Colombia investigates journalist murders: Police in Colombia are investigating the shooting deaths of two journalists returning from a county fair when they kill.
According to authorities, individuals on motorbikes opened fire at their car when Leyner Montero and Dilia Contreras entered the northern Colombian town of Fundacion early on Sunday.
According to the authorities, they are still unsure whether the incident was related to their journalistic activity. In Fundacion, Montero managed a community radio station that broadcasted regional news and cultural events.
In contrast, Contreras managed a regional news website and had just started working as a press representative for the municipality of Fundacion. Both journalists had visited the county fair over the weekend, according to the police, when Montero allegedly engage in a brawl.
After Mexico, Colombia is the region in which journalists kill most often. Since 2016, when the country’s government reached a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that ended five decades of conflict, nine journalists have been killed in Colombia because of their job, according to the press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders.
Colombia had a twofold increase in journalist killings in the 1990s and early 2000s, and assaults on the media included the car bombing of the offices of a major daily.
The murder of Contreras and Montero, according to Juan Pappier, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, was “one of the deadliest assaults” against Colombian journalists in recent memory.
According to Pappier, it serves as a bitter reminder that security and protection measures need improvement.
President of Colombia Gustavo Petro, who took office earlier this month, demanded an inquiry.
