US reporter detained by Venezuelan authorities

[Judi Lynn]

60. In the meantime, in US-supported right-wing Colombia, next door,

countless journalists have been terrorized, tortured, murdered for decades, along with teachers, union organizers, indigenous Colombians, African Colombians, clergy, human rights workers, campesinos throughout the country, with NOT ONE WORD appearing in US corporate media, since the US has steadily backed that elitist-controlled country.

Radio journalist killed in Antioquia, Colombia
By Paola Nalvarte/TK
Posted at 2013-09-17 16:16

Colombian journalist and attorney Édison Alberto Molina was killed last week in the city of Puerto Berrío in the Department of Antioquia, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Molina was attacked on Sep. 11 by unidentified suspects that shot him four times in the head when he was heading back to his house with his wife, who was mildly injured.

Molina, 40, ran the radio program “Consultorio Jurídico” every Wednesday on the channel Puerto Berrío Stereo where he would address callers' legal questions. During this time, as Colombia's Foundation for the Freedom of the Press (FLIP) has documented, he also accused the current mayor of the city, Robinson Baena, of committing several acts of corruption.

“The authorities should get to the bottom of the murder of Édison Alberto Molina, find out the motive, and put those responsible on trial,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior coordinator for the Americas.

The director of the radio station where Molina worked, Orlando González, told CPJ that Molina had received several threats in recent months and that a week before the murder, a bag came to him with a handful of dirt and unidentified bones.

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The Department of Antioquia has turned into one of the most dangerous areas for journalists in Colombia due to the increase in gang violence, carried out for the most part by drug trafficking ex-paramilitary fighters. These fighters blackmail local businesses and in many cases work with the local authorities, according to a CPJ report.

https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-14451-radio-journalist-killed-antioquia-colombia

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Colombia

Where journalist murders go unpunished

http://www.cpj.org/americas/colombia/

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Colombia: Capturing Violence's Swirl
Published August 26, 2013
Stephen Franklin, for the Pulitzer Center


[font size=1]
Hollman Morris at the offices of Contravia. Image by Stephen Franklin. Colombia, 2013. [/font]

BOGOTA, Colombia–Hollman Morris persevered when death threats taunted him in a Colombia haunted by murder and injustice.

He persisted even as funeral wreaths, one after another, landed on his doorstep, and a smear campaign, staged allegedly by agents of a now defunct state intelligence agency, drove his work into the ground.

As Colombia descended into violence, a vortex whipped by left-wing guerillas, right-wing paramilitaries and drug cartels, Morris, reporting on the bloodshed, himself became a target.

When threats became unbearable, Morris, 45, would flee the country, either alone or with his family. Although he always returned, he grew more fearful.

Through his documentary video efforts at his company, Contravia (it translates as counter-currents), he exposed abuses by the shady groups as well as the Colombia’s armed forces.

But Impunity, his 90-minute documentary with Juan Jose Lozano, released in 2010, had an especially powerful impact in Colombia and globally. It argued that the government had failed to bring to justice the paramilitaries and their alleged business and government allies for the mayhem they wrought in Colombia.

When he applied for a U.S. visa to take part in a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2010, much to his surprise he was turned down. U.S. officials told him he was “ineligible under the terrorist activities section of the U.S. Patriot Act,” according to a Washington Post report.

More:
http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/colombia-violence-media-paramilitary-journalism-redemption