Abstract
Violence against journalists in Colombia is reaching the point where many now practise self-censorship in an attempt to stay safe and remain in work
“Many journalists believe that if they don't write about sensitive issues, they won't be killed or punished for their words,” says Andrés Morales, director of Colombia's press freedom group FLIP (Foundation for Press Freedom). It's a startling claim, but one backed up by facts, statistics and a real — and growing — sense of fear among the country's journalists.
Last year, 188 journalists were victims of attacks, threats, forced displacement and even assassination. In 2012, there were 158 direct attacks on journalists. In September 2013, radio presenter Édison Alberto Molina, who hosted a programme in which he exposed government corruption, was murdered. Molina was shot four times in the face as he headed home on his motorcycle from the community radio station in the town of Puerto Berrío where he broadcasted Consultorio Jurídico — a legal programme exposing corruption, cost overruns and mismanagement of public works. Molina's co-host, Orlando González, said Molina had received several threats in recent months as a result of his journalism.
He joined the long list of journalists killed, attacked, threatened or forced to flee as a result of their work. In recent months, three indigenous journalists were physically attacked by riot police in the south-western department of Cauca, while a paramilitary group, the Rastrojos, circulated a leaflet threatening journalists covering a recent wave of protests. Fernando Londoño, a radio talk show host, was injured and his driver and bodyguard were killed in a targeted bombing. Collective threats were made against 10 reporters in Santa Marta, six others were forcibly displaced in Antioquia.
But such incidents barely scratch the surface of an increasingly brutal war against journalists and independent journalism in Colombia. In May 2013, the leading investigative journalist, Ricardo Calderón, narrowly escaped a mafia-style assassination attempt. Heading home from work, Calderón, an editor at Colombia's news magazine, Semana, had got out of his car and was urinating at the side of the road when a man shouted his name. He heard the screech of tyres followed by five shots. Calderón dived into a ditch and fled for his life.
In recent years he had helped reveal major human rights scandals, including most recently the fact that army members at the Tolemeida Detention Centre, who had been convicted of committing atrocities, continued to benefit from extravagant privileges, including being able to carry on their business activities and the freedom to leave the detention centre as they pleased. Calderón is clear — the bullets were not only meant to kill him but to also send a message to Colombia's increasingly threatened journalists: stop interfering.
Within days that message was reinforced when police uncovered an assassination plot against four prominent correspondents and columnists. The four were working on a documentary revealing links between corrupt politicians and criminal gangs, including details of 126 local and national politicians whose election campaigns had been financed by such gangs. They were about to shed light on links between the governor of La Guajira Francisco “Kiko” Gómez and a criminal gang linked to the drug trafficker, Marcos Figueroa.
It was a threat they took seriously. The journalists were given armoured cars and protection before the threats forced them into exile. Five days later came the starkest message yet. Eight journalists in Cesar were threatened with death if they continued investigations into land seized by paramilitary groups during Colombia's civil war. The threats came following restitution claims by displaced peasants, some of whom were murdered as a result.
A leaflet, topped by an image of an automatic weapon, signed by the paramilitary Anti-Land Restitution Army, was delivered to newsrooms, ordering eight named journalists to immediately stop their investigations and to leave the area within 24 hours or be killed. The leaflet described the journalists as “military targets”, warning that “if you continue to stick your noses in cases of land restitution and victims, you will be next”. The journalists are currently receiving government protection.
All this at a time when Colombia's government and main guerrilla groups are locked in peace talks in Havana to end the decades-old conflict. In the midst of these talks, paramilitary organisations, narco-traffickers, criminal gangs and local and national politicians fight for the spoils of peace and have no fear in targeting journalists they perceive as threatening their interests. Colombian journalist Deisy Rodriguez Lagos and Italian documentary maker Bruno Federico had a narrow escape when a gunman opened fire as they were covering an operation to expel peasants in the Chimichagua district of the department of Cesar. “In South America, landowners and their henchmen frequently behave as predators of freedom of information,” says the press freedom group, Reporters Without Borders. “Journalists covering population displacements and land restitution are at risk, made more serious by the impunity surrounding such matters.”
The attack took place just after they had been filming vegetable plots in the area from which the peasants had been expelled. The gunmen were identified by residents as being in the pay of a powerful palm-oil magnate believed to be responsible for the expulsion of local families. But it is also the army and police who have been named by press freedom groups as serious threats to journalists’ rights to work free from fear or harassment.
Systematic violence against journalists
In 2013, freelance journalist Guillermo Quiroz Delgado died, allegedly as a result of police brutality, after being arrested while covering a street protest. “They put a lot of pressure on journalists,” says Jonathan Bock, a safety and security monitor for FLIP. “They have a hostile attitude.” A reporter for Caracol News radio network, who was covering the protests, was called into police headquarters for questioning. “They wanted to know who her sources were and why she published what she did.”
Journalists covering April's coffee workers’ strike faced systematic violence at the hands of the mobile anti-riot force (ESMAD). One radio station was forced off air after its equipment was destroyed. Several journalists were hospitalised and a national television crew had its cameras smashed by police officers. Many journalists complain that authorities view them as being sympathetic to anti-government protestors, receiving “suggestions” that they keep away from the story. Press freedom groups also condemned the violence, intimidation and censorship used against a campaign of peaceful demonstrations indigenous groups waged across Colombia to defend their rights in October 2013.
