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Colombia's Elderly Targeted Increasingly in Kidnappings
Baltimore Sun, June 22, 2003 MEDELLIN, Colombia - Karina Ruiz was resting in bed after church on Good Friday when armed kidnappers burst into her home and hustled her off to the mountains, ignoring her family's pleas to leave her be. Colombia suffers 3,000 kidnappings a year, the world's highest rate. But Ruiz's case highlights an even more disturbing trend - she is 81 years old. With Colombians in growing numbers fleeing the country or being bankrupted by ransom payments, the kidnapping industry is running out of victims, and for at least the past two years even the elderly haven't been safe. At least 55 people older than age 65 are being held. The oldest known victim in captivity is an 84-year-old man. They are among those least able to cope with the rigors of being held in the jungles and freezing mountains of Colombia. One senior citizen, recently released by rebels after a ransom was paid, said she spent 47 days slogging across the rugged terrain of Antioquia state in western Colombia. The woman, afraid of retribution by her former captors, spoke in an interview on condition she not be identified by name or age. She said it was not uncommon to spend 10 hours a day walking through the mountains, often in driving rain. She was often hungry, had to bathe in icy rivers and suffered sleepless nights squeezed in among the rebels and fending off insects. Her captors threatened to shoot and kill her if the ransom payment didn't come through, she said. On May 8, Joaquin Sierra, 83, was kidnapped from his ranch in a rebel stronghold in Antioquia. He has not been heard from since. "He is dying," said his anguished son, Dario Sierra. "He is rotting in the jungle. We want him back, dead or alive, but not kidnapped." No ransom demands have been made, but the son said: "We will not pay a single peso, because this only generates more violence in Colombia." Ruiz has not been seen during the two months since she was seized at her home in the western Colombian town of Angostura. She has diabetes and high blood pressure, and her relatives worry about how she is managing without her medication. "Why would they do such a thing, with such an elderly person living out her last days?" asked Norela Parra, one of Ruiz's daughters. "This is inhuman." The family says the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has made contact four times, threatening to kill Ruiz if no ransom is paid. The FARC, which has been fighting the government for 39 years, is behind most kidnappings in Colombia. It professes to be ideologically leftist but is regarded by many Colombians as a large criminal gang. The Ruiz family says the FARC wants a ransom of $425,000. Ruiz's 13 children range from a teacher to a successful businessman, but they say that even their combined resources can't amass that amount. As the rebels took Ruiz - allowing only brief hugs and kisses with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren - she grabbed a crucifix and told her family not to pay any ransom. Nonetheless they have tried to negotiate payment, but with no success. The last evidence they received that Ruiz is alive was a letter in her handwriting delivered early last month. Sebastian, 6, who saw his great-grandmother being kidnapped, prays for her return every night. "In the morning he'll say, 'She didn't come back. Let's pray again,'" Parra said. Parra, 58, has gone on national television to urge the rebels to take her in exchange for Ruiz. "It just seems too difficult, such an old person suffering in the wilderness," she said during an interview in her brother's modest apartment in Medellin. "She can't walk. She's probably starving and sleeping in some hole somewhere. Thoughts of my mother don't leave me for a second."
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