Word: colombian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They became at least the 86th and 87th Colombian journalists to be killed or wounded in this decade -- and the ninth and tenth known victims since the cocaine cartels vowed retaliation last August against "journalists who have attacked and abused us." Although drug lords have also menaced judges, law- enforcement officials and industrialists, they have hit news organizations with special savagery. Pulido, in fact, escaped injury in an explosion at his headquarters in June. When he was struck down last week, the national newspaper El Tiempo editorialized that the attack was probably a punishment for his years of unrelenting struggle...
...precise toll exacted by the drug lords is hard to certify: Colombian journalists are also targeted by leftist guerrillas and rightist death squads. In a new report titled "Murder: The Ultimate Censorship," the Inter American Press Association notes, "Nowhere is this struggle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light more clearly drawn than in Colombia." Some of the country's ablest reporters have fled into exile or gone into hiding, their voices effectively silenced. Others admit their news judgment has been affected...
...organization would be the focus of wrath. But the agreement fell apart under competitive pressures and the feeling of some reporters that others failed to contribute their fair share. In any case, it is a virtual impossibility for reporters to work in complete anonymity, and most Colombian journalists simply shoulder the risk. Says Enrique Santos Calderon, an El Tiempo columnist and Sunday editor who spent several months in self-imposed exile following a bombing at his home, then returned to his outspoken ways: "We journalists aren't soldiers, but we have become the first line of defense...
Gomez, Santos and Salgar were among a group of Colombian journalists who were in New York City last week to discuss the battle between drug lords and reporters under the sponsorship of New York University and the International Press Institute. Their goal was to remind the world that their nation is, as El Tiempo said, "not a cave of thieves but the major victim of the international drug trade." Potent as their words were, more potent still was the harrowing image of Pulido cut down on his way home from an honest day's work in a land ravaged...
Also yesterday, all 42 of Medellin's federal judges announced they were resigning, according to the Colombian radio network RCN. They had begun an indefinite strike Thursday, demanding more protection from drug traffickers...