Luis Eduardo Alfonso Parada

The inability to solve journalist murders in Arauca feeds an atmosphere of hostility and intimidation for the media there. By John Otis

The Five Most Murderous Countries for Journalists

Colombian journalists continued paying an extremely heavy price for practicing their profession amid a 40-year-old civil war pitting two major leftist guerrilla groups against the Colombian army and right-wing paramilitary forces. At least four journalists were killed in reprisal for their work in 2003, and CPJ continues to investigate the deaths of three others.

New York, January 2, 2004—A total of 36 journalists were killed worldwide as a direct result of their work in 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This is a sharp increase from 2002, when 19 journalists were killed. The war in Iraq was the primary reason for the increase, as 13 journalists, more than a third of this year's casualties, were killed in hostile actions.

In fact, according to CPJ's statistics, the death toll in Iraq was the highest annual total from a single country since 24 journalists were killed in Algeria in 1995 at the height of civil strife between the government and Islamist militants.

Bogotá, Colombia, March 18, 2003—Gunmen shot and killed a radio news host early this morning in a volatile northeastern region of the country. The journalist, who had been threatened previously by members of a right-wing paramilitary army, was also a free-lance reporter for Colombia's most widely read daily.

Luis Eduardo Alfonso Parada, 33, was shot to death at 4:55 a.m. by two gunmen in the town of Arauca, near the Venezuelan border, while he tried to enter his office at Radio Meridiano-70. Two men were waiting for him there and fled on a motorcycle after the attack, said an Arauca Department police spokesperson.