Two Dutch journalists have been abducted in Colombia in an area near the Venezuelan border.<\/p>\n
Derk Bolt and Eugenio Follender went missing at the weekend in Catatumbo, a region where several armed groups operate, including the left-wing ELN.<\/p>\n
They were searching for the mother of a Colombian child adopted in the Netherlands a few years ago.<\/p>\n
The Colombian authorities tweeted a demand “for the immediate release of the two men.”<\/p>\n
Last year the ELN rebel group kidnapped a Spanish journalist and several Colombians in the same area. All were later released.<\/p>\n
The Colombian army says it has sent specialist forces to the region to search for the Dutchmen.<\/p>\n
They work for the Dutch TV programme Spoorloos, which traces lost relatives. Derk Bolt is a presenter and Eugenio Follender a cameraman.<\/p>\n
The ELN is the second largest left-wing guerrilla group in Colombia, behind the Farc.<\/p>\n
The Farc signed a peace deal with the government last November and are already disarming and preparing to enter civilian life. The ELN only started peace talks in February this year.<\/p>\n
The group has insisted on a bilateral ceasefire but the government says this would be conditional on the ELN ending kidnapping – something that has not yet happened.<\/p>\n
During the negotiations there have been military operations against that insurgent group as well as attacks against security forces by the ELN.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two Dutch journalists have been abducted in Colombia in an area near the Venezuelan border. Derk Bolt and Eugenio Follender went missing at the weekend in Catatumbo, a region where several armed groups operate, including the left-wing ELN. They were searching for the mother of a Colombian child adopted in the Netherlands a few years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[8390,8391],"class_list":["post-329914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-colombia-army","tag-dutch-journalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}