SHE'S GREEN AND ALIVE, SO FAR

Colombian Senator Ingrid Betancourt has ambitions. She hopes to be elected
president next year. As a Green member of parliament for 10 years she has
fought the violent tyranny of the drug barons and the corrupt political and
judicial system that protects them.

She wants to reform the economy, the courts and parliament, to free the
nation of its drug dependency.

In such a campaign, she says, the challenge is not so much to win the
hearts and minds of an oppressed people as to be alive at the end of the
elections.

Colombia goes to the polls next year. Killings, torture, abductions and
vote rigging are routine, but Ms Betancourt said Colombians were brave and
not afraid to turn out for candidates standing up for integrity and
democracy. "But for a long time there has been no one to believe in," she
says. "All the big leaders have been killed."

Ms Betancourt has paid a heavy personal price for stepping into the breach.
She was forced to move her family to another country four years ago after
her husband and children began receiving death threats. She rarely sees
them. She has 10 bodyguards, and travels in a bullet-proof car.

But despite the dangers and the sacrifices, she keeps going because
Colombians need hope. She said she was no longer free to consider only her
own willingness, but must think also about the expectations of those who
followed her because she was not afraid to speak out. "It is a very big
price to pay, but I do it because I think I could not live without changing
this," she says.

Ms Betancourt said social injustice, poverty and environmental degradation
could not be tackled without a government free from corruption. The US was
an ally in the war against drugs, but it had to understand it was not
helping by sending money and weapons to a government and military with
links to organised crime.

"We know from our experience this is not the way things are going to be
solved. What we can do is exclude Colombia from drug trafficking. We can do
that as Colombians, but we can't do it with weapons and with money. These
are only making the corruption bigger. It is fighting for principles and
values. If we can't fight on principle and values, we can't win this battle."

Ms Betancourt yesterday welcomed the launch of the Green Shield at the
Global Greens conference. The shield is intended to operate like Amnesty
International in bringing cases of Green imprisonment, murder and
harassment to international attention.

Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown said members of parliament from safe
countries would expose and pressure the governments of nations where Greens
and environmentalists were in danger. He hoped assassins would think again
if the eyes of the world were on them.

Ms Betancourt said it was important to be part of a global movement. "We
have been struggling with this war on drugs alone for 15 years. Many of us
have been killed or have had to leave the country to preserve their lives.
We have felt alone, and I think now in the world people are beginning to
understand that Colombia is ... a country with a very heroic population ...
having the support of all the Greens in the world is having the support of
public opinion in the world."