What is known about the death of journalist Humberto Coronel?

A journalist threatened and unfortunately killed in front of his workplace.

Humberto Coronel died after being shot eight times in the city of Pedro Juan Caballero. He worked for Radio Amambay and the news portal Mbykymi Noticias. The station is owned by the family of the former mayor of the area, assassinated by hit men last May.

There was a precedent. Coronel and his co-worker, Gustavo Báez, notified the police of the threats. In the case of Báez, it consisted of a red sign indicating that he “knows many things.”

“I received the information that they attacked Humberto in front of the station. At that time my wife did not let me go out, and my relatives called me, they asked me not to leave the house, because I wanted to go to the station,” he pointed out. the communicator.

The deputy commander of the National Police, Baldomero Jorgge, also reported that Colonel “was going to consider” offering an escort in the face of threats, care that Radio Amambay already maintained. His complaints were uncomfortable.

The course of investigations

Apparently the murder of Humberto Coronel was linked to the threats received, according to the prosecutor in the case, Katia Uemura, who also accused organized crime of committing the murder, although she blamed the deceased for being “gifting himself” in condition of threatened.

“Another important element” to take into account in the investigations, according to the police deputy commander, Baldomero Jorgge, is that the threats received by both journalists occurred days after the murder of the town councilman.

The theory handled by the Police is that this attack is the product of a continuity of attacks against the Acevedo family, from which the mayor came.

“These two communicators work in the family business. They are very close, so to speak. They are from the first ring of the Acevedo family, they work in the media and more in other aspects of the family business,” said the police chief.

The Acevedos “have several edges, business-wise, and these people are very close,” Baldomero Jorgge declared.

And it is that another reported attack against the Acevedo clan ended the life of the daughter of the then governor of Amambay, brother of the deceased mayor.

Gustavo Báez contemplates the possibility of leaving the country

In an interview with local media, he stated that “the family’s position is clear, it is to leave the country, not the city.”

Faced with the threats that he presents against him, Báez declared that he had to overcome a “bureaucratic process and “knock on doors in various state institutions” to have police protection.

After the attack on Coronel, various direct threats to the station came via social networks.

The work of both journalists, the complaint and the calls for attention focused on the city of Pedro Juan Caballero, capital of the state of Amambay, where political crimes and gang clashes are the order of the day.

The reason would be that the area is the headquarters of a powerful group that controls a large part of South American drug trafficking, according to a specialized medium.

Pronouncement of the Union of Journalists of Paraguay

Representatives of the Journalist’s Union of Paraguay (SPP) held meetings on Wednesday with the interior ministers and the commander of the National Police.

At the end of the meeting, the representative of the SPP, Santiago Ortiz, recognized the “good will” of the government delegates, but emphasized the lack of “investment and real protection and care for journalists and freedom of expression.”

“This is a crime that is the responsibility of the State’s inaction,” concluded Ortiz, who also pointed to organized crime as being responsible for the murder and the climate of insecurity.

“When a crime committed by a journalist goes unpunished, as most cases in Pedro Juan have, what is being said to organized crime is: ‘Keep killing, if nothing happens at all, no one pays.’ Hopefully that will change,” he stressed.

In a statement, the SPP and the Human Rights Coordinator of Paraguay (Codehupy) underlined, among other points, that “the mafia has spread throughout the national territory, thus allowing silence – the ultimate goal of these attacks – to deepen in some territories and spread to others.

The document also requires “adequate custody” for threatened journalists.

This would not be the first murder of a communication professional in Amambay. According to the Roundtable for the Safety of Journalists, an entity that intertwines Paraguayan public and civil society organizations, at least eight journalists have been murdered in the state since the early 1990s.

Other reactions to the case

The Paraguayan Episcopal Conference “regretted the sad loss” of Coronel.

In a releasethe entity considered “that only with an intelligent, timely and effective intervention of the national authorities, the National Police, the Public Ministry and the Judiciary, will all kinds of attacks on life cease, which have afflicted the country for a long time, and above all to the aforementioned border town.

For its part, in an ordinary session of the Chamber of Deputies reaffirmed their solidarity with the relatives and companions of the victim.

When taking the floor, several parliamentarians criticized the “clear absence of the State”, others called on the inhabitants of the city of the event to “wake up” since the competent bodies in the investigations “are not going to do anything”.

Prosecutor Uemura’s statements were also criticized in which she assured that Coronel “gave himself away.”

The Embassy of the United States also echoed. In a trill, the diplomatic headquarters “condemned” the event.

with EFE