’s crimes, Washington was also aware the army was collaborating with right-wing paramilitaries. | 16:46 |
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| They began as self-defence units set up by rich landowners to defend their properties from FARC. They became even more ruthless, massacring entire villages suspected of rebel ties. They murdered labour leaders, journalists and political activists -- including Ivan Cepeda’s father. | 17:04 |
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| CEPEDA: The paramilitaries have “disappeared” 25,000 people in Colombia. | 17:31 |
| Cepeda | They have dug up thousands of common graves where they buried these people who have disappeared. | 17:37 |
| Photo. Meridiano de Cordoba | CAMPBELL: He accuses Alvaro Uribe of being their most powerful ally. As a young politician, he associated with paramilitary leaders. | 17:46 |
| Uribe at airport/ Boards plane | Soon after he became president, they agreed to demobilise, though some have re-formed as criminal gangs. Not a single senior figure has been convicted over the mass killings. CEPEDA: When he was Governor of the Department of Antioquia, | 17:59 |
| Cepeda | he asked for permits so that security companies could operate -- and those security companies became paramilitary groups. | 18:24 |
| Uribe | CAMPBELL: The opposition says you’ve been soft on paramilitaries. They’ve even accused you of tacitly supporting them. What relationship do you have with the paramilitaries? URIBE: I don’t know with the opposition, what the opposition how to you spoken, why, with, because this is the government that has dismantled paramilitaries. Today Colombia no longer has paramilitaries. My government has fought them with all that the determination by saying that we have done against guerrillas. | 18:30 |
| Presidential palace | Music | 19:08 |
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| CAMPBELL: There’s no hard evidence to link the president to any illegal acts. Even so, the paramilitary issue is threatening to become his Watergate. The Supreme Court is investigating more than 60 Congressmen for suspected links with paramilitaries. The links include using paramilitaries to kill their political opponents and direct involvement in kidnapping and extortion. And almost all the law makers are close allies of President Uribe, including his own first cousin. | 19:11 |
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| The president insists all the alleged crimes took place before he came to power. | 19:47 |
| Uribe | CAMPBELL: But are you embarrassed that so many of your allies in Congress are facing charges, are in jail? Your own first cousin is in jail. URIBE: No… No, no. No, no. I am I am very happy to guarantee to this country a future of transparency in politics. | 19:56 |
| Rally at Villavicencio | CAMPBELL: The allegations of human rights abuse have so far barely dented the president’s extraordinary popularity. He’s due to step down next year, but he’s touted changing the constitution to allow him to run again. He dismisses his left-wing critics as little more than mouthpieces for FARC. | 20:12 |
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| URIBE: Security is born to fight the terrorists. The intellectual arm of the FARC has justified the FARC for many years. We won’t allow the intellectual bloc of the FARC to distract us with a speech of peace, which in the end strengthens terrorism. CORDOBA: First of all, the government has taken the decision | 20:36 |
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| to criminalise protest, to criminalise the opposition, and demonise the opposition. | 21:07 |
| Walking down street with bodyguards | CAMPBELL: Piedad Cordoba has received death threats from paramilitaries for criticising the president. She never travels without at least three bodyguards, even to walk one block to her city penthouse. | 21:22 |
| Cordoba inside penthouse | Her stylish residence has become an unofficial meeting point for Colombia’s beleaguered opposition -- politicians, human rights activists, writers and former hostages. PIEDAD: It’s not true that you can say whatever you like. Maybe you can say it hidden at home where nobody listens, | 21:39 |
| Cordoba | but we who have the public voice, who are the voice of the country and the people, and dare to criticise; the truth is, we’re paying the price. | 22:00 |
| Obama-McCain debate | CAMPBELL: Marginalised in their own country, they’re putting their hopes on the new US leader. Barack Obama was already raising human rights concerns in his election campaign. | 22:15 |
| Super: | OBAMA: Actually I understand it pretty well. The history in Colombia right now is that labour leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis and there have not been prosecutions. | 22:29 |
| Uribe | URIBE: We had committed to protect them, and we have seen a great reduction in the number of assassinations. | 22:43 |
| Bogota | We need the help of President Obama and we are optimistic that the United States President Obama will continue giving support to our to our noble battle against narco-trafficking. | 22:51 |
| Flor Hilda at grave | CAMPBELL: Colombians have been through a generation of sorrow. For some, like Flor Hilda Hernandez, whose son was murdered by the US-funded military, the grief will never end. | 23:09 |
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| Music | 23:22 |
| Gloria at rally | CAMPBELL: But for Gloria Polanco, reunited with her sons, there’s hope for a better future in which the next generation will be spared Colombia’s pain. | 23:29 |
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| Reporter: Eric Campbell Camera: David Martin Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen Producer: Vivien Altman
Additional footage courtesy Telsur Rafael Poveda Television,Eu | 23:49 |