Top-flight investigative journalist goes off the air (Colombia)

[rabs]

Hollman Morris is one of the best investigative journalists in Colombia. Last night on his program TV program he announced it was going off the air. Morris had a program called "Contravia" or "Wrong Way" (as in a one-way street).

There was no further explanation but it smacks of a J.J. Rendon/Santos threat. Morris received numerous death threats after JM Santos claimed Morris was connected to the FARC. This was only a little over a year ago, in Feb. 2009.

So in little over two/three months, the prestigious mass-circulation magazine CAMBIO, which broke the multi-million dollar Agro-Industry scandal, was banned from political reporting.

Now Morris is off the air. (Think of Morris as K. Olbermann or Rachael M. and CAMBIO magazine as the TIME of Colombia.) This comes with only two weeks before the election.

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Contravia has uncovered links between paramilitary leaders and high officials in Colombian politics and finance. Thirty senators and representatives in the Colombian Congress have been imprisoned because of their ties to the paramilitary death squads; another sixty have been investigated. That’s a third of Colombia’s 268 member Congress, giving rise to a new term—‘para-politica’—to describe the ongoing crisis as one top politician after another is accused of complicity with the para-military squads. Most of those accused represent political parties that are part of the governing coalition led by President Alvaro Uribe.

Hollman Morris was given the Human Rights Defender Award by Human Rights Watch in 2007. He’s been forced to leave Colombia several times for extended periods after the airing of Contravía revelations. The show does not receive commercial backing; subsidies come from the Open Society Institute, the European Union and other international sources.

In February 2009, Contravía’s reporting prompted a denunciation by the government: Colombia’s Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, accused Hollman Morris on national radio of being “close to the guerillas,” after he conducted several interviews with FARC hostages who were later released. Uribe himself denounced Morris to the national press, and implied he was a member of the “intellectual bloc” of the FARC.

Such accusations in Colombia can have fatal consequences. Death threats followed. Shortly thereafter, Morris defended himself from the government’s charges on one of Colombia’s most popular morning talk shows; Contravía ...

http://www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/articles/colombianjournaliststrackguerrillawaroncontrav%C3%ADa

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombia’s DAS Carried Out “Political Warfare” Against Journalist Hollman Morris, Files Indicate

Colombia’s DAS Carried Out “Political Warfare” Against Journalist Hollman Morris, Files Indicate
Posted by Staff on Apr 16th, 2010

Today in Latin America

Top Story – Documents posted to the Center of International Policy’s “Plan Colombia and Beyond” blog indicate that the Department of Administrative Security in Colombia coordinated an attack of “political warfare” against independent journalist Hollman Morris.

The Colombian prosecutor’s office released documents from the country’s Department of Administrative Security (DAS, in Spanish; the Colombian equivalent of the FBI) to Morris, who gave them to the Center of International Policy and authorized their publication on the organization’s Web site.

The DAS’ tactics included the initiation of an “international smear campaign” involving “comuniqués,” “inclusion in a FARC video” and initiating the suspension of Morris’ U.S. visa, the documents show.

An investigation published by the Colombian weekly magazine Semana in February of last year revealed that the DAS had coordinated a series of illegal wiretaps of opposition politicians, human rights defenders, supreme court justices and journalists.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield announced the suspension of financial aid to the DAS on Tuesday and said the money formally destined for the DAS would now go to Colombia’s police.

http://latindispatch.com/2010/04/16/colombias-das-carried-out-political-warfare-against-journalist-hollman-morris-files-indicate/

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This pattern is so familiar, isn't it? First the denunciations from the government, followed by death threats from the paras, a vicious pattern of psychological terrorism, followed by the murder of the journalist, human rights worker, etc.

Hope Hollman Morris will leave the country and keep the government from being able to add him to its dead journalists list.

Thanks for getting us current on his situation.
http://www.javeriana.edu.co.nyud.net:8090/cyl/boletin/mayo/images/TiempoReal_History.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

2. Recommending.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[Wilms]

3. k&r n/t