Venezuela investigates slaying of journalist

[Bacchus39]

Venezuela investigates slaying of journalist


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080616/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_journalist_killed;_ylt=AvTmXwEn6m4BaRODNJFRjga3IxIF

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan authorities are investigating the killing of a television anchorman who apparently was stabbed to death.

The attorney general's office announced Monday that prosecutors are investigating the slaying of Javier Garcia. The journalist's brother discovered Garcia's body at his apartment in Caracas.

The motive for the killing was not immediately clear.

Garcia worked for Radio Caracas Television, which has been fiercely critical of President Hugo Chavez.

Violent crime is rampant in Venezuela's capital with dozens of homicides reported every weekend, but killings of journalists are rare.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Maybe Chavez clobbered him? Brilliant deduction. You should feel proud of yourself!

Really, that's impressive mental skill!

Here's some Colombia stuff:

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who was first sworn in as president in August 2002 and secured a second four-year term in May 2006 promising to end Colombia’s endemic violence, has taken a tough stance against both right-wing paramilitary groups and left-wing guerrillas. Under his presidency, the murder rate and the number of kidnappings have fallen. However, his administration has been shaken by the so-called "para-political" scandal, which broke in late 2006 and exposed possible ties between paramilitary leaders and dozens of high-ranking government officials and politicians close to the president. The relationship between the president and the media continued to be tense as Uribe lashed out publicly at well-known Bogotá-based journalists Gonzalo Guillén and Daniel Coronell.

Although the number of journalists’ deaths has sunk dramatically since 2002, when 15 journalists and media staffers were killed, Colombia remains one of the most dangerous countries in which to practice the profession of journalism. In particular, journalists working outside the capital, Bogotá, who attempt to investigate corruption and drug trafficking, or report on the country’s decades-long civil war, continue to face threats, harassment, and physical attacks at the hands of right-wing paramilitaries, members of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), corrupt officials, drug traffickers, and other common criminals. Frequently, the groups involved in Colombia’s civil war single out journalists or media outlets as "military targets," using intimidation and violence to ensure they are portrayed favourably. The impunity that has accompanied these crimes has led to widespread self-censorship among Colombia’s journalists.

The Colombian press freedom organisation, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP), among others, reported numerous press freedom violations throughout the year, including threats and physical attacks. Numerous journalists were forced to flee the country after receiving death threats, and several media outlets were the target of violent attacks.

One journalist, Javier Darío Arroyave, was murdered, although the circumstances behind his death were unclear. Arroyave, news director for the local radio station Ondas del Valle and host of the news programme, "¿Cómo les parece?", was stabbed to death on 5 September in his home in Cartago, Valle del Cauca department. Although the journalist’s laptop computer was missing, there were no signs of forced entry, police said. In May 2005, Arroyave temporarily cancelled his news programme following pressure from the then mayor of Cartago, Luis Alberto Castro, whom the journalist accused of corruption. Investigators believe Arroyave’s murder was a crime of passion, but colleagues said they could not rule out that he was killed because of his work as a journalist.

Several journalists were forced to flee into exile after receiving death threats.

On 8 March, Darío Arizmendi Posada, news editor at Radio Caracol and host of the programme "Seis AM hoy por hoy", was forced to flee the country after receiving death threats from an unidentified group.

Also in March, Germán Hernández, news director of the Neiva-based daily El Diario del Huila, fled his hometown after receiving anonymous death threats.

In May, Rodrigo Callejas, host of the daily news programme "Debate 5" on the local radio station Fresno Estéreo, was forced to flee his home in Fresno, Tolima department, after receiving death threats from a man who identified himself as Luis Alfonso, commander of a subgroup of the FARC. Callejas had reported on guerrilla activities in the region.

In September, Juan Pablo Monsalve, a Bogotá-based reporter for the news programme "La Noche" on the national television station RCN, fled the country after receiving several death threats in August linked to his reporting on alleged local government corruption in Cantagallos, Bolívar department.

In October, Gonzalo Guillén, a correspondent for the Miami, U.S.-based daily El Nuevo Herald, was forced to flee Colombia after receiving 24 death threats by telephone and e-mail following comments made by President Uribe. On 2 October, Uribe had called two national radio stations, Caracol Radio and RCN Radio, to deny allegations made by Virginia Vallejo in her book, "Amando a Pablo, odiando a Escobar" (Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar), that he had had close ties to the deceased drug baron Pablo Escobar. Uribe said Guillén had collaborated with Vallejo in writing the book, and also accused the journalist of "being a person who has persisted in trying to harm me," the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported. CPJ and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), among others, called Uribe’s comments "irresponsible" and "reckless" and a contribution to the "climate of fear confronting the Colombian news media." Guillén, who said he had nothing to do with the book, had already received several threats linked to his reporting on possible ties between paramilitaries and officials close to Uribe.

On 9 October, President Uribe endangered the life of another journalist when he requested the host of a morning programme on La FM to call Daniel Coronell, news director of TV network Canal Uno and a columnist for the weekly magazine Semana, in order to rebut the journalist’s latest column, CPJ reported. In the column, Coronell had mentioned the recent allegations made by Virginia Vallejo in her book. In an hour-long, on-the-air discussion with Coronell, Uribe called the journalist a coward, liar, swine, and professional slanderer. A few hours after the broadcast, Coronell received the first of several death threats.

