Bolivia

New York, July 28, 2009--Following a vicious attack on a cameraman for the La Paz-based television network Gigavisión outside the station's offices early Saturday morning, the Committee to Protect Journalists called on Bolivian authorities today to thoroughly investigate and bring those responsible to justice.

On the evening of April 12, 2009, Raphael Ramírez, editor of the national daily La Prensa, received two anonymous calls at his home in La Paz from an individual who threatened to kill him if he "did not stop publishing lies," Carlos Morales, the daily's director, told CPJ. The following morning, an unidentified individual called Morales' home three times and warned his wife that the journalist would be killed if he did not change the paper's editorial line, Morales said. The caller specified that he was unhappy with La Prensa's coverage of a corruption scandal involving high-ranking individuals in Bolivian President Evo Morales' administration. (The journalist is not related to the president.)

The news media were caught in the middle of a deepening power struggle between the leftist government of President Evo Morales, an Aymara Indian, and the conservative opposition governors of the eastern lowlands. The battle was fueled by rising ethnic tensions between Bolivia’s indigenous majority, centered in the capital, La Paz, and the European-descended opposition based in the lowlands.