(IPYS/IFEX) – On the morning of 18 October 2004, journalist Carlos Flores Borja, owner of “La Voz de Bagua Grande” radio station, was threatened while conducting a live radio interview with Wilfredo Rosillo Merino, the leader of the Utcubamba Defence Front (Frente de Defensa de Utcubamba). Ricardo Coronado Cruzálegui, a former Utcubamba government employee called […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On the morning of 18 October 2004, journalist Carlos Flores Borja, owner of “La Voz de Bagua Grande” radio station, was threatened while conducting a live radio interview with Wilfredo Rosillo Merino, the leader of the Utcubamba Defence Front (Frente de Defensa de Utcubamba). Ricardo Coronado Cruzálegui, a former Utcubamba government employee called the station and threatened Flores Borja, demanding that he stop the interview immediately. The incident took place in the city of Bagua Grande, Utcubamba province, Amazonas Region, northern Peru.
Coronado Cruzálegui has been linked to former mayor José Luis Novoa Flores’s administration and is currently under house arrest on corruption charges. He told Flores Borja, “You better stop that interview or I’ll come over there to fix things in a different way.” Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the radio station accompanied by his son, who threw a rock at the broadcasting studio’s window. They drove by the station’s front door several times insulting the journalist, his family and Rosillo Merino.
Coronado Cruzálegui was apparently irritated by Rosillo Merino’s comments regarding “irregularities” committed by Coronado Cruzálegui and Novoa Flores during the former mayor’s administration.
Flores Borja, who is also president of the National Journalists’ Association (Asociación Nacional de Periodistas del Perú, ANP) Utcubamba branch and a correspondent for Radio Marañon and Coordinadora Nacional de Radio, went on the air to ask the people of Bagua Grande and the police for support.
