( dpa ) - Colombia has a new radio programme that allows relatives of people who have been kidnapped by rebels to address their loved ones in the troubled South American country.
The Night of Freedom programme is to air late Sundays and early Mondays on the private radio station RCN. Its first programme was broadcast Sunday night.
The initiative will join Voices of Kidnapping, a radio programme launched in 1994 by journalist Herbin Hoyos, who had been kidnapped by leftist rebels himself earlier that year, to allow people to send messages to the hostages.
Former hostages in the Andean country - including current Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo and former vice presidential candidate Clara Rojas - have said programmes of this kind have become the only means for the kidnapped to hear from their families in the jungle.