By Carola Guerrero De León*
Several journalism organizations have requested an investigation on last month’s murder attempt against Colombian TV journalist Diego Gómez Valverde in the department of Valle del Cauca.
Gómez Valverde, 49, director of Canal Universitario – the TV channel of Del Valle University in the southeastern city of Cali – was driving his car on Nov. 19 when an unknown man on a motorcycle fired nine shots and injured him seriously during a stoplight, according to Terra. The attacker did not steal anything from him.
“We hope that Gómez recovers quickly,” journalism organization Reporters Without Borders said. “Given that nothing was taken from the victim and the possibility that he was ‘warned’ before this shooting, according to a few of his colleagues, the police should avoid their usual tendency to rule out any connection with the victim’s work as a journalist.”
RSF, along with Colombia's Freedom of the Press Foundation (FLIP in Spanish) and the Inter-American Press Association, condemned the attack.
“Unfortunately in Colombia – a country that managed to halt the violence that years ago left a long list of murdered colleagues – we are starting to see, once again, a worrisome increase in denunciations of attacks and threats against journalists,” said Claudio Paolillo, president of IAPA's press freedom commission.
Local authorities are offering 5 million pesos in exchange of information that would help track the people behind the attack, Diario ADN reported.
Two media workers have been killed in Colombia so far this year, journalist and attorney Édison Alberto Molina in the department of Antioquia, and news vendor José Darío Arenas in Valle del Cauca.
According to FLIP, there have been 116 direct attacks against journalists in Valle del Cauca in the last 10 years.
*Carola Guerrero de León is a student in the class "Reporting Latin America" at the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
