(FLIP/IFEX) – Two journalists with the indigenous radio station Nasa Yuwe Estéreo, Rubiel Lis Velasco and Griseldino Yafué Guetoto, were detained illegally by members of the intelligence police (Seccional de Inteligencia Judicial Investigativa de la Policía Nacional, SIJÍN) in the municipality of Caldono, located in the department of Caucas in Colombia’s southwest. On 19 September […]
(FLIP/IFEX) – Two journalists with the indigenous radio station Nasa Yuwe Estéreo, Rubiel Lis Velasco and Griseldino Yafué Guetoto, were detained illegally by members of the intelligence police (Seccional de Inteligencia Judicial Investigativa de la Policía Nacional, SIJÍN) in the municipality of Caldono, located in the department of Caucas in Colombia’s southwest.
On 19 September 2006 at 11:00 a.m. (local time), after the journalists had left their office in downtown Caldono, two people, who at first identified themselves as members of the communications ministry, approached them and asked the journalists to take them to the station so they could inspect the radio’s transmitters. The transmitters had been donated by the communications ministry under a programme to support community radio.
Once in the station, the two men – who never properly identified themselves – told Lis and Yafué that they had to accompany them, and had them get into a truck onto which other Caldono residents were later also loaded.
At the police station, the journalists were told that the computers there were not working and so they could not register their detention at that location. They were then taken away again in the same truck to another municipality in the same department, Siberia.
Radio station director Lis told FLIP that once they were in Siberia the men told them: “A change of orders: we have to go to Popayán.” They were again transported in the truck. In the headquarters of the Sijín in the departmental capital, the journalists were told that an arrest warrant had been issued for them, on the grounds that they had committed the crime of “rebellion”, allegedly by collaborating with members of the country’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC). The officials never showed the journalists the warrant.
The journalists demanded to speak to a lawyer, but were denied this right.
The police photographed the journalists and sent them to the municipal jail in Santander de Quilichao, located in the northern part of the department. Following legal proceedings initiated by lawyers representing the indigenous community of which the journalists are members, a Popayán judge acquitted the journalists and they were released after nine days of detention.
The indigenous governor of Caldono, Guillermo Chilo, told FLIP that this is not the first time the community has experienced such an incident. He said it is not uncommon for the police to illegally detain members of his community, especially journalists that work with the indigenous radio station.
He recalled that José Vicente Otero, a journalist who spearheaded the creation of the radio station, was detained on a similarly false pretext, and later absolved and released.
Lis confirmed that they frequently broadcast on the station the press releases of indigenous councils, in which the indigenous leaders frequently make denunciations and express discontent over the treatment they receive from the national and local levels of government. The journalist considers this to be the motive for the detentions and continuous harassment.
Sergeant Humberto Campo Luna of the Sijín told FLIP that the detention was legal because it was conducted under an arrest warrant issued by the Santander de Quilichao regional prosecutor. “I looked at the warrant but I don’t remember the details,” said Campo Luna when FLIP asked him to indicate which crime had been alleged in the arrest warrant.
Campo Luna added that the officials that made the arrest were members of the Sijín of Santander de Quilichao, and explained that if they first identified themselves as employees of the communications ministry it was because “these are strategies by which to carry out an arrest without provoking a reaction.” He added that the transferring of the journalists from place to place was done “for security reasons”.
FLIP condemns these illegal detentions and the continued harassment of the indigenous radio station Uxwal Nasa Yuwe Estéreo. Indigenous community radio stations and the journalists who work there are entitled to exercise the right to freedom of expression. Additionally, as a minority group, they deserve special protection by the government.
