Day of the Journalist: Colombia's journalists need more protection

[Judi Lynn]

1. Personalized love note to one of the dead journalists included:

María Jimena Duzán, a journalist with the weekly Semana, received exceptionally violent anonymous threats on Twitter the next day: “Ms. Duzán must be raped, spat on, cut up with a chain saw and hanged in Bolívar Square.” Vanessa de la Torre, a presenter on Noticias Caracol and Blu Radio, was threatened with death on Twitter a few days later for writing articles critical of former President Alvaro Uribe.

The right-wing paras have always saved particularly vicious murders to be used to strike fear into the minds of local Colombians to prompt them to take great pains to please their right-wing overlords in order to avoid such a fate for themselves or their loved ones. It's meant to serve as a terror tactic against the community.