(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Attorney General Alfonso Gomez Méndez, RSF expressed its indignation over the assassination of Flavio Bedoya, correspondent in Tumaco (in the southwestern province of Nariño) for the weekly communist paper “Voz”. The organisation asked the attorney general to do “everything possible in order to ensure that this case is investigated […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Attorney General Alfonso Gomez Méndez, RSF expressed its indignation over the assassination of Flavio Bedoya, correspondent in Tumaco (in the southwestern province of Nariño) for the weekly communist paper “Voz”. The organisation asked the attorney general to do “everything possible in order to ensure that this case is investigated and the guilty parties are arrested and punished.” “Confirmation that Bedoya was assassinated because of his profession would make this the worst violation of press freedom in the country since the beginning of the year,” declared RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard.
Journalists have become favoured targets in the war being waged between the Colombian United Self Defence Groups (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC, paramilitaries) and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC – Marxist) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberacion Nacional, ELN -guevarist). RSF considers Carlos Castaño (of the AUC) to be one of the world’s thirty most dangerous press freedom predators. Colombia is the most dangerous country on the continent for information professionals. Thirty-three have been killed there since 1991. Castaño is considered to be the mastermind behind the August 1999 assassination of famous journalist and comedian Jaime Garzon (see IFEX alerts of 18 December 2000, 25 October, 27, 16 and 13 August 1999).
According to information collected by RSF, on 27 April 2001, Bedoya was shot four times by two men as he was getting of the bus on a main road of the port, which borders Ecuador. The Colombian Communist party journalist was fifty-two years old and is survived by three daughters. He received death threats after publication of an interview he held with a FARC commander. He had also recently reported on the combat between guerrillas and paramilitaries near Tumaco. According to police sources, paramilitaries are believed to be responsible for the murder. “Voz” director Carlos Lozano declared that, “We had tried to warn the interior minister and other authorities of the death threats made against the journalist but there had been no response.”
