WHAT HAPPENS TO REPORTERS IN COLOMBIA WHO TELL THE TRUTH

WASHINGTON - On the morning of May 25, my colleague Jineth Bedoya, a
26year-old reporter for the Colombian newspaper EI Espectador, went
off to do an interview at the Modelo National Prison in Bogotfa. It
wasn't the sort of assignment one learns about in journalism school,
but it was typical enough of how Colombian reporters have to work
these days - both to find out what's going on and to keep ourselves
alive.

Ms. Bedoya, another colleague and 1, by our reporting, had angered a
group of Modelo inmates from Colombia's rightwing paramilitary forces.
We had been receiving warnings and threats for days.

Ms. Bedoya, a former crime reporter, was a particular target. She had
reported in a recent article that the police were colluding with the
paramilitary prisoners, allowing them to keep guns in their cells even
after a night of violence in which 26 prisoners were killed.

Ms. Bedoya had been trying for weeks to interview the leader of the
paramilitary prisoners, a convicted murderer known as ---thebaker.---
Finally he had called and told her to meet him the next morning,
alone, in the office of the warden. Ms. Bedoya was unaware that less
than an hour before she got the call, two men had tried to force me
into a car outside my apartment. Still, she took her editor and a
photographer along as a precaution. If they reported the paramilitary
leader's views, they hoped, maybe he would drop his threats.

When they arrived at the prison, no one seemed to know anything about
the appointment. But when the photographer and the editor stepped
outside for a moment, Ms. Bedoya was abducted from the prison lobby in
full view of the guards. She was then drugged, bound and gagged and
driven to a city about three hours away.

There she was beaten, tortured and raped by four men who accused her
of being a guerrilla sympathizer. Before kicking her out of their car
that night at a local garbage dump, the men told her they had plans to
kill me and two other journalists.

Ms. Bedoya is now out of the hospital and back on the job. She, her
editor and another threatened colleague ride around together in an
armored car with a police escort, trying to report their stories.
After police officials warned that they could not protect me, I left
the country. The prison guards who stood by as Ms. Bedoya was
kidnapped are still on the job, and Colombia's president, Andres
Pastrana (a former journalist), has yet to say a word about the crime.

In one sense, Jineth Bedoya's case is unusual. Many journalists who
run afoul of the most violent parties in our country's long-running
civil conflict end up dead. Last summer, Jaime GarzF3n, a caustic and
wellloved television and radio commentator, also went to the Modelo
prison to plead for his life. He was shot to death two days later. Mr.
GarzF3n was one of seven Colombian journalists murdered last year,
one of at least 152 killed since 1980. In 1986, the publisher of El
Espectador, Guillermo Cano, was murdered by gunmen working for the
drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. Three years later, the paper's offices
were demolished by a bomb, Twelve of our colleagues have been killed,
and journalists at other news organizations can tell similar stories.

On Thursday the United States Senate approved a package of $1.3
billion in aid for Colombia, which must be reconciled with the House
bill providing $1.7 billion. In both versions most of the aid is
military, though the Senate bill would do more to help protect human
rights.

But as Congress debates how best to help Colombia, the question my
colleagues and I ask ourselves is, who will be left to report on how
the money is spent?

Journalists in Colombia understand that we are an annoyance to those
in power. Our job is to tell our readers not only about drug
trafficking and political violence but also about official corruption,
government mismanagement and numerous social problems that go
unaddressed.

We have always accepted the consequences for what we write, and we
will continue to do so. Nonetheless, we believe that our government
must respond forcefully to the growing attempts to silence us --
especially when they come from military commanders and other public
officials. If Americans really want to help strengthen democracy in
Colombia, they should start by insisting that Colombian leaders defend
the people's right to a free press.