COLOMBIA: BODY COUNT OF SLAIN JOURNALISTS

On February 16, while addressing representatives of the the Foundation for the Freedom of the Press of Colombia and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) of New York, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe cited his own government as the only one that had succeeded in reducing to near zero the number of journalists assassinated per year and concluded that this feat made him one of the leading defenders of the freedom of the press in his nation's history. The premise is less questionable than the conclusion: in the previous year, the "only" killing was of Jose Everardo Aguilar, for doing his job; in 2002, the first year of Uribe's presidency, six colleagues met the same fate.