(IPYS/IFEX) – Early in the morning on 10 December 2004, Henry Portugal Pérez, a journalist for Radio Caplina station, was notified by his neighbours that his garage and the entrance to his house were on fire. The incident occurred in Tacna region, southern Peru. Portugal Pérez managed to get his wife and children out of […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – Early in the morning on 10 December 2004, Henry Portugal Pérez, a journalist for Radio Caplina station, was notified by his neighbours that his garage and the entrance to his house were on fire. The incident occurred in Tacna region, southern Peru.
Portugal Pérez managed to get his wife and children out of the house unharmed. While putting out the fire with the help of his neighbours, the journalist noticed that a dead dog had been hung in the front door entrance.
The journalist told IPYS that since June he has been reporting on allegations of irregularities within the local municipality and the Tacna regional government. After Portugal Pérez began broadcasting this information on his Monday to Friday radio programme “La voz del pueblo” (“The people’s voice”), he began receiving anonymous messages on his mobile phone, telling him to stop criticising the municipal and regional authorities’ conduct. He was warned that, if he failed to do so, his wife and children would be attacked.
According to the journalist, the fire at his house as part of a campaign aimed at intimidating him and forcing him to stop reporting on the allegations of irregularities committed by the mayor and the Tacna regional president.
