Death Threats, Arrests, Imprisonment, Torture p. 11

By: Karen Lange

Death Threats, Arrests, Imprisonment, Torture p. 11

Journalism is a dangerous profession in Huanta, Peru,
where 14 journalists have been killed since 1983
WHERE ALEJANDRO CORONADO comes from, journalism is such a dangerous profession that there is a tomb to hold its dead.
Three of 14 journalists killed since 1983 in Coronado's hometown of Huanta, Peru, lie in the mausoleum. It has room for 20 more.
On the side of the one-story cement building, erected in 1985 by Coronado and another local reporter, appear the words, "The journalist is a friend."
That message often has been lost on the government soldiers, local militiamen, drug traffickers and Shining Path guerrillas struggling for power in and around Huanta.
Coronado, a radio broadcaster, Reuters correspondent and free-lance writer for a national daily and newsweekly, has suffered death threats, arrests, imprisonment and torture. He has lost five of six journalist friends with whom he grew up in the poor southern mountain town.
The 28-year-old reporter told his story many times during the spring semester as a visiting fellow at Duke University's DeWitt Wallace Center for Communications and Journalism in Durham, N.C.
A Ford Foundation grant has allowed the center to expand its program to include journalists who work in emerging democracies or under conditions of hardship, executive director Dee Reid said. Coronado said the most valuable part of the visit for him was sharing experiences with other journalists, including those from Poland and Germany.
"In all the countries, there are problems with censorship of the press," he said, speaking through a translator. "The difference is in some countries, there's taking away of liberties, and in other countries, there's taking away of life.
"You never know what they're going to do," Coronado said, referring to the guerrilla group that took up arms against the government in 1980. "They don't necessarily kill you because they want to kill you. They want to see what effect your death will have, what kind of publicity they can get."
Other groups have their reasons for killing journalists.
"To work as a journalist in Huanta is very difficult," said Robin Kirk, who met Coronado while free-lancing for the San Francisco Chronicle in Peru from 1989 to 1991. "You always have to be worried about who you're talking to, what you're asking and how it will be perceived. Journalists could be perceived by any side as enemies."
In 1983, eight local stringers walked to a small village near Huanta looking for information about the killing of seven guerrillas. Villagers, who had been told by the army to kill any strangers on the assumption that they would be Shining Path members, killed the journalists.
During the same year, the navy, in Huanta because of a nearby river, arrested Coronado and "disappeared" him for eight days after he reported government human-rights violations.
They tied his arms behind his back and suspended him by his wrists. They threw him on an anthill and walked on him. They kept him blindfolded and without food.
"I would ask myself, 'Why was I born?' " Coronado said. "But I said, 'If I leave here with life, I'm going to continue working as a journalist.' We want to replace every dead journalist with 10 more."
Coronado was released when his family appealed to the general heading the counterinsurgency effort.
Three years later, he again was in trouble: caught between the Shining Path, which said it would kill him unless he read an announcement on the air, and the army, which said it would arrest him if he did what the guerrillas asked. Finally, he read the announcement, then left suddenly for a "vacation" in Lima, the capital, where most journalists stay.
Lima is safe, but jobs there are scarce and the cost of living is high. Within months, Coronado returned to be one of the few journalists who dares to live in Huanta.
He said he has grown used to the danger.
"It's like drinking a very cold glass of water," he said. "It's strange at first, but if you continue it every day, it becomes normal."
Besides the reports that he produces as a stringer, Coronado serves as a crucial resource for foreign reporters.
"If there weren't journalists like him, the news simply wouldn't get out," Kirk said.