Also in October, Hollman Morris, an independent journalist and producer of the weekly investigative news programme "Contravía" on the television station Canal Uno, was forced to flee the country following death threats linked to his reporting. On 26 September, Morris received a threatening e-mail from a group calling itself the Colombian Patriotic Front ("Frente Patriótico Colombiano"). The group said Morris was an "anti-patriot" and a "member of the guerrillas," and had won a coffin in a raffle. Morris had already been the target of threats in March 2006, after a video accusing him of being a spokesman for the FARC began circulating.

Another journalist, Geovanny Álvarez Castro, co-director and host of the daily news programme "La Verdad" (The Truth), broadcast by the community radio station La Nueva in the northern city of Sabanalarga, Atlántico department, also fled the country in October after receiving several anonymous death threats apparently linked to his reporting on local corruption. On 21 September, the Sabanalarga police had informed the journalist of a possible attempt against his life.

In other cases of intimidation, harassment or violent attacks against the media, two unidentified gunmen fired shots outside the offices of the Cali-based bi-monthly La Razón on 21 February, injuring three people, including the bodyguard of the paper’s director, Édgar Buitrago Rico. Buitrago believed the attack was linked to his paper’s critical reporting on local government corruption. Buitrago said he had received numerous anonymous death threats since August 2006. In 2004, he was forced to flee Cali following repeated death threats.

In April, Diego Waldrón, owner and editor of the magazine Revista Gente in Barrancabermeja, Santander department, received threatening anonymous telephone calls after publishing a report on local corruption. Waldrón was also threatened in 2004, when he worked for the radio station Calor Estéreo. On that occasion, Waldrón and his colleague, Garibaldi López, were threatened after reporting on ties between local politicians and paramilitary groups.

In June, Rubén Darío Valencia, editor of the Cali-based daily newspaper Q’hubo, was informed about an alleged plot against his life. The threat was apparently linked to articles published in the newspaper about the arrest of Olmes Durán Ibargüen, the alleged head of a drug trafficking cartel based in Colombia’s Pacific coast region.

On 8 August, various broadcast media outlets in the north-eastern department of Arauca, including Sarare Estéreo, La Voz del Cinaruco, La Voz del Río Arauca and Meridiano 70, received a pamphlet from the FARC declaring an "armed stoppage" ("paro armado") in the region, and warning journalists that they must read the announcement on air three times on news programmes over the course of two days or be regarded as military targets. Press groups demanded that the government do more to protect journalists targeted by the guerrilla group.

On 22 November, Feibir Beltrán Luna, director of the local TV station Cauca Visión, received a death threat in the eastern city of Popayán, Cauca department, following reports by the station on local police corruption. An unidentified man told him that he and his family were targeted for murder. Beltrán believed the threat was related to his station’s reporting on alleged corruption involving members of the local police. Beltrán first began receiving death threats in February 2006.

Also on 22 November, Diro César González, director of the weekly newspaper La Tarde, received an anonymous letter at his home in Barrancabermeja, Santander department, offering condolences on his death. González believed the threat was linked to La Tarde’s coverage of local corruption and paramilitary activities. In January 2006, González relocated to Bogotá for almost a year after two unidentified men warned González’s wife, Tatiana Sánchez, that her husband’s name was on a paramilitary "black list" of journalists targeted for assassination.

On 12 December, the radio station Maravilla in Valledupar, Cesar department, received a pamphlet apparently signed by right-wing paramilitaries, which contained a hit list of 24 residents of the city designated as "military targets," including Enrique Camargo Plata, director of news programming for the radio station Radio Guatapurí.

http://www.freemedia.at/cms/ipi/freedom_detail.html?country=/KW0001/KW0002/KW0016/

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~snip~
AUC meets the press
Journalists have figured prominently among Castaño's victims. In January 1999, for example, Castaño repeatedly threatened Alfredo Molano Bravo of the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador after Molano wrote a story about anti-communist paramilitary groups and their ties to Colombian drug traffickers.

In June 1999, AUC members threatened Carlos Pulgarín, a reporter for Bogotá's largest daily, El Tiempo, after Pulgarín wrote an article about paramilitary assassinations of indigenous activists. Pulgarín fled to Peru, where his movements were apparently monitored; he later received telephone threats in Lima.

On September 16, 1999, two assassins on a motorcycle shot and killed Guzmán Quintero Torres, editor of the northern Colombian daily El Pilón. Quintero was investigating several AUC-linked murders at the time, including the 1998 slaying of television journalist Amparo Leonor Jiménez Pallares, who was killed after she reported that local paramilitary forces had murdered peasants.

On September 9, 2000, AUC paramilitaries abducted and killed a rural community leader named Carlos José Restrepo Rocha, who ran two small regional publications. AUC fliers were left next to Restrepo Rocha's bullet-ridden corpse, but the motive for this particular murder remains unclear. Later that year, AUC members threatened Eduardo Luque Díaz, of the daily La Nación, at his office and home, demanding that he reveal the whereabouts of a family he had mentioned in a story.

