By Samantha Badgen
Reporters without Borders has asked Colombian authorities to provide protection for Eva Durán, a journalist who received threatening phone calls on Jan. 18.
Durán is an animal rights defender and recently published a contract for 100 million pesos (about $510,000) from the City of Barranquilla to build a slaughterhouse for abandoned pets and other animals living on the streets. Durán also stated that she is the victim of a campaign to discredit her from media organizations owned by the government and powerful people at the local level.
El Universal said Durán received a phone call on her cell phone from a man claiming to be a supporter of animal rights who asked to meet her, which she couldn’t do since she was out of town at the time.
“After a short conversation, the man started sounding confused and ended up saying my exact address. He also described what I was wearing at that very moment and ended the conversation by saying he was going to go to my house that night and would rip out my tongue,” Durán told El Universal.
She told RSF she has been the target of hostilities from certain media outlets because of her strong criticism of local authorities.
Durán, also an activist against animal mistreatment on the Colombian coast, filed a report with the authorities in Cartagena, where she and her family live.
RSF insists that threats of the kind Durán received must be taken seriously in a country like Colombia, since reporting on facts that reflect badly on certain officials can jeopardize the safety of the journalists who report them.
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.
