Piedad Córdoba
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Feb.5, 2010- Piedad Cordoba´s electoral office raided by armed men
Who is Piedad Córdoba?
Colombian Senator Piedad Córdoba made the cause of humanitarian Exchange her duty, risking her political career and her own life. She has been a brave, irreverent woman.
Piedad Córdoba asked Colombian President Álvaro Uribe for permission to facilitate the humanitarian exchange, talking to Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and even visiting the FARC rebel leader Raúl Reyes to fulfil her task.
Piedad is the eldest of nine siblings, and since an early age she wanted to follow his father steps. Her dad was a Sociologist with an outstanding academic career, and a great orator of the Liberal Party towards the late 40s. She was only eight when she started attending rallies organised by community groups and Colombian afro descendants.
She went to the University and graduated as a Lawyer. She started her political career in Medellín, working with the Liberal leader William Jaramillo. She is the leader of the Movement People´s Power Century 21 (Poder Ciudadano Siglo XXI), a left-wind faction of the Liberal Party, fighting for the rights of women, ethnic minorities, and particularly for human rights. Since 1994 has been a representative in the Senate.
The Senator has received several death threats and even had to live in exile with her four children. In 1999, was kidnapped by the paramilitary forced led by Carlos Castaño, who accused her of being a member of the ELN, but she received enough national and international support that she had to be released. This illegal detention, an attempt to terrify Piedad, just made her work harder for peace and made her views in regards to the paramilitary even stronger.
Since August 2007 she got involved in the campaign for a humanitarian exchange between the FARC and the Colombian government, and received the support of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez.
Piedad Córdoba has been investigated by the Colombian governments, accused of being a collaborator of the FARC, according to some emails supposedly found on the rebel leader´s lap top found after the bombing of a FARC camp in March 2008. She has denied the accusations, and keeps working for the humanitarian exchange that in February 2009 has led to the liberation of six people held by the FARC and returned to their families as an unilateral gesture of Peace.
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