Journalist Jaime Quispe, the director of Jornada newspaper in Ayacucho, Peru, received a death threat the same day he published an article about political pressure to release a regional politician’s imprisoned brother, whom he accused of being a member of a blackmail gang, the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) reports.
According to Inforegión, an environmental news agency where the journalist worked, Quispe received a phone call saying “You are going to die, you are going to die.”
The National Association of Peruvian Journalists (ANP) condemned the threats and announced plans to present a formal complaint to international legal bodies to ensure that the threats do not “silence the journalist.”
According to the ANP, in the first six months of 2011, there have been at least 200 incidents against journalists in Peru, the same number that were registered in all 2010. Many of these took place during the lead-up the June 5 presidential elections.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
