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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