Lima, May 7 (EFE) .- The national association of Journalists of Peru (ANP) demanded a diligent investigation into the murder of the journalist Raúl Celis López, who died this Wednesday after an attack of alleged hitmen in the Amazon city of Iquitos.
“The ANP expresses its most energetic repudiation for the murder of the journalist Ramiro Raúl Celis López, driver of the Karibeña radio news, in Iquitos,” said the association through a pronouncement by specifying that the communicator received three shots when he was heading to his workplace.
Celis was the director of a morning news and was known for his incisive style to inform and his casual way of expressing his opinions, according to the guild.
The information collected by the Journalist’s Human Rights Office (OFIP) indicates that Celis “was a constant target of threats due to its way of doing journalism, which is why we demand prioritize the professional mobile in the investigations.”
“From the ANP we denounce that this crime is not an isolated event, but part of the escalation of aggressions that seek to silence critical voices and discourage the exercise of a critical journalism,” said the association by also remembering the murder of the social communicator Gastón Medina, occurred in January in the Ica region.
The union made a public call to the National Police of Peru and the Public Ministry to act quickly in the investigation of this crime.
“We require immediate results that allow individualizing responsibilities and exemplary to the intellectual and material authors of this fact that, once again, to national journalism,” added the ANP.
Likewise, the association added that those who ordered the murder of the journalist “want to send a forceful message to the critical press”, so they urgently consider guaranteeing justice in this case, in the same way as in the homicide of Gastón Medina.
“The murder of a journalist is a direct attack on freedom of expression, democracy and the right of society to be informed,” concluded the guild.
On the same way, this attack also condemned the National Human Rights Coordinator (CNDDHH) and recalled that a recent report from the ANP accounts for 101 attacks on journalists and media so far from 2025.
“Violence against the press cannot continue normalizing. This murder reflects the climate of insecurity that those who report and the lack of effective response of the State against crime progress. We demand justice, sanction to those responsible and real guarantees to exercise journalism with freedom and security,” said the CNDDHH.
Similarly, the Ombudsman’s Office of Peru recalled that it is the second homicide against a communicator in less than four months, which demonstrates the “absence of guarantees in favor of journalists.”
The Interior Ministry reported that it has deployed a police team to find the location and capture of those responsible for the “condemnable fact” and said that agents specialized in criminal investigation participate in the operation of criminal investigation to give “a prompt effective response.” EFE
