BOGOTA, Aug 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Assailants on a motorcycle shot and killed two journalists Sunday in Colombia as they returned from covering a carnival, police said.
Leiner Montero, the director of an online radio station, and Dilia Contreras, the director of an online news website, were killed near the municipality of Fundacion in the department of Magdalena as they were returning from patron saint festivities in a nearby village.
Andres Serna, police chief in the department of Magdalena, said the reporters were driving back to Fundacion from the town of Santa Rosa de Lima, where they had covered a street festival, when the attackers shot them.
He said another person was wounded, but did not specify if this was a journalist too.
Serna said that, according to preliminary investigations, a fight had occurred involving Montero and several others.
“We are committed to the citizens of Magdalena to resolve in the shortest possible time this sad case involving two journalists who were highly appreciated among their union, family and acquaintances,” he added.
The Free Press Foundation urged police “to take into account Leiner and Dilia’s work as journalists” as they investigate the crime.
The foundation said that last year 768 journalists in Colombia suffered some kind of violence, including killings.
Serna convened an emergency meeting of police officials in Fundacion, which the government says is among the worst in Colombia in terms of violence, poverty, black market economic activity and weak government institutions.
Since a peace accord with leftist FARC rebels was signed in 2016, 10 reporters in Colombia have been killed.
That makes this country Latin America’s third most dangerous for journalists, after Venezuela and Mexico, according to Reporters without Borders.
“We condemn the killing of journalists,” said Juan Pappier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Colombian Senate speaker Roy Barreras called the shooting an attack on “democracy’s life” and called for police to resolve the case. — NNN-AGENCIES
