Luis Gabriel Pereira, journalist of the medium Notiorense, murdered in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba.RR.SS
The bullets again silenced another journalist. Luis Gabriel Pereira, head of a news site hosted on Facebook, was murdered Tuesday by two gunmen riding a motorcycle and intercepted in the middle of the street. One of them got out and shot him at close range. The incident took place in Ciénaga de Oro, a municipality in the cattle breeding region of Córdoba where drug trafficking is rampant.
Authorities have offered a $2,200 reward for information that will help locate the two killers. Unlike other journalists who take a more circumspect stance, Pereira published cases of violence and police incidents on his website, Notiorense, without hiding the names of those responsible. The town from which he did it is near Montería, one of the cradles of paramilitarism in the 1990s. The Foundation for Freedom of the Press (FLIP) has investigated the case and believes that Pereira was murdered because of his work as a reporter. He has asked the Colombian public prosecutor’s office to investigate the case thoroughly.
#FLIPAlert | We deplore the murder of Luis Gabriel Pereira, a journalist with the Notiorense medium, in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba.
We extend our condolences to his family and friends.
We document the case. pic.twitter.com/6sLq8ze0l1
— FLIP (@FLIP_org) May 10, 2023
Ciénaga de Oro is the very parish where President Gustavo Petro was born 63 years ago. His mother and some cousins and uncles still live there. When he was very young, his parents moved to a town south of Bogotá and it was not until he was young that he returned to Ciénaga, where he rediscovered his roots and the Caribbean character that is still ingrained in him today. His knowledge of the area led him to denounce the ties between paramilitaries and politics while he was a congressman, a process that landed many involved in prison. At this point, Petro also often denounces that the land is in the hands of big landowners – including former President Álvaro Uribe – who use it for grazing cattle and not for farmers’ harvests.
The chances of solving this journalist’s crime are slim. Impunity is high in Colombia: one of the latest statistics shows that only six out of ten murders are solved. This is the case of Rafael Moreno, the investigative journalist who was murdered a year ago, also in Cordoba, by a hitman who used his name to enter the restaurant he had just opened and killed him in front of the diners. Moreno condemned mayors and lawmakers who squandered or directly retained public funds. Authorities still have no idea who took his life. A group of reporters from local and foreign media, including EL PAÍS, have continued their investigations, exposing the clientelism and corruption rampant in the area’s town halls.
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