Colombia
According to the World Press Freedom Index, Colombia was ranked 130 out of 180 countries in 2020. For the last five years, the ranking of Colombia has been ranging from 128 to 130 except when in 2016 it dropped to 134 place.
The World Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of 180 countries which measures the freedom available for journalists in each country. It has existed since 2002 and is yearly composed and published by the non-profit and non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders, also known as Reporters sans frontiers (RFS) because of its foundation in France in 1985.
Based on Freedom House, an NGO organization that manages advocacy and research on human rights, democracy and political freedom, Colombia’s government and the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace accord in 2016.
However, it is universally accepted that Colombia has always been a violent country with serious human rights abuses. So despite the above accord, in 2018–2019 Colombia still encountered major challenges in maintaining a peaceful and fair environment.
A non-profit organization in Colombia named Foundation for Press Freedom or FLIP (from the Spanish La Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa) stated that in the first half of 2018 the number of threats against journalists was significantly rising and more specifically in Apr. 2018 two FARC dissidents killed 2 Ecuadorian journalists in Colombia.
Furthermore, Black Eagles paramilitary successor group sent in Jul. 2018 death threats to many distinguished journalists. In overall FLIP registered that during 2018, 491 attacks were executed on press freedom.
Moreover, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), an American independent NGO organization, published the death of José Abelardo Liz, a broadcast reporter and columnist/commentator. He was killed in Corinto, Colombia on Aug. 13, 2020, while he was video-recording an army campaign driving away members of the Nasa Indigenous group from a land they had been living on and cultivating for six years.
Dora Muñoz, a spokesperson for the Nasa community, shared to the CPJ that Liz was shot by soldiers, who claimed that this land near the western Colombian town of Corinto was their property. She also noted that Liz died in the ambulance which transferred him to another hospital, as the one in Corinto was not highly equipped.
In addition, on Sep. 16, 2019, the German international broadcaster DW Made For Minds published an interview of a Colombian investigator journalist Claudia Julieta Duque. She was forced by the court to not reveal those responsible for her kidnappings, psychological torture and illegal surveillance.
Duque pointed out that one of her assailants framed her by accusing her for injury and slander when she was constantly denouncing the perpetrators of covering up the death of the journalist Jaime Garzon. He told the judge to force her to stay silent. Otherwise, she would have been sent to prison for 10 years. Duque admitted to the DW the presence of a strategy to censure, attack and silence journalists in Colombia.
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Elena Stoycheva is majoring in Business Administration and Journalism and Mass Communication and minoring in Spanish at the American University in Bulgaria. She is eager to fight for press freedom and for the ability to express one’s opinion at liberty.
