(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 15 July 2002 IAPA press release: IAPA voices alarm at new murder, wave of violence against newsmen in Colombia MIAMI, Florida (July 15, 2002)-The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed outrage at the murder of yet another journalist in Colombia and called on the authorities there to investigate […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 15 July 2002 IAPA press release:
IAPA voices alarm at new murder, wave of violence against newsmen in Colombia
MIAMI, Florida (July 15, 2002)-The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed outrage at the murder of yet another journalist in Colombia and called on the authorities there to investigate this and numerous other attacks on journalists in the interior of the country. A number of news media in the interior have suspended operations out of fear of reprisals by outlawed armed groups in what is seen as one of the most violent periods of assaults on journalists in the history of the South American country.
Mario Prada Díaz, 44, editor of the monthly newspaper Horizonte Sabanero in the town of Los Pinos, near Sabana de Torres in Santander province, was found dead on July 12 after disappearing the day before. He had been shot five times in the head with a 9mm pistol.
Local police told the IAPA that Prada Díaz had not been receiving any threats and the motive for his murder remained unknown.
IAPA President Robert Cox, protesting this latest murder, said that “today more than ever the Colombian press has a responsibility not to buckle under those who seek to silence it.” Cox, assistant editor of The Post and Courier, Charleston, South Carolina, added that “by these executions those who resort to violence demonstrate just how important freedom of the press, exposure of wrongdoing, and providing information are for a free and peaceful society.”
Prada Díaz launched his Horizonte Sabanero newspaper four years ago and in recent months had extended its circulation to the towns of Barrancabermeja and Puerto Wilches in Santander province and San Alberto in neighboring Cesar province. In its last editorial, the paper – which covered local community affairs – alleged mishandling of public funds by the Sabana de Torres municipal government.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Rafael Molina, expressed solidarity with the Colombian journalists, who, he said, “despite the violence continued serving the public by exposing acts contrary to the common good.” Molina, editor of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, news magazine Ahora, called on the Colombian authorities to take the necessary steps to investigate death threats issued against journalists working in such inland provinces as Santander (where the Horizonte Sabanero newspaper was distributed). The area is marked by clashes between members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla movement and the Central Bloc of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
Last week, paramilitaries threatened the editors of two local weekly legal reviews, El Vocero and El Número, in Barrancabermeja. Threats were also issued to eight other journalists in Cesar, Caquetá and Arauca provinces, where a number of news media have been forced to suspend publication in order to avoid reprisals by armed groups in what is seen as one of the worst periods of intimidation of the press in Colombia.
Prada Díaz’s murder brought to four the number of journalists killed because of their newsgathering activities so far this year. The others were Orlando Sierra Hernández, managing editor and columnist of the newspaper La Patria in Manizales, murdered on February 1; Héctor Sandoval, a cameraman for the RCN television network, killed in Valle del Cauca on April 12 amid a clash between soldiers and policemen with a group of FARC guerrillas who had kidnapped 12 members of the local legislature; and Efraín Alberto Varela Noriega, owner and editor of radio station Meridiano 70 in Aracua province on June 28.
Officials are still investigating the motives for the murder of four other journalist this year. They are Marco Antonio Ayala, photographer for the Cali newspaper El Caleño, killed on January 23; Víctor Omar Acosta, murdered in Yumbo, Valle del Cauca, on May 15, and Rodrigo Alfonso Ahumada, a radio station manager, killed on June 21 in Santa Marta, capital of Magdalena province.
Journalists Esau Jaramillo, Juan Carlos Gomez Díaz and Oscar Hoyos were also murdered this year, but not because of their job.
