First modification:
In 2000, the Colombian government launched a plan of measures to protect the lives of press workers. It is a program of the National Protection Unit of which the journalist Rafael Moreno was a part, murdered on the night of October 16, 2022 in the department of Córdoba, in the north of the country.
Journalist Rafael Moreno, director of a digital newspaper in northern Colombia who had been threatened for his investigations, was murdered by hitmen on Sunday night, an NGO and the police reported Monday.
The reporter directed the Voces de Córdoba media outlet, specializing in information about that department of Colombia and based in the municipality of Montelíbano, where he was shot to death.
Moreno’s crime would be the first to occur under the protection of the state.
Rafael Moreno was shot by two men when he was in a place he owned. It would be the first journalist murdered in Colombia with a current protection scheme, which according to the Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP) “also exposes the problems of the journalist protection program”, of which Moreno had been a part since 2019.
“Despite these measures, they were not reinforced with the recent threats that he had reported or with the requests that had been made from FLIP and other organizations,” laments Jonathan Bock, director of this foundation. “It was a risk analysis that didn’t take all of this context into account,” he says. “Besides, he had a security scheme with a protection man who was not with him at the time of the murder. These failures show not only the vulnerability of regional journalists, but also the shortcomings of mechanisms to protect journalists”, he says.
Both FLIP and the International Federation of Journalists call for an investigation that considers Moreno’s informative work as the main motivation for his murder.
“Rafael was conducting various investigations and had filed complaints with the Colombian Attorney General’s Office and with the Attorney General’s Office for alleged acts of corruption that are in the political life of the department and the Nation,” says Andrés Chica, of the Cordoberxia Social Foundation. “That has nuances that obscure the situation and greatly concern a number of people who are also dedicated to research,” he says.
During 2022, 230 Colombian journalists have been threatened, six of them in Montelíbano, a city in the department of Córdoba where Rafael Moreno worked. There he was also a social leader.
“Of course, the situation of the leaders and human rights defenders of the department of Córdoba is not at all positive. Between 2016 and 2022 of this month, there are 53 leaders assassinated. There are more than 150 leaders who are under threat”, he remarks.
The Foundation for Press Freedom also asked the National Protection Unit to investigate “why its security plan for Rafael Moreno was not reinforced and if there were irregularities in the protection plan at the time of the murder.”
