Colleagues fear whitewash in murder of Dominican journalists on Facebook Live
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Version 0 of 1. Luis Manuel Medina, a newsreader at the FM103 radio station in the Dominican Republic, was reading the 10.30 bulletin when the shooting started. The first few shots, captured on a Facebook Live video of the broadcast, killed Leo Martínez, the station’s director and producer, in his office next to the studio. The Facebook video catches Medina’s expression of concern as, seconds later, the station secretary, Dayana García, screams: “Shots! shots! shots!” Medina rises to his feet, and the video cuts out before he too is fatally shot. García, 33, was seriously wounded in the attack, and by the end of the next day, the suspect was also dead, having apparently killed himself while surrounded by police officers. Police have said that the attack was motivated by a personal vendetta, not an attempt to silence the media. But the broad-daylight murder of two popular local journalists at their workplace has sent shockwaves across the Caribbean country, where independent journalism is already the subject of meddling by politicians and threats from organised crime. Although relatively few Dominican reporters have been killed compared with other countries in the region, such as Mexico, Brazil and Guatemala, harassment, physical attacks and even death threats are common for those covering crime and politics. But the on-air murder of Medina, 47, and Martínez, 60, both veteran radio broadcasters, was unprecedented. San Pedro is a small coastal city of 200,000 people, 45 miles east of the capital Santo Domingo. The studios of FM 103 are located on the second floor of a busy shopping mall in the city centre. Medina and Martínez were longtime collaborators on the popular breakfast show Milenio Caliente (Hot Millennium), which in August will mark 25 years on air. The show is respected locally for its coverage of social and political issues, its diverse opinions and refusal to shy away from controversial topics: listeners are encouraged to call in or even turn up at the station to denounce local drug pushers, dishonest businesses, or problems accessing health services. Police say that the killer, identified from CCTV footage, was a local man named José Rodríguez, 59. They have described him as a violent drug addict who had been deported from the US – claims his family have denied. About 36 hours after the double murder, Rodríguez was also reported dead. Police said that he started shooting at officers in San Pedro who returned fire; Rodríguez then allegedly shot himself in the head rather than surrender. “He was not a hitman,” said police spokesman Colonel William Alcantra, who described the murders as a “personal conflict”. The attorney general’s office is expected to announce the conclusions of its investigation next week, but a spokesman told the Guardian that there was nothing to indicate a link to Medina and Martínez’s work. Rodríguez’s family have said that he was angry with the two radio journalists because they were involved in an allegedly fraudulent land scheme which had left him out of pocket. But other journalists fear that the motive for the double murder will not be properly investigated following the death of the only suspect. In a column for the Acento digital newspaper, political and media analyist Mario Rivadulla, called for a full investigation. “The motives were surely professional. Some spurious interest, some local mafia, some dirty business laid bare by Leo and Luis Manuel … It is the price of exercising one of the most dangerous professions in the world.” Marino Zapete, host of El Jarabe, an online news programme said that while Rodríguez may have pulled the trigger, police still needed to investigate who might have ordered the murders. “From the beginning, dissident journalists like me were worried that the material author would end up dead and with that, an investigation into possible intellectual authors and the truth behind the killings would also end. What I feared most, is exactly what happened,” he said. In 2016, more than 200 people died at the hands of police in extrajudicial killings, according to the National Commission of Human Rights. Such deaths are usually justified by officers as self-defence. Fausto Rosario, the editor of the Acento, told the Guardian: “The extrajudicial murder of suspects is very common here. And when this happens, investigations are closed.” |