[JURIST] UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) [official website] chief Irina Bokova [official website] on Tuesday condemned the brutal murder of Colombian journalist Luis Carlos Peralta Cuéllar, urging authorities to bring the perpetrator to justice. Bokova, who is mandated to defend press-freedom by her position, stated, “[p]ress freedom is one of the pillars of democracy and good governance. … Journalists must be able to exercise their profession without fearing for their lives.” According to UNESCO, Cuéllar was the owner and operator of Linda Stereo radio station, which regularly reported on government corruption. He had received several death threats over an extended period of time before he was murdered in early February. In a report released in early March, entitled World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development [text, PDF], UNESCO reported that the murder of media workers is on the rise around the world. The report stated that in the years 2007-2012, 430 journalist were killed.

Violence against journalists and other media workers has been mounting over the past few years. In early February the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] expressed concern [JURIST report] about the exercise of freedom of expression in Burundi following the arrest of Bob Rugurika, director of Radio Public Africaine [media website]. Also last month Bokova condemned [JURIST report] the killings of Mexican journalist Moisés Sánchez Cerezo and Japanese freelancer Kenji Goto, the owner and editor of the weekly magazine, La Unión, which he used as a platform to address problems of insecurity in Medellin de Bravo. In late December a special tribunal in Bangladesh found [JURIST report] British journalist David Bergman guilty of contempt for challenging the official death toll of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war [Bangladesh News backgrounder] with Pakistan.