Journalist who accompanied Petro in Egypt, removed for denouncing gender violence

The press team of the Colombian Presidency announced on Wednesday that it would remove journalist Juan Fernando Barona from the group of professionals covering President Gustavo Petro’s tour in Egypt, due to a complaint against him for gender violence.

“The Presidency of the Republic has contacted Noticias UNO and its director to inform them that this collaborator will be separated from the group of journalists who cover the president. The process for his return will be assumed by the media outlet and the Colombian embassy in Egypt. will be in charge of any additional requirement of the citizen”, dictates the statement shared to the press.

The situation occurs after the publication, on social networks, on Tuesday, of some videos where it is seen how the journalist assaults a woman, who was lying on the floor, while they enter an elevator. Likewise, the cameras captured when he and another man dragged the woman out of a parking lot. The events would have occurred on October 15 of this year.

Jorge Acosta, manager of News ONE, where the journalist worked, stated that he was fired. “The administrative and editorial teams learned tonight of the serious images spread on social networks. Mr. Barona has the right to defend himself within due process,” he added.

The activist organization Jacarandas pointed out, through Twitter, that the woman who can be seen in the video is the journalist’s ex-girlfriend, incapacitated for eight days after the beating.

Barona published on Tuesday, through Twitter, a photograph showing marks on his chest and part of his neck, accompanied by a message in which he explains that he did not want to make public “a painful private case, which is intimate”, but that he puts in knowledge of the aggression against him and a Legal Medicine opinion that was practiced on him and that generated a disability of 15 days.

“I won’t say another word about it, except on the stands,” he added.

The communicator will have to face a criminal investigation in the Colombian Prosecutor’s Office and will have to answer for the facts broadcast on video on social networks.

The journalist was traveling with the Colombian Government delegation, which is in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, on the occasion of the COP 27 celebration there these days, which started last monday and in which more than 100 leaders are scheduled to speak in the coming days about how to face a worsening situation that scientists describe as the greatest challenge on Earth.

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