Miami (December 20, 2012)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today welcomed the decision of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to admit the case of the murder in Colombia of journalist Hernando Rangel Moreno, which has remained unpunished since it was committed in 1999.
Following an in-depth investigation carried out by its Impunity Project, the IAPA submitted the case to the IACHR on July 3, 2000, after coming to the conclusion that there had been an unjustified delay in the criminal investigations and in the hope that the intervention of the international agency might influence the Colombian government to reopen, investigate and effectively solve the case.
The IAPA argued that in the Rangel Moreno case the government of Colombia had an international responsibility as there had been a violation of articles of the American Convention on Human Rights regarding the right to life, freedom of expression, and legal protection and guarantees.
Rangel Moreno was editor of the publications Magdalena 30 días, Sur and Región in the city of El Banco Magdalena, Magdalena province, Colombia, when he was killed on April 11, 1999, in apparent reprisal for critical statements he had made and for promoting strike action against the administration of the local mayor, planned for the day following his murder.
He was on the terrace of the home of a friend watching a boxing match when a man approached him from behind and shot him four times in the head. The gunman escaped. Rangel Moreno, who was also a lawyer, was married with two children. Now, 13 years later, the crime remains unpunished.
“We are pleased that the Commission has approved a report of admissibility of the Rangel Moreno case and we trust that we can reach agreement with the government of Colombia to ensure that his murder no longer goes unpunished,” declared IAPA President Jaime Mantilla, editor of the Quito, Ecuador, newspaper Hoy.
The chair of the IAPA’s Impunity Committee, Juan Francisco Ealy Ortíz, president of the Mexico City, Mexico, newspaper El Universal, called the move “an important step for the battle against impunity.”
The IACHR assigned the petition the number 12,882.
Since 1997 the IAPA has submitted to the IACHR the results of 29 investigations into unpunished murders of journalists in six countries of the Americas – Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay and Colombia. The first cases in this latter country to be submitted to the IACHR were those of Carlos Lajud Catalán and Guillermo Cano. These were followed by the cases of Jairo Elías Márquez, Nelson Caravajal, Gerardo Bedoya, Julio Chaparro and Jorge Torres, as well as that of Rangel Moreno.
In a number of the cases investigated by the IAPA and admitted by the IACHR, amicable solutions were obtained under which the IAPA and the governments concerned agreed to moral and financial reparations to the victims’ families.
The journalistic investigation into the Rangel Moreno case was carried out by Colombian reporter Diana Calderón, at the time a member of the IAPA’s Rapid Response Unit, with the sponsorship the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which also sponsored multiple other Impunity Project activities between 1995 and 2012.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. The IAPA Impunity Project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and has the mission of combating violence against journalists and lessening the impunity surrounding the majority of such crimes. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org; http://www.impunidad.com
