ESMAD agents assault a journalist form the newspaper Al Día, from Santa Marta

On Monday, July 14th, in the evening hours, the journalist Jorge López was covering judicial news in the capital of the department of Magdalena, where they were having problems of public order with protesters. The reporter felt that agents from the mobile squad were assaulting a young man who was watching the events, so he intervened asking them not hit the young man anymore, but the members of the riot police responded by attacking the journalist. "They beat me with a shield, controlled me with a move, and then I was dragged around, handcuffed,” Lopez told the FLIP.

Although the communicator identified himself to the agents with his press card to be relieved and the attacks stopped, Lopez was not heard and his card was torn and damaged.

The journalist was taken to a police station, where he claims he was given to an officer who, when he realized that López was communicator, uncuffed him and apologized.

FLIP was able to talk to the commander of the Metropolitan Police of Santa Marta, Colonel Fredy Tibaduiza, who said that "the police overstepped itself in the process, so an appropriate disciplinary investigation will be initiated."

For FLIP, attacks on journalists by the security forces are unacceptable, because they should be the guarantors of the rights for the freedom of the press, as well because it is not the first time that these facts are presented against communicators under the coverage of demonstrations. In 2013, in a period of 75 days, FLIP recorded 44 attacks on journalists who were documenting social protests, 14 were responsibility of ESMAD agents.

Despite the call that FLIP has made for actions to be taken within the institutions, so that such incidents that violate the right to freedom of press is not resubmitted, in 2014 the attacks on the press by authorities persist. On the 15th of January this year, ESMAD agents assaulted and illegally detained journalists Robert Romero Vital and Yila Aguilera, while they were doing their journalistic work in the municipality of San Pedro, Sucre. Similar events occurred on May 1st, when Esteban Vanegas, a journalist form Medellin, Antioquia, was beaten and arrested by the police while covering the marches of the International Labour Day.

FLIP calls on the authorities to take into account that the Special Rapporteurs for Freedom of Expression of the UN and the IACHR stressed the importance of the work undertaken by journalists covering social manifestations, "the State has the duty to ensure that journalists and media are doing their work in the context of a public demonstration are not detained, threatened, attacked, or limited in any way in their rights to be in exercise of their profession”.

In addition, FLIP remembers that in 2012 the Colombian government was condemned by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of journalist Richard Vélez, who was assaulted by soldiers while covering the Coca marches in 1996. In that judgment, the Inter-American Court said that the attacks on the press in the context of social protests have an intimidating effect on other journalists covering public issues.

FLIP demands authorities to make the necessary investigations to punish those responsible for this aggression, and take measures so that these abuses of power by members of the security forces against journalists do not happen again.