Colombia too dangerous for critical journalists, film director says

[Judi Lynn]

30/06/2005 14:56 Stockholm | 08/12/2006 13:32 Bogotá
Colombia too dangerous for critical journalists, film director says

Award-winning film director Frank Piasecki Poulsen has chosen to present his latest film in Cuba, instead of Colombia, for "security reasons". According to Poulsen there is a witch hunt against critical journalists going on in Colombia, and the Uribe government is using all means to silence opposition and critical media, including death squads.

~snip~
The Danish director fears for his safety after the Uribe administreation has intensified a crack-down on independent journalists. On November 19, Colombia’s secret police DAS detained Fredy Muñoz, a correspondent for the news channel TeleSUR, charging him with "terrorism".

Being publicly accused of ‘terrorism’ is often an invitation for assassination attempts in Colombia, a country that has the highest number of journalists killed by paramilitary death squads in the world.

According to Poulsen, the Uribe government has even unsuccesfully tried to convince Danish authorities to stop the documentary, produced by Zentropa, a well-known Danish production company owned by Lars Von Trier. And Colombian police has stepped up a campaign to stop street vendors from selling bootleg copies of Guerrilla Girl in several cities in Colombia.

"I'm glad the Havana International Film Festival has selected Guerrilla Girl for this year's official program. In this way a wider Latin American audience will be able to see this documentary, that the Colombian government so desperately tries to ban", Poulsen says.
(snip/)

http://www.anncol.org/uk/site/doc.php?id=268