(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned a new death threat against Gilberto Martínez Prado, the manager of Colmundo Radio in Ibagué (in the center-western department of Tolima), as well as the threats and harassment to which he has been constantly subjected for years. “The police protection he has been getting for the past two years is […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned a new death threat against Gilberto Martínez Prado, the manager of Colmundo Radio in Ibagué (in the center-western department of Tolima), as well as the threats and harassment to which he has been constantly subjected for years.
“The police protection he has been getting for the past two years is not enough on its own to guarantee his right to freely practice his profession and does not relieve the Colombian government of its duty to investigate the corruption allegations he has made, which have prompted the death threats and harassment that have forced him to leave the region several times,” the organisation said.
On arriving at the radio station on 26 April 2005, Martínez Prado found a letter saying: “carry on criticizing, son of a bitch, hide behind that microphone that makes you feel big. All runts end up in the cemetery.”
The Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP, a Colombia press freedom organisation partnered with RSF) noted that Martínez Prado had in recent weeks been covering a case of embezzlement in a national savings fund, in which a former parliamentary representative for Tolima is implicated.
As well as being a radio journalist, Martínez Prado is also a member of a committee that was set up to monitor implementation of a pact to ensure accountability in the Ibagué local government. Since 2000, he has specialised in the fight against local corruption.
“My problems began in January 2003 when I criticised a system of corruption within the previous municipal government and its links with drug traffickers,” he told RSF. “It was around this time that my friend Felix Martínez Ramírez, a lawyer and a member of the committee, was murdered.”
He accused the former mayor’s father, Mario Rodríguez Padilla, of being behind the murder and prosecutors in Bogotá ordered Rodríguez’s arrest on suspicion of being the instigator. “But the arrest order was never executed, and I am the prosecution’s witness in this case,” he said.
The Department for Security Administration (DAS) granted him special protection in March 2003. Since then, 37 bodyguards have taken turns protecting him. “But the threats have never stopped,” he said. “I have had to leave the region several times and move my family from it.”
The protection was renewed in September 2004 but Martínez Prado is concerned that it may end soon.
