(CJFE/IFEX) – CJFE has learned from the Foundation for Press Freedom (Fundacion para la Libertad de Prensa), that journalist Guzmán Quintero Torres, 34 years old, was assassinated on 16 September 1999, at approximately 10:00 p.m. (local time). A photographer and a reporter from the “El Pilon” periodical were accompanying Quintero Torres to his house and […]
(CJFE/IFEX) – CJFE has learned from the Foundation for Press Freedom
(Fundacion para la Libertad de Prensa), that journalist Guzmán Quintero
Torres, 34 years old, was assassinated on 16 September 1999, at
approximately 10:00 p.m. (local time). A photographer and a reporter from
the “El Pilon” periodical were accompanying Quintero Torres to his house and
witnessed the attack. A hired assassin intercepted them on Cesar street, in
the city of Valledupar, and shot Quintero Torres three times in the face and
once in the chest.
Quintero Torres was a correspondent for the “Televista” news programme
(broadcast on the Telecaribe regional station), the vice-president of the
Valledupar Journalists’ Group and the coordinator of the training program
for community participation facilitators run by the National Correspondence
University, UNAD (antigua Unisur). His primary occupation was being the
editor-in-chief for “El Pilon”. The periodical was founded four years ago
and is the only one that is distributed throughout the Cesar department and
in the southern region of the La Guajira department. Quintero Torres was a
big fan of journalism and had organised a number of training courses for
Valledupar journalists. Previously, he had been employed as the director of
the Caracol radio station and as a correspondent for the “El Heraldo”
periodical and the television NTC news programme in the city of Valledupar.
At that time he was an impartial reporter, reporting nationally and to the
Atlantic Coast region, on events taking place in the Cesar department. This
is one of the regions in the country that have most been affected by
political violence and the national economic crisis.
Quintero Torres’ death is a grave loss for the journalistic profession (126
similar deaths have occurred in the last twenty years in Colombia) and marks
the second such death in the Cesar department in less than fifteen months.
The former correspondent for the QAP news programme in Valledupar, Amparo
Jiménez Pallares, was also killed in the city. The Foundation for Press
Freedom (Fundacion para la Libertad de Prensa), which had on a number of
occasions been supported by Quintero Torres, stands by his wife and two
children (two and five years old) in their hour of mourning. The Foundation
calls on journalists to reflect upon the state of press freedom in Colombia,
that has suffered two severe blows in less than five weeks (see IFEX alerts
of 13 August and 16 August 1999).
