Jineth Bedoya Lima

A Journey of Two Decades to find Some Justice

by Thess Mostoles

In 2000, Jineth Bedoya Lima, 49, was a 26-year-old reporter. She had been covering a story on weapons, human trafficking, and corruption at the infamous La Modelo prison in Colombia for three years, during which the threats against her and her mother intensified. When she feared for her safety, the Colombian state told her she was not entitled to protection.

“Jineth was one of the first journalists investigating how the armed conflict had moved into the prison system,” Claudia Duque, a Colombian investigative journalist, International Women Media Foundation (IWMF) Courage in Journalism award recipient, and Bedoya’s friend, says. “Jineth uncovered many stories about massacres inside prisons. That made her a target for threats and, later, her attack.”

Bedoya testified about her case for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) hearing in 2021. “Police Intelligence came to the newspaper (El Espectador) and told us the best solution to stop these threats was for me to interview the paramilitaries,” she said. After she and her editor agreed, they got a phone call to set an appointment to interview one of the paramilitaries on May 25th, 2000, in La Modelo. “It was a trap,” she added.

When she got to the prison, she was kidnapped, taken to a different location, drugged, tortured, and raped by several men. During her attack, she said she was told “it was a punishment for the press, that journalists got themselves where they shouldn’t. That the real plague wasn’t them; it was journalists.”

After her kidnapping, she suffered a double victimisation when the Colombian justice system proved negligent in investigating her case. As Bedoya testified before the IACHR, shortcomings of the investigation included evidence she had provided getting