MIAMI, Florida (Dec.
21)-The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed its concern
at the escalation of a wave of violence being unleashed against the press
in Colombia, with the kidnapping of a journalist, the acquittal of the alleged
killers of another and the murder of several reporters in recent weeks.
"We are disturbed by the severity of the violence in its many forms
that is being waged against the Colombian press, and we urge the authorities
to spare no effort to investigate the origins of these attacks so as to
bring about respect for human rights and freedom of opinion," said
IAPA President Danilo Arbilla, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, news weekly
Búsqueda.
Arbilla pointed specifically
to the abduction on December 15 of Winston Viracachá, correspondent
of Caracol TV in the southwestern Colombian province of Nariño, by
members of the National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrilla movement in reprisal
what he had been reporting.
"Kidnapping not
only violates the most elementary human rights but also deprives peoples
right to be informed," added the chairman of the IAPAs Committee on
Freedom of the Press and Information, Rafael Molina, of Ahora magazine,
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The IAPA also stated
its concern at the acquittal of three defendants accused of murdering Nelson
Carvajal, a reporter for the Radio Sur radio station and RCN national network
in Pitalito, Huila province, on April 16, 1998. The hemisphere free-press
group urged that the acquittal be overturned by a higher court so that justice
would be done and an end put to the impunity surrounding crimes against
journalists.
In circumstances that
continue under investigation, in less than one month recently violence in
Colombia also claimed the lives of journalists Alfredo Abad López
and Guillermo León Agudelo, both from the radio station La Voz de
la Selva in Florenica, Caquetá province, and Gustavo Ruiz Cantillo,
of Radio Galeón in Pivijaí, El Magdalena province.
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