Follow us on SIP Follow us on BLOGGER Follow us on FACEBOOK Follow us on YOUTUBE Follow us on TWITTER
Alerts
Statistics
Investigations
Demand Justice

News
Activities
Official Documents
Media campaigns
Legal reforms
Case Law
Publications
Videos
Newsletter
Links

Mission
Officers
Staff
Contact us
Donate online
Lend Your Voice - CD

  
Colombia
August 3, 2007
IAPA DOCUMENTARY TO AIR IN PRIME TIME IN COLOMBIA
Radio and TV Caracol

MIAMI, Florida (August 3, 2007)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today welcomed the decision of Colombian television network Caracol to broadcast nationwide the free press organization’s documentary on the murder of journalist Orlando Sierra that it produced last year as part of its campaign to end impunity in crimes against journalists.

Sierra, managing editor of the Manizales, Colombia, newspaper La Patria, died after being riddled with bullets on January 30, 2002. Those who carried out the murder are in jail serving a 28-year sentence. Although the trial judge ruled that there was evidence linking other persons to the crime as having masterminded it, the Attorney General's Office Human Rights Unit. which is handling the case, has not made any progress in its investigations and the guilty continue to go unpunished. Witnesses have been eliminated one by one.

“We hope that the Caracol network’s example will be copied by other television stations in the Americas and thus provide support for the work of the free press,” declared IAPA President Rafael Molina, editor of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, newspaper El Día.

Titled “La Batalla del Silencio” (The Battle of Silence) the 21-minute documentary, which is to be broadcast tomorrow (Saturday) at 10:00 p.m., prime time in Colombia, sent shockwaves among the Supreme Court chief justices, jurists, scholars, lawyers and journalists from throughout the Western Hemisphere participating in the recent Hemisphere Conference on The Judiciary, The Press and Impunity held by the IAPA in Santo Domingo.

The IAPA’s hemisphere-wide anti-impunity campaign, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also comprises investigative reporting programs, training for reporters working in hazardous environments, and the monitoring of the state of press freedom in the Americas.



Error en la consulta:No database selected