Miami (November 30, 2022) - The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) is saddened by the murder of a journalist in Colombia, the fourth this year in the country. The institution urged the Colombian authorities to investigate quickly to prosecute the culprits and prevent the crime from going unpunished.
Journalist Wilder Alfredo Córdoba, director of the private channel Unión TV and a social leader, was murdered on November 28 in the municipality of La Unión, in the department of Nariño, bordering Ecuador. Córdoba, 35, was killed from behind by shooters on a motorcycle. The journalist denounced the problems of insecurity and increased crime in the border area. According to local media, he made public messages he had received a few days ago asking him to keep quiet about some issues he had denounced in his municipality.
IAPA President Michael Greenspon expressed his solidarity with the family members and the Colombian journalistic community. Greenspon, global director of Licensing and Print Innovation for The New York Times Company of the United States, warned of "the defenselessness and serious violence suffered by many journalists in the Americas."
The chairman of the IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Carlos Jornet, called on the authorities to "investigate in depth, identify those responsible and bring them to justice." Jornet, the editor of the Argentine newspaper La Voz del Interior, added, "This new case ratifies the pathetic reality of practicing journalism under fire."
Greenspon and Jornet said that 2022 "has reached the chilling figure of 42 murdered journalists." Twenty of these cases were recorded in Mexico, eight in Haiti, four in Colombia, three in Honduras, two in Ecuador, and one in Brazil, Chile, the United States, Guatemala, and Paraguay.
Also murdered in Colombia this year were Rafael Emiro Moreno, director of the Voces de Córdoba website, in Montelíbano, Córdoba, on October 16; and Dilia Contreras, director of the digital program La Bocina Col, and Leiner Montero, director of the community radio station Sol Digital Stereo, both killed in Fundación, Magdalena, on August 28.
IAPA is a non-profit organization dedicated to defending and promoting freedom of the press and expression in the Americas. It comprises more than 1,300 publications from the western hemisphere; and is based in Miami, Florida, United States.
