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Guevara, 27, died on Wednesday three days after being seriously wounded in an attack by hitmen in Cali, capital of the Valle del Cauca department (southwest), and his murder unleashed protests of rejection and demands for justice in the country.
The journalist, a judicial reporter for the newspaper Q’hubo, of the El País publishing house, received four bullet wounds on Monday night, two in the stomach, one in the chest and one more in the leg, which ended up causing the death in a clinic in his city.
“The murder of Andrés Felipe is one more example of the other pandemic that Cali suffers, that of violence, which has already mourned the families of more than a thousand victims of homicide cases this year. It is also a reflection of the multiple threats that today threaten Colombian journalists in the exercise of their work, “the newspaper El País said in a statement.
That publishing company highlighted, when condemning the crime, the enormous risk that assassination, threats, attacks and other attacks against journalists and the press pose to Colombia’s democracy.
“The crime of the journalist Andrés Felipe Guevara Henao cannot remain, like so many others in this country, forgotten in the file of impunity,” El País warned, demanding maximum diligence and efficiency in the investigations initiated by the authorities.
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) also condemned the murder on Thursday and regretted that there are already 24 journalists killed in violent events in the Americas during the year.
“We deeply condemn another murder, this time in Colombia, which mourns journalism and forces us to be much more alert to the evident increase in acts of violence against journalists in our region,” IAPA President Jorge lamented in a statement. Canahuati.
ENDLESS VIOLENCE
The murder of the reporter made Colombia mourn again, a country involved in a spiral of violence in which at least 139 human rights defenders had been murdered as of September this year, according to official data from the Ombudsman’s Office.
This year, Colombians expressed their discontent on the streets over the extensive list of fatalities of the violence, further swollen by about 250 demobilized from the former FARC guerrilla, as well as indigenous, black and peasant leaders.
The country saw a river of blood flow due to the massacres that in 2020 recalled the most convulsive times of the war, massacres in which, mainly in rural areas and far from Colombia, civil victims of the disputes waged by criminal groups for control of the land and illegal economies such as drug trafficking.
Due to the seriousness of the situation, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, denounced a week ago that the organization has documented 66 massacres this year in which 255 people were murdered in 18 departments of the country.
His office has also recorded the murder of 244 former FARC combatants since the signing of the Peace Agreement in November 2016.
Regarding the murder of Guevara, the UN Office for Human Rights in Colombia stated that “freedom of the press is one of the pillars of democracy and the murder of a journalist weakens it,” while demanding ” a prompt and effective investigation that leads to punish those responsible. ”
Mourning in journalism
Journalists from all over the country remembered Guevara as a promising young journalist, highlighted his professional career, courage, and dedication to the trade, and highlighted his commitment to work, despite the risk involved in journalism in a city like Cali, considered a of the most violent cities in Colombia.
“There is no title to describe this pain. Andrés Felipe Guevara Henao, our judicial journalist, could not win the battle against the violence that he covered for three years. Our friend died yesterday afternoon, after the attack he suffered last Monday . He left us broken and empty, “reads the front page of Q’hubo this Wednesday, accompanied by a photo of the communicator.
The reporter’s crime produced great stupor in Colombia, a country that despite the figures of violence refuses to normalize the actions of the weapons that continue to corner civilians four years after the disarmament of the FARC.
“I will never forget his passion for journalism, his thirst for progress, his serene humility. What a pain! Good journey, Felipe!” Wrote the online editor of El País, Ossiel Villada, on his networks.
According to the Foundation for Freedom of the Press of Colombia (FLIP), this year there have been 421 violations against the press in Colombia that have left at least 604 victims.
The Foundation itself denounced that, according to sources consulted, including colleagues of the reporter, for a couple of years Guevara had received threats apparently related to his journalistic work.
Because of these threats, journalists questioned that the commander of the Cali Metropolitan Police, General Manuel Antonio Vásquez, said a day after the attack that “they preliminarily distort that this event was related to his profession.”
Among his colleagues, the intimidations that Guevara had received are known and according to the information collected by FLIP, as a result of these threats, the journalist had to leave the Mariano Ramos neighborhood, where the attack occurred in 2017, after he published some information about a criminal gang that operated in that sector.
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