In one incident, the home of Daniel Maestre Villazón, a community journalist in Cesar department, was burgled and his laptops and computer hard disks were stolen. Whenever such protests are held, “indigenous groups and their news media are the targets of intimidation and violence with the clear aim of censoring their message,” claims Reporters Without Borders.
José Vicente Otero, the spokesman of the Cauca Indigenous Regional Council, said: “The physical violence used by riot police against the indigenous community journalists was indicative of a continuing tendency on the part of the authorities to treat indigenous demonstrations as acts of subversion and to try to restrict the news coverage they receive.
“Our journalists provide the indigenous movement with an extremely important service, because we cannot count on the traditional media. Unfortunately, recognition of community media is a real problem in Colombia. The lack of official accreditation seems to facilitate attacks on journalists and the seizure of their equipment by police with complete impunity.”
In the wake of such attacks more than 90 journalists are receiving some form of security assistance provided by the National Protection Unit. And 34 of them are forced to carry out their interviews and investigations protected by armed bodyguards. While many welcome the increased protection given to individual journalists, few believe such measures are adequate to tackle this latest widespread threat to freedom of expression. “The aim is not to multiply the protection schemes provided to journalists but instead to carry out an effective legal investigation through which we can overcome these threats,” according to Ignacio Góme, founder of FLIP.
Key to that is tackling Colombia's dismal record on impunity. Of the 144 journalists killed in Colombia between 1977 and 2012, there have been sentences in only 12% of the cases.
Following November's shooting of TV director Diego Gómez Valverde, chairman of the Inter-American Press Association's (IAPA) Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, editor of the Uruguayan weekly Búsqueda, said: “Unfortunately, in Colombia we are starting to see a worrisome increase in attacks and threats against journalists. The impunity surrounding murders, threats and other acts of violence is the foundation of self-censorship. Such lack of action has in the long run, negative collateral effects on how press freedom is exercised.
“Many of the murder cases in Colombia continue to go unpunished, others have become subject to the statute of limitations without justice being done.”
Running out of time
In 2013 the cases of the murders of Gerardo Gómez, Carlos Catalán, Nelson de la Rosa Toscano and Manuel José Martínez Espinosa, all of them killed in 1993, became subject to such statutes. The case of Danilo Alfonso Baquero expired on December 26, the 20th anniversary of his assassination. Ten investigations expired in 2011 alone. Since 1977, of the 144 cases of journalists killed, 59 have been dropped having run out of time. The statute of limitations on five further unsolved murders will expire by the end of 2014.
With impunity rates running at almost 90%, press freedom organisations recognise that widespread self-censorship now represents a growing threat to free expression. Journalist Robert Nieto agrees. He was threatened by a local official in Caucasia, Antioquia while investigating the town government's spending of $1m on a now abandoned, half-built library. The threats were reinforced by former paramilitaries, now operating as criminal gangs which, he says, work in collaboration with the politicians.
“We can register events, but investigative journalism is off limits,” Nieto, editor of Región al Día, told the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We need to have good journalism, but it's dangerous to write about alliances between local authorities and criminal gangs.”
It is true that fewer journalists have been killed in the past two years in Colombia than in previous years, but media claim the statistics do not tell the whole story. In its most recent annual report the Committee to Protect Journalists points out: “Colombian authorities cite increased security throughout the country as the cause for the recent decline in news media deaths, but journalists themselves said widespread self-censorship had made the press less of a target.”
More than three-quarters of Colombia's journalists in a recent survey said they practised self-censorship. Nydia Serrano of El Universal, who has seen some of her colleagues flee the country after receiving death threats, concurs: “The number of journalists killed is down … the statistics are correct, but that's because we don't tell about 80% of what happens in this country.”
The Colombian journalists’ federation, FECOLPER, recognises that self-censorship is a growing problem because journalists fear not only physical attacks but economic repercussions too as a result of their precarious employment situation. Few have contracts and most are vulnerable. Lizneira Roncancio, an investigative journalist in Arauca, says: “Generally, a journalist may end up reporting on a story the way the owner or director of a media thinks. Sometimes, it is difficult for journalists to get to where a story is taking place, so they become dependent on whoever can provide transportation and then we are pressured to put out reports favourable to this group.”
In their 2013 report on the state of media, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression said: “In extreme cases of impunity, media are left with few options. Many will choose the only option they have to guarantee any safety: avoiding of issues in the public interest that would put them in the line of fire. Unfortunately, this also means that society loses one of its most valuable watchdogs.”
If there is any chance of achieving a lasting peace in Colombia, that is something the country's media cannot allow to happen. Jim Boumelha, president of the International Federation of Journalists, sums up the attitude of Colombia's beleaguered media workers: “The peace process means nothing unless the culture of impunity for attacks against journalists ends. Press freedom is vital to democracy and the exercise of democratic rights. We do not need words about compensating victims. Action to tackle impunity and create an environment in which journalists can work free from threats, harassment and pressure must be central to a genuine peace process.”