On April 27 of this year, Flavio Bedoya, a southwesternColombia correspondent for the Communist Party weekly La Voz, was murdered. Colleagues believed the murder was linked to a series of highly critical reports that Bedoya had published in La Voz since the beginning of April about collusion between the security forces and outlawed right-wing paramilitary gangs in southern Nariño Department.

One month after Bedoya's death, the AUC tried unsuccessfully to bomb the Bogotá offices of La Voz. Castaño took responsibility for the incident a few days later.

On October 31, 2000, rural community radio station director Juan Camilo Restrepo Guerra was summoned to a meeting by rightist paramilitaries who were apparently incensed by his sharp criticisms of the local administration. Restrepo Guerra's brother drove him on a motorcycle to the rendezvous site. The paramilitaries shot Restrepo Guerra dead in front of his brother, who has since declined to testify and has gone into hiding.

Journalists who choose to remain in Colombia despite Castaño's intimidation privately admit that they censor their own reports to protect themselves and their families. "Of course I censor myself," said one threatened journalist who elected to stay. "You have to tell the story, but there are some things I can't include."

Carrot and stick
Although journalists all over Colombia have been threatened and attacked for daring to criticize the AUC, Castaño has also used the press to launch a PR offensive. The formerly reclusive leader has "gained public visibility in the national and international media with disconcerting ease," according to a March 2001 report by the United Nations human rights office in Colombia.

"Carlos Castaño, Colombia's fugitive paramilitary leader, unleashed a national stir when he stepped from the shadows and submitted to a ninety-minute, one-on-one interview, televised on March 1 <2000>," wrote then-U.S. Ambassador Curtis W. Kamman in a recently declassified U.S. embassy cable. "The 35-year-old Castaño appeared intelligent, articulate, well-poised, and, above all, very charismatic."

Nearly one in five Colombian adults watched at least half the program, about the same percentage that supports Castaño, according to opinion polls. Since that first television appearance, Castaño has made himself freely available to both domestic and foreign reporters.

The Garzón murder
While Castaño has been linked to numerous attacks on the press, he currently faces just one criminal charge over an attack on a journalist. The charge, aggravated homicide, relates to the 1999 murder of Colombian television host Jaime Garzón. According to the official charge sheet, Castaño ordered Garzón's murder because of the journalist's role in negotiating the release of hostages held by leftist guerrillas.

The 39-year-old Garzón was a morning news host for the Caracol network and a regular columnist for the weekly magazine Cambio. But Garzón was best known for his work as a television comedian who used humor to criticize all factions in the civil conflict. He specialized in uncannily accurate impersonations of Colombian officials and other notables and was so popular across Colombia that in 1997, then-presidential candidate Andrés Pastrana Arango appeared live with other candidates on his TV show.

Garzón regularly traded on his stature as a well-respected broadcaster to negotiate for the release of victims of guerrilla kidnappings. He also served on an independent commission that mediated between the government and the leftist guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Two points emerge clearly from the Garzón case. First, some of Colombia's most dangerous criminals work for Carlos Castaño; and second, not even famous and well-connected journalists are safe from him.

On August 10, 1999, Garzón heard that Castaño was planning to kill him. The news was conveyed by a Colombian senator named Piedad Córdoba, who chaired the Senate's human rights committee at the time. In late 1998, Castaño's men kidnapped Córdoba and held her for nine months. During that time, Castaño told Córdoba that Garzón was on his list of targets. Castaño read her excerpts from what he said were transcripts of Garzón's private telephone conversations. He claimed that the transcripts proved Garzón was really a guerrilla.

After Córdoba was released in June 1999, she told Garzón that Castaño was planning to eliminate him. During the second week of August, Garzón learned that Castaño had ordered him killed by the end of that week. On August 10, desperate to get in touch with Castaño, Garzón visited La Modelo prison, a maximum-security installation in Bogotá where several important AUC figures are incarcerated.

According to the charge sheet, Garzón met with Ángel Custodio Gaitán Mahecha, also known as "The Baker," and with Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, also known as "Popeye." Velásquez was an early 1990s Escobar loyalist who later transferred his allegiance to the AUC. Both were well-connected members of the Colombian underworld.

Gaitán used his cell phone to call Castaño. He handed the phone to Garzón, who pleaded with Castaño to spare his life. Castaño called Garzón a son of a bitch who supported the guerrillas and added that he was a coward who didn't have the guts to meet him face to face. Before hanging up, the two men arranged to meet the following Saturday, August 14.

On August 13, a motorcycle-riding gunman shot Garzón dead at a traffic light just four blocks from his office. A few hours later, Castaño himself called Garzón's radio show and denied responsibility on the air. Velásquez and Gaitán also claim they had nothing to do with Garzón's death. More:
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/Colombia_sep01/Colombia_sep01.html

[Bacchus39]

2. I drew no conclusions from the original post regarding Chavez

I do know he can always count on your support no matter what he does since you lack the ability to think independently.