Colombian Ingrid Betancourt has announced her presidential candidacy Election News

Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian politician who was kidnapped and kidnapped and kidnapped by an armed rebel group for six years, has submitted a new candidacy for the presidency.

It has been almost two decades since the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) was abducted in 2002 while campaigning for a high-ranking Colombian congressman.

Betancourt, the leader of the Oxygen Green Party, told reporters on Tuesday that he would run for office as a candidate to run for the centrist party. If he wins the nomination, he will run in the May 29 first-round presidential election.

“I’m here today with many of you to finish what I started in 2002,” the 60-year-old said at a news conference. “I am here to claim the rights of 51 million Colombians who do not find justice because we live in a system designed to reward criminals.”

Betancourt’s presidential candidate Colombia has come after a series of protests last year to deal with education, health care, poverty, police violence and other social issues that demanded government action.

The Colombian has been accused by rights groups and international observers security forces a for “serious” human rights violations repression about the demonstrations that began in April 2021 in line with a proposed tax reform. Last month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said government agents were using “unnecessary or disproportionate force”. protests.

Betancourt’s announcement also comes as other candidates start campaigning across the country and even before the presidential vote comes later this year.

Gustavo Petro, the former left-wing mayor of Bogotá, who is ahead of the vote, has expressed widespread frustration with the corruption and economic inequality that has risen in the coronavirus pandemic.

Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampiet, the Colombian capital, Bogota, reported that many people in the country were surprised by Betancourt’s decision to step down.

“It comes at a critical time in the country, when Colombians are terribly angry with the political establishment, with the rise in violence,” Rampiet said, adding that voters remain very divided.

“He presented himself as someone who would try to unite this people, who would try to unite the Colombians around their personal story; [lives] most Colombians. ”

Betancourt’s story is well known in the South American nation. He spent six years in rebel camps in the Amazon rainforest, sometimes preventing fighters from escaping with metal chains tied to a tree.

Proofs of his life, where he asked officials to investigate the circumstances that led to his kidnapping, and then begged the government to resume peace talks with the FARC rebels, were widely circulated in Colombia and abroad.

The politician became a symbol of international campaigns in Colombia for peace talks and the release of FARC hostages.

His captivity ended in a military operation in 2008 in which Colombian soldiers disguised as humanitarian workers captured Betancourt and several other hostages without firing a single FARC bullet.

The FARC was disarmed and disbanded underneath 2016 peace treaty which ended Colombia’s civil war for decades, and has since become a political party.

After Betancourt was released from public life, he spent much of his time with his family in France. But he returned to the Colombian political scene last year as the country prepares for the May elections.

While announcing his candidacy for the presidency, Betancourt said he would fight to end the impunity of corrupt politicians by confronting the economic inequalities that Colombia has long suffered.

“My story is the story of all Colombians,” Betancourt said. “While my colleague and I were chained around our necks, Colombian families were chained to corruption, violence and injustice.

“While our kidnappers were taking away our food, mobsters and politicians continued to steal and waste our resources without caring for the children who go to Colombia here without breakfast.”