| Brazil | |
| Natan Pereira Gatinho, Ouro Verde, January 11, Paragominas | Gatinho was a correspondent for the television station Ouro Verde, also known as TV Mundial. Until November 1996 he also hosted a program for Radio Cidade, in which he read letters from farmers and workers complaining about their dire conditions. He was fatally shot January 11. He had been receiving death threats because of his radio program. He also was a militant activist of the Worker's Party and a candidate in the 1996 municipal elections. A truck driver with whom Gatinho had had a fight two days before his death was arrested for the murder, but he has denied the charges. Brazilian press groups suspect that Gatinho was murdered by local landowners because of his work as a journalist, but some journalists believe he was killed because of a personal feud with the truck driver. Gatinho had accused him of running over and killing a woman who was a colleague at Ouro Verde. |
| Colombia | |
| Alejandro Jaramillo,
October 24, Pasto
|
Jaramillo last worked in journalism as deputy director of
the newspaper El Sur in Pasto, from June through August. Before
taking that job he had lived in exile in Ecuador, where he fled in 1989
after receiving death threats. Several years earlier, in an incident that
may have been related to his work as a police reporter, he was shot and
injured while working for El País in Cali. He was reported
missing on October 24, and his dismembered body was found the following
week. Because of the gruesome nature of his murder, involvement by organized
crime is suspected.
|
| Cambodia | |
| Ou Sareoun, Samleng Reas Khmer, October 14, Phnom Penh
|
Ou was a reporter for Samleng Reas Khmer (Voice of
the Cambodian People), according to his father, who owns and edits the
newspaper. The newspaper was investigating extortion in the central market
of Phnom Penh. On the morning of October 14, as he was distributing newspapers
to vendors in the market, Ou was dragged into the street by security guards,
who had been the target of the newspaper's investigation, and shot dead.
The official report of Ou's death said he was drunk and had been killed
in a dispute over a card game, but the Khmer Journalists Association maintains
that he was killed because of the newspaperÕs reporting. Police
arrested the guard who shot Ou, but he was later released, and no charges
were filed against him.
|
| El Salvador | |
| Lorena Saravia, Radio RCS, August 25, San Salvador
|
Saravia was a prominent newscaster in El Salvador and a
news anchor at radio station RCS. She was abducted from her car August
25, murdered with a shot to the head, and found dead in a vacant lot the
following morning. Her car was found a week later in Santa Ana, 50 kilometers
from San Salvador. Nothing was stolen. The investigation has not produced
any leads, and it is not clear why Saravia was killed. Prior to working
at Radio RCS, Saravia was a television news presenter. Radio RCS airs political
talk shows hosted by ex-military officers and ex-guerrillas.
|
| Guatemala | |
| Luis Ronaldo De León Godoy, Prensa Libre, November
14, Guatemala City
|
De León was head of the weekend supplement section of the leading
daily Prensa Libre. He was stabbed as he was leaving his house in
central Guatemala City by an assailant who had been waiting in a nearby
car for several hours, eyewitnesses reported. He died as a result of his
injuries after three hours of surgery. Neither money nor personal documents
were taken in the attack, local journalists reported, making robbery an
unlikely motive.
|
| Hernández Pérez, Radio Campesina, July 16, Tiquisate
|
Pérez was a news reader at Radio Campesina in Tiquisate, Escuintla.
He was ambushed by a group of heavily armed men as he was leaving the station
on the morning of July 16 and killed instantly by gunfire. Another employee
of the station, Haroldo Escobar Noriega, a messenger, was also killed.
The motive for the murders is not known.
|
| Indonesia | |
| Naimullah, Sinar Pagi, July 25, Pantai Penibungan
|
Naimullah was a reporter with the Jakarta-based morning daily newspaper
Sinar Pagi. His mutilated body was found in the back seat of his
car on July 25 in the remote area of Pantai Penibungan, about 90 kilometers
north of Pontianak, the provincial capital of West Kalimantan. He had recently
reported on timber theft and had been conducting an investigation of illegal
logging in Kalimantan. Police in the area said he was killed in a traffic
accident. The editor of Sinar Pagi was widely quoted as saying that
Naimullah was no longer working for the paper at the time of his death.
Some officials of the Jakarta-based Alliance of Independent Journalists
believe he was targeted by logging interests as a result of his earlier
reporting.
|
| Peru | |
| Tito Pilco Mori, Radio Frecuencia Popular,
September 3, Rioja |
Pilco was owner and director of Radio Frecuencia Popular in Rioja and
host of the program "El Pueblo Quiere Saber" ("The People Want to Know"),
which frequently criticized public prosecutors, judges, and police officials.
He was assaulted August 27 on the outskirts of Rioja as he was returning
home from a visit with a cousin. He was found, severely injured and unable
to speak, at 5 a.m. on August 28, some distance from his motorcycle. He
died September 3 in a Lima hospital. Two witnesses reported seeing assailants
in a white car without license plates intercept Pilco on his motorcycle
and beat him. But the official report said his death resulted from head
wounds received when he crashed his motorcyle because he was drunk. The
investigation was initially headed by José Monteverde, a provincial
prosecutor whose integrity had been questioned by Pilco on his radio show,
according to the local press. After a Lima newspaper published an account
of Pilco's death, the case was reopened.
|
| Russia | |
| Valery Krivosheyev, Komsomolskaya Pravda, September 6, Lipetsk
|
Krivosheyev was a special correspondent for the national daily Komsomolskaya
Pravda in Lipetsk in Central Russia. He was found dead from skull trauma,
near a coffee shop where the reporter frequently met his sources. Colleagues
at the newspaper and at the Glasnost Defense Foundation claim that KrivosheyevÕs
killing was related to his work as an investigative journalist covering
local and national public figures. Later reports indicated that he was
killed in a brawl during a wedding reception at the café. The day
before his death he told friends at De-Fakto, the newspaper where he had
formerly worked, that he had scheduled a meeting with a source on a story
he called "a bombshell of national proportions."
|
| Ukraine | |
| Petro Shevchenko, Kievskiye Vedomosti, Ukrainian, March 13, Kiev
|
Shevchenko was a correspondent for the Kiev daily Kievskiye Vedomosti.
He was found hanged in an abandoned building. Kiev police labeled Shevchenko's
death a suicide, but his colleagues at the newspaper believe he was murdered
because he had co-authored a series of articles published in the weeks
before his death about disputes between the mayor of Luhansk and the local
branch of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), successor to the KGB. At
year's end, CPJ was unable to confirm whether Shevchenko's death was a
suicide or murder.
|