Colombia / Americas

Bogotá, Colombia 3 de mayo de 1999 — En 1986, cuando el director de El Espectador Guillermo Cano fue asesinado en un semáforo de Bogotá, todos en Colombia sabían quién ordenó el ataque. Pablo Escobar, cabecilla del cartel de Medellín, supuestamente ofreció varias fiestas extravagantes para celebrar la muerte de Cano. Pero no hubo ninguna fiesta…

“Investigative reporter Alejandra Matus spent six years researching The Black Book of Chilean Justice. But her book, a historical exposé of the judiciary’s lack of independence, spent less than two days on Chilean bookshelves: On April 14, police confiscated its entire press run at the order of a Santiago Appeals Court judge. That same day,…

Dangerous Assignments

Colombian journalists have long been in a no-win situation. If they call for peace or for greater public participation in elections, they risk being targeted by guerrillas or paramilitary death squads. If they report on official corruption, they become targets of powerful political figures or their underworld partners.

The publication in March of CPJ’s Attacks on the Press in 1996 was the culmination of months of intense preparation by CPJ staff, investigating and verifying more than 1,000 documented cases of violations of press freedom worldwide. The 376-page volume, edited by Publications Director Alice Chasan, is the longest and most comprehensive of CPJ’s annual…

Silenced: The Unsolved Murders if Immigrant Journalists in the United States, published by the Committee to Protect Journalists in December 1994, cover shot shows the body of New York investigative journalist Manuel De Dios Unanue being removed from his favorite restaurant in Queens, where he was murdered on orders from Colombian drug traffickers. (March 11,…

CPJ’s 1995 report surveys 101 countries The bullet-ridden wall pictured on the cover is a detail from a photograph taken in Somalia by American photojournalist Dan Eldon of Reuters. Eldon, Associated Press photojournalist Hansi Krauss, and Reuter colleagues Hosea Maina and Anthony Macharia were murdered in July 1993 by a Somali crowd angered by the…

On April 3, 1981, three New York journalists filed incorporating papers for a new organization called The Committee to Protect Journalists, dedicated to the defense “of the human and professional rights of journalists around the world.”

Africa For the third consecutive year, Ethiopia held more journalists in jail–31 at year’s end–than any other country in Africa. Most were detained without charges.