LIMA, May 8 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A Peruvian journalist was gunned down Wednesday by hitmen as he was travelling to work in the Amazon city of Iquitos, the second such murder this year, prompting global condemnation.
Raul Celis Lopez, the 70-year-old host of a news show on Radio Karibena who was a well-known voice in the Peruvian Amazon, was killed as he was heading to work by motorbike taxi at around 5:30 am, the National Association of Journalists (ANP) wrote on X.
Lopez had regularly discussed the violence of the armed gangs that plague Iquitos on his popular daily program.
In January, the owner of a regional TV channel, Gaston Medina, who also had reported on Peru’s extortion epidemic, was shot and killed as he was leaving his house in the south-central city of Ica.
Reacting to Lopez’s death, the ANP called for “swift/diligent action in this new case which leaves the nation’s journalism in mourning.”
The killings sent shockwaves through Peru.
Hundreds of outraged citizens took to the streets of Iquitos to denounce what they called the authorities’ inaction in the face of a worsening security crisis.
“We are in the streets because of contract killers,” the protesters chanted, according to images from a regional television channel.
A producer at Radio Karibena described Lopez as “outspoken” but said he had not reported being the target of death threats.
Peru is experiencing an unprecedented wave of racketeering and gang violence, leading authorities to declare a state of emergency in several parts of the country.
The Ombudsman’s Office condemned Lopez’s killing on social media, saying it demonstrated the “lack of guarantees” of safety for journalists in the Andean country.
The Inter American Press Association lamented the murder of a journalist “known for his denunciations of corruption, extortion, and crime in the region.”
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) also weighed in.
It called on the Peruvian authorities to take measures to “guarantee the safety of journalists, especially those covering environmental and criminal issues in the most vulnerable areas of the country.”
Lopez’s killing comes as Peru reels from a massacre at a gold mine in the country’s north.
Thirteen people were found dead at the mine in Pataz district after being kidnapped, allegedly by illegal miners working with criminal gangs. — NNN-AGENCIES