LIMA, Jan 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A journalist who reported on Peru’s extortion epidemic was shot dead on Monday and two people were injured in a separate bomb attack on a prosecutor’s office that also investigates racketeering, authorities said.
Gaston Medina, the owner and editor of a regional TV channel, was gunned down as he was leaving his house in the south-central city of Ica, the country’s National Association of Journalists (ANP) said.
He was shot multiple times by gunmen and declared dead on his arrival at hospital, the ANP added.
Medina had reported, among other issues, on the growing problem of racketeering by criminal gangs who threaten bus drivers, shopkeepers, hairdressers and even teachers if they do not pay protection money.
Transport companies staged numerous strikes last year over the murders of drivers blamed on extortionists.
In a separate attack Monday in the northwestern city of Trujillo, the epicenter of the extortion epidemic, two people were injured when a bomb exploded outside the prosecutor’s office.
CCTV footage showed a man on a motorcycle with a backpack like those used by food delivery drivers depositing it in front of the prosecutor’s office.
The bag exploded shortly afterward.
Attorney General Delia Espinoza blamed the attack on organized crime.
While extortion is a problem across Latin America, it has recently taken on alarming proportions in Peru — a phenomenon blamed partly on criminal gangs such as Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua which operates in several Latin American countries.
In response to the bus drivers’ murders, the government declared a state of emergency in parts of the capital Lima last year, and deployed the military.
In the first ten months of 2024, police received more than 14,000 extortion complaints. But the problem is believed to be more prevalent as many victims fail to report cases out of fear.
Million-dollar profits make the shakedown business more lucrative than drug and human trafficking, and possibly even illegal mining, intelligence sources said.
Wilmer Quispe, a lawyer for Medina, the slain journalist, told journalists that his client had received death threats before Monday’s attack.
Peru ranked 125 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index for 2024, a “dramatic fall” in two years. — NNN-AGENCIES
