Millions demonstrate worldwide for Colombia hostages

Jul 21, 2008, 14:47 GMT

Bogota/Paris - Millions of people in Colombia and around the world gathered to demonstrate for the release of an estimated 2,800 hostages being held for years by leftwing Colombian rebels.

In Colombia alone, people in 1,100 cities and towns flooded the streets Sunday in solidarity with the hostages, with music from 100,000 Colombian performers.

The day, July 20, commemorated the independence of Colombia from Spain 198 years ago.

Demonstrators in Paris were led by Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, freed just weeks ago by a sophisticated, tricky Colombian commando ruse after nearly seven years in captivity.

'Never again hostages,' the former presidential candidate shouted to thousands of protestors.

An estimated 700 hostages are held by the group that kidnapped Betancourt - the Revoluntionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - while other leftwing groups or criminal gangs hold the remaining kidnap victims.

Three South American presidents marked the day in Leticia, Colombia, in the Amazon jungle near the border with Brazil and Peru. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was joined by Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Peru's Alan Garcia to listen to pop greats like Skakira and Carlos Vives.

FARC has been weakened in recent months by a series of Colombian government coups, including the killing of one FARC leader and the death of another, and the successful rescue of Betancourt, three American security contractors and some other high profile hostages that FARC wanted to exchange for some of their own in prison.

But the end of four decades of civil conflict in the South American country is hardly in sight, and rebels receive fresh recruits daily from the poverty-stricken rural areas where they rule.