(FLIP/IFEX) – Journalist Germán Hernández, director of “El Diario de Huila” newspaper’s investigative journalism unit, has left the city of Neiva, located in Colombia’s southwest, after receiving several death threats made to his cell phone. The threats were made from various pay telephone centres located near the newspaper’s facilities. Seven such calls were received, the […]
(FLIP/IFEX) – Journalist Germán Hernández, director of “El Diario de Huila” newspaper’s investigative journalism unit, has left the city of Neiva, located in Colombia’s southwest, after receiving several death threats made to his cell phone. The threats were made from various pay telephone centres located near the newspaper’s facilities. Seven such calls were received, the first of which was made on 27 February 2007. Hernández was told, “you son of a bitch of a toad, you’re going to die.” After two weeks of such calls, the journalist and the newspaper’s managers decided he had to leave Neiva.
Since early February, the newspaper had been publishing reports and articles on the university hospital of Neiva (Hospital Universitario de Neiva), including allegations of corruption in the handling of nearly 12 billion pesos (approx. US$5.52 million), while Jorge Mauricio Escobar was its manager.
