Read this letter. Read it carefully. The voice that speaks to you on these pages will keep you awake at night.
The life she endures in the jungle, day after endless day among the disciples of violence and hatred—she sets it down in language both simple and heartrending. She tells of her loneliness, her homesickness, her anguish approaching despair. Imprisoned, tormented, tortured, abandoned by too many for too long, buried in the distant shadows of terror—we might believe her silenced, or dead.
Her captors have tried to deprive her of her gifts—her intelligence, her sensitivity. They have tried to isolate her even more by driving her mad.
But Ingrid Betancourt remains lucid. And courageous, even heroic. And free.
This fighter for mankind's freedom tells us that for her "It is better not to want anything so as to be free, at least, of desires." But in fact she does have desires—simple desires, and deeply moving: to hold up her head in defiance of torturers and butchers; to retain, despite everything, faced with the brutality of evil, her dignity and her faith in man.
In the name of her humanity, and of yours, I implore you to listen to this voice.
For you, it is such a small thing. For her, it is a message from the heart, a moving gesture of solidarity.
ELIE WIESEL
