Hopes shattered, slain FARC hostages' children grieve

Vivian and Johan waited for their fathers, hostages of the FARC, for their whole lives: on Tuesday, they met them, wrapped in Colombian flags after being murdered by their captors. Johan Steven, 13, is the son of the longest-held hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Jose Libio Martinez, who was kidnapped December 21, 1997 and shot to death on November 26. Until Saturday, Johan had devoted his short life to someone he never knew, since his father was kidnapped months before he was born. When he was only three, he asked in a national news broadcast that he be reunited "with Daddy" for Christmas. Nearly 10 years later, he wrote to the then chief of the FARC, Alfonso Cano. "I write this letter to ask that you look upon this child who is only 12 years old and pleads for the liberation of his father, whose warmth he has had to grow up without," he wrote. "Mr Alfonso Cano, I know that you must have children, and at times you share moments with them that are happy or sad and in which you support them," he said. Despite the letter and innumerable marches and interviews to keep people from forgetting, Johan Steven's dream was buried forever when FARC guerrillas shot to death his father along with three other hostages, all of them with more than a dozen years in captivity, according to the defense ministry. "Sirs of the FARC, you... broke my wings, you broke my yearning to personally know my father, for that embrace I longed for, for 13 years, 11 months and five days," said Steven. "I am going to pray a lot for your soul. That God may receive you in heaven," he said at an impromptu news conference. Viviana Duarte, 15, also had her hopes shattered. In a February 2010 interview with AFP, she recounted the long wait and her efforts to study and send messages to cheer up her father, Edgar Yesid Duarte, who was kidnapped October 14, 1998 when she was two years old. "Every Saturday I send messages on the radio program 'Voices of Kidnapping.' They call my cellphone at 11:30 or 12:00 at night and I wait up to send him a message because in the proof of life (a video Duarte sent his family) he said it gave him strength," she said. "My childhood, my first communion were without him, and now I am becoming an adolescent," she said at the time. "It would be such great joy to be able to play with him, even it were a Nintendo game, things like that." Her mother Sysy Abitbol told Radio Caracol on Monday, "It pains my soul immensely that my daughter has to meet her father dead." "We never thought we would receive our dear Edgar in a bag," she said. "Don't deceive us any longer. FARC, don't deceive us." Policeman Alvaro Moreno also left behind two children. All of the hostages had families awaiting the day of their liberation, like Magdalena Rivas, the mother of the fourth slain hostage, Elkin Hernandez. "They pulled my insides out," she said Monday as she made an appeal for the the FARC and the government to negotiate a peace. "On my knees I beg that they please free these human beings who are still in the jungle," she said. "Colombia is bleeding to death, day by day." Her plea was echoed Tuesday by Bishop Hector Gutierrez in a eulogy for the four men at a funeral in Bogota's national cathedral attended by their families and national leaders. "Let's sit down again to talk. Let's agree on the basics," he said. In their first reaction, the FARC on Tuesday blamed the government for the executions, claiming that the raid had foiled their plans to free the captives.