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|     RICHARD VELEZ

 

Richard is a Colombian journalist and camera operator currently living in exile. He was victim of several kidnappings and an assassination attempt. After recording a massacre of peasants by military forces he was beaten and left to die by the soldiers involved in the incident. He survived but his life continued to be at risk, which forced him to flee the country and seek political asylum in the U.S.

|     MARIA JIMENA DUZAN

 

Duzan is a respected Colombian journalist who, at age 16, had her first column at El Espectador Newspapers. She has also worked for numerous media outlets including El Tiempo and Semana. While working at El Espectador she became Director Guillermo Cano’s protégé. Pablo Escobar’s assassins later on murdered Cano for his aggressive media attacks against narcoterrorists. Duzan was threatened with death dozens of times. In a separate incident, her sister and journalist Silvia Duzan was gunned down while working on a story about drug trafficking and paramilitary squads. In 1994, she released her autobiography, Death Beat: A Colombian Journalist’s Life Inside the Cocaine Wars. Duzan won IWMF’s courage award and attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow.

|     FIDEL CANO & ANA MARIA BUSQUETS DE CANO

 

Fidel Cano Correa is a Colombian journalist and director of the well-known El Espectador newspaper. Cano is nephew to Guillermo Cano Isaza who was killed by Pablo Escobar for publishing the first evidence that showed he was a murderer and drug lord. Between 1987 and 1995, Cano Correa worked at El Espectador as sports writer, lifestyle and economy editor, and correspondent in the United States. He experienced the bomb placed by Escobar at the El Espectador, which left the paper in ruins. In 2000, Cano Correa would return to his family’s newspaper as general editor. In 2006, he was awarded as the Journalist of the Year at the Premio Nacional de Periodismo Simon Bolivar. Ana Maria Busquets de Cano is the wife of murdered journalist, Guillermo Cano.

 

|     HOLLMAN MORRIS

 

Morris is an investigative television producer, writer and documentary filmmaker who has denounced abuses by leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian army in the country’s decades-long internal conflict. He was the founder and editor of the Peace and Human Rights Section of the highly targeted newspaper, El Espectador. Morris attended Harvard University in 2011 as a Neiman Fellow and soon after completed another fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington D.C. In 2007, Morris won the Human Rights Watch Award for his work on the victims of armed conflict in Colombia and directed a controversial documentary called “Impunity“. He currently works as the director of Canal Capital in Bogota.

 

EXPERT CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Douglas Farah  I  Former Washington Post Correspondent

Carlos Lauria  I  Committee to Protect Journalists

Catalina Botero  I  IACHR Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression

Gerardo Reyes Copello  I  Univision

Mohamed Keita  I  Committee to Protect Journalists

Bob Dietz  I  Committee to Protect Journalists

Maria Salazar-Ferrer  I  Committee to Protect Journalist

Adam Isacson  I  Washington Office on Latin America

Arturo Carrillo  I  George Washington University

Alex Sanchez  I  Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Silvio Waisbord  I  George Washington University​​​​​​​​

Thank you to all who contributed in any way.  

 

 

 

 

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