26 August 2003
REBELS SUSPECTED AS ONE JOURNALIST KILLED, ONE INJURED
On 22 August, Juan Carlos Benavides Arévalo, a journalist with the community radio station Manantial Estéreo, was shot and killed at a checkpoint near the southern town of Puerto Caicedo, report the Foundation for Press Freedom (Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa, FLIP), Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Jaime Conrado Juajibioy Cuarán, Benavides' colleague at the station, was also seriously injured when suspected rebels shot at their vehicle, which did not stop at the roadblock. The two journalists were travelling with a group to a meeting between President Alvaro Uribe and regional officials in Puerto Asís.
Local press reports say the rebels who shot at the vehicle were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), notes CPJ. However, the organisation points out that Putumayo Department, where the incident took place, is one of Colombia's major coca-producing regions and the FARC, the government, right-wing paramilitary militias and drug lords control checkpoints in the region.
IFEX members have reported six cases of media workers killed so far this year in Colombia. RSF estimates that about 50 journalists have been killed in the country in the last decade. Armed groups in the nation's civil war consider journalists to be "military targets" when they suspect them of backing their opponents, notes RSF.
One of many unpunished crimes against Colombian media workers is the May 2002 murder of Elizabeth Obando Murcia, an employee of "El Nuevo Día" newspaper in the town of Roncesvalle. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) is calling on newspaper and magazine readers throughout the western hemisphere to sign an open letter asking Colombia's attorney general to help solve the killing. The letter is part of IAPA's "Let Us Put An End to Impunity" campaign, which aims to bring the guilty to justice in the murders of 269 journalists over the past 15 years.
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
- Add your signature to IAPA's open letter on the Obando case: http://www.impunidad.com
For more information, visit:
- CPJ: http://www.cpj.org/news/2003/Colombia25aug03na.html
- IFJ: http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Index=1882&Language=EN
- RSF: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=7839
RSS