Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009americas: colombiaStation in Pará, received telephone death threats after denouncing alleged fraudin Barcarena City Hall, news accounts said. After filing a police report, Baía resignedand fled the city. Later that month, four unidentified men attacked theoffices of Marília-based radio Diário FM in São Paulo state, according to localnews reports. The assailants bound the security guard with rope and destroyedthe central transmission equipment. The station was off the air for three hoursafter the attack.COLOMBIAThe strained relationship between the government and theBogotá-based independent press worsened after news media revealed that thenational intelligence agency had been spying on leading critics, including journalists.The press continued to be caught in the middle of the ongoing civil conflictas officials made loaded accusations and far-right paramilitary and leftist guerrillagroups terrorized provincial reporters. In an important step in the fight againstimpunity, a court convicted the masterminds in a 2003 journalist killing. WhileCPJ research has shown a gradual decline in journalist murders over the last fiveyears, one reporter was slain in reprisal for his work in 2009.The leading Colombian newsweekly Semana—known for investigations thathave shaken the administration of President Álvaro Uribe Vélez—published astory in February on a spying scheme orchestrated by agents of the AdministrativeDepartment of Security (DAS), the national intelligence service. The magazinereported that officials spied on critical journalists, members of the opposition, SupremeCourt justices, government officials, and international human rights groups.Thousands of e-mails and telephone conversations were intercepted, and the informationwas alleged to havet o p developments»»Provincial journalists face threats from allsides in civil conflict.»»Convictions gained in one journalistmurder; progress reported in other cases.2003key statisticYear that nationalintelligence agents beganspying on journalists and other critics.been passed on to criminalgroups, Semana reported.The country’s most prominentjournalists were amongthose monitored.Uribe denied involvement,blaming rogue elementsin the intelligenceservice for the spying. TheAttorney General’s office orderedan immediate searchof DAS headquarters andan investigation into the charges. Investigators later determined that the schemestretched from 2003 well into 2009, according to news reports. The Miami-baseddaily El Nuevo Herald reported in June that, among other things, the DAS monitorede-mails and telephone conversations between Colombian journalists andinternational human rights groups, including CPJ.In September, after the arrest of 10 high-ranking DAS officials, the Uribeadministration introduced a bill before Congress to create a smaller intelligenceorganization with more limited functions. The DAS, which reported directly tothe president, had been plagued by scandal throughout Uribe’s two terms.Among those in custody in the spying scandal was former DAS Deputy DirectorJosé Miguel Narváez, according to local news reports. Semana reported thatthe former DAS official also had links to paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño andwas being investigated in connection with the murder of journalist Jaime Garzón.A news host on Caracol and a columnist for the newsweekly Cambio, Garzón wasshot four blocks from his office in 1999. The following year, authorities chargedand convicted the paramilitary leader Castaño in absentia. (Castaño, who disappearedin the early part of the decade, is believed to be dead.) In 2009, under theLaw of Justice and Peace, a demobilized paramilitary fighter said Narváez hadplotted the killing and had urged Castaño to execute it, according to Semana.Under the Law of Justice and Peace, members of illegal armed groups are grantedleniency in exchange for demobilization and full confession to crimes. Narváezwas not immediately charged in the Garzón case; the Law of Justice and Peace hasbeen criticized for eliciting false allegations.Hollman Morris, a reporter known for his critical coverage of the country’scivil conflict, came under fire from the government after he traveled to southwesternColombia to interview guerrilla fighters for a documentary on kidnappings.On February 1, Morris said, members of the leftist guerrilla group Fuerzas ArmadasRevolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) urged him to interview three policeofficers and a soldier who were being held hostage. The journalist told CPJ thatonce he realized the hostages’ answers had been coerced, he simply asked for theirnames and their time in captivity. The same day, FARC released the four hostagesto a humanitarian mission led by the International Red Cross.As news of Morris’ meeting with the hostages was reported, the governmentreacted in forceful, rapid-fire fashion. Vice President Francisco Santos Calderónsaid Morris had acted without “objectivity and impartiality.” Then-Minister ofDefense Juan Manuel Santos called him “close to the guerrillas.” And Uribe accusedthe journalist of being an “accomplice to terror.”Morris told CPJ that the accusations triggered a string of e-mail threats.On February 5, CPJ and Human Rights Watch sent Uribe a letter objecting tothe loaded assertions and urging the president to put an end to comments tying7 47 5