"Peruvian journalist Geraldine Santos is only 30 years old, and she is already preparing for her funeral. Santos says she has received so many threats while reporting on cocaine trafficking and environmental crimes in the Amazon jungle that she has arranged for her family to contact a government source who, in case Santos is murdered, could help locate her body.
[…]
The targeting of reporters by criminal groups combined with government hostility toward news media and weakened institutions have led to a steady erosion of press freedom in Peru, journalists, diplomats and legal experts told [the Committee to Protect Journalists] CPJ.
According to a report published this year by Voces del Sur, a network of 17 Latin American press freedom organizations, Peruvian public officials were responsible for 61% of attacks against news media in 2025. Regional journalists are the most frequent targets, and four journalists killed in Peru last year—Gastón Medina Sotomayor, Raúl Célis López, Juan Fernando Núñez Guevara, and Mitzar Castillejos Tenazoa— worked in small towns or cities outside the capital. Their murders marked the most journalist killings in a single year since the 1980s when the Peruvian government was waging war against Shining Path rebels."
