Prominent columnist and conflict analyst Leon Valencia has fled Colombia due to death threats, while his colleague told RCN Radio Wednesday he will have to leave the country as well.
Ariel Avila, an investigator for the Corporation Nuevo Arco Iris, an NGO investigating the conflict in Colombia, stated that his colleague Leon Valencia fled the country after receiving “anonymous calls, telling us we are not recognizing the work of former President Alvaro Uribe … treating us like terrorists, guerrillas, that we have an association to discredit political parties, that we are being used” Avila told the radio station.
Because of the threats, the investigator said he will leave the country in a few days too.
Valencia, a former guerrilla and long-time Uribe critic, is one of Colombia’s most prominent columnists and investigator of the country’s armed conflict. He was hired by the national government to scan political parties’ candidate lists ahead of the October local elections in order to detect criminal infiltration of the parties’ candidate lists.