New York, February 22, 2007—Unidentified gunmen fired shots outside the offices of the Cali-based bimonthly publication La Razón on Tuesday, injuring three people. The Committee to Protect Journalists is investigating whether the incident was an attack against the paper’s director, Édgar Buitrago Rico, who had been threatened with death. At 3: 45 p.m. on Tuesday,…
New York, February 8, 2008–Colombian journalist José Joaquín Chávez was forced to leave his home in Anzoátegui, in central Tolima province, after receiving several death threats from alleged members of a leftist guerrilla group. Chávez, director of the Anzoátegui-based community radio station Acción Estéreo and correspondent for the regional radio station La Voz del Tolima,…
By Joel SimonAs Venezuelan elections approached in November, President Hugo Chávez accused news broadcasters of engaging in a “psychological war to divide, weaken, and destroy the nation.” Their broadcast licenses, he said, could be pulled–no idle threat in a country where a vague 2004 media law allows the government to shut down stations for work…
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
COLOMBIA Investigative reporting and in-depth coverage of the civil conflict again fell victim to fear in the country’s most troubled areas, where threats and intimidation forced at least seven provincial journalists to flee their homes. The climate of intimidation is the legacy of years of murderous attacks on journalists. With 39 journalists killed since 1992,…
ALGERIA: 2 Djamel Eddine Fahassi, Alger Chaîne III IMPRISONED: May 6, 1995 Fahassi, a reporter for the state-run radio station Alger Chaîne III and a contributor to several Algerian newspapers, including the now-banned weekly of the Islamic Salvation Front, Al-Forqane, was abducted near his home in the al-Harrache suburb of the capital, Algiers, by four…
New York, January 30, 2007—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by a court order preventing Colombia’s El Heraldo newspaper from publishing follow-up articles to its report alleging links between a company in Barranquilla and paramilitary forces. On January 21, the paper published a joint investigative report with the nongovernmental organization, Fundación Protransparencia, alleging links…