Bogotá, May 21, 2002—Two newspaper reporters and their driver were kidnapped by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on May 16 in northern Colombia. According to local police, the rebels freed one of the reporters the following day. Nidia Álvarez Mariño and Ramón Vásquez Ruiz of the Santa Martabased daily Hoy Diario del…
New York, May 13, 2002—Panamanian journalist Miguel Antonio Bernal will go to court tomorrow morning to face criminal defamation charges filed in 1998 by then-National Police director José Luis Sosa. During a February 1998 broadcast of the news program “TVN-Noticias,” Bernal held the National Police responsible for the decapitation of four Coiba Island Prison inmates…
New York, May 10, 2002—A Mexican newspaper publisher appeared on Wednesday, May 8, before a public prosecutor in Mexico City to respond to criminal defamation charges brought against him by a local politician. Alejandro Junco de la Vega, president and publisher of the Mexico City daily REFORMA, was charged over an article alleging that Carlos…
New York, May 9, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists is extremely concerned about a series of menacing threats against four Colombian journalists, including an incident yesterday. At around 6:30 a.m. on May 8, two men approached Carlos Pulgarín—a journalism professor at the Universidad de La Sabana, a private university in the capital, Bogotá—as he was…
New York, May 7, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the Chilean government’s recent pledge to reform Chile’s onerous criminal defamation laws. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, government spokesman Heraldo Muñoz announced that the government would present a proposal to the Chamber of Deputies to achieve “the decriminalization of crimes of opinion ……
Washington, D.C., May 2, 2002—In Senate testimony today, a CPJ representative argued that the U.S. government should never recruit journalists as spies, and that U.S. intelligence operatives should never pose as journalists. Appearing before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Terrorism of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CPJ Washington representative Frank Smyth underscored the need…
Bogotá, April 26, 2002—On April 22 and 23, unidentified men threatened to kill television journalist Daniel Coronell and his 3-year-old daughter. Coronell, news director of “Noticias Uno,” a current affairs program on the Bogotá TV station Canal Uno, received threatening calls on his cellular phone and at his home and office after he aired an…
Bogotá, April 19, 2002—The campaign of presidential front-runner Álvaro Uribe Vélez said earlier this week that a radio network in central Colombia was targeted for a deadly April 7 bomb attack because the station had broadcast the candidate’s speeches. But network officials denied the claims and said the statements endangered the lives of their staff,…
Bogotá, April 18, 2002–A man being held by authorities in Colombia’s capital has confessed to murdering journalist Orlando Sierra, a newspaper editor and columnist who was shot and killed early this year, CPJ has learned. Luis Fernando Soto told investigators that he shot 42-year-old Sierra, deputy editor of La Patria newspaper, on a whim after…
New York, April 17, 2002—In the aftermath of last week’s failed coup against President Hugo Chávez Frías, Chávez supporters harassed several Venezuelan media outlets, CPJ has learned. On Thursday, just before his ouster, Chávez had accused local broadcasters of conspiring to overthrow his government. At around 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, when President Chávez…