New York, December 3, 2002—Colombia’s Constitutional Court has overturned sections of a government decree requiring foreign journalists to obtain authorization from the Interior Ministry before entering state-run security zones. On November 25, the country’s nine-member Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the earlier decree requiring that foreigners traveling to the zones get permission first from the…
New York, October 30, 2002—Rising crimes against journalists in Colombia prompted the Attorney General’s Office this month to add 12 new prosecutors to a unit dedicated to investigating attacks against the press, according to a statement from the office released on Monday, October 28. The unit, which previously had four prosecutors based in the capital,…
New York, October 25, 2002—The Colombian government announced yesterday that it will require foreign journalists to obtain authorization from the Interior Ministry before entering two state-run security zones. Yesterday’s announcement clarified an earlier decree, released on September 9, requiring all foreigners traveling to the zones to get permission from the government first. It was unclear…
Bogotá, September 17, 2002—Edgar Buitrago Rico, founder and director of the monthly Revista Valle 2000, today fled the city of Cali in fear of his life after receiving repeated death threats since May. In response, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today sent a letter to Colombian interior minister Fernando Londoño Hoyos urging him to…
Bogotá, August 14, 2002—Paramilitary fighters are threatening to kill members of the Colombian press in a northeastern region of Colombia where a journalist was recently shot and killed. A July 29 e-mail message sent to Radio Meridiano-70 and to Caracol Televisión correspondent Rodrigo Ávila accuses press members and media owners in the Arauca Department of…
Bogotá, August 9, 2002—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) detained two newspaper journalists and their driver in Colombia on Tuesday, August 6, freeing them unharmed two days later, CPJ has learned. Iván Noguera and Héctor Fabio Zamora, a correspondent and photographer, respectively, for El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest daily, and their driver, Henry Gómez, were…
New York, July 12, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has just learned that Mario Prada Díaz, of the weekly El Semanario Sabanero in the Santander Department in northeastern Colombia, was killed this week. His death occurred the same week in which another journalist in the region was threatened at gunpoint, one day after a…
Bogotá, July 1, 2002—The owner of a radio station, who recently had alerted the public to the presence of paramilitary fighters in the region, was shot and killed in northeastern Colombia. Efraín Varela Noriega, owner of Radio Meridiano70, was driving home from a university graduation in Arauca Department on the afternoon of June 28 when…
389 journalists killed between 1992 and 2001, most murdered with impunity New York, June 4, 2002–The majority of journalists killed in the line of duty during the last decade were murdered because of their reporting, concludes a study released today by the Committee to Protect Journalists. This comprehensive analysis of journalists killed between 1992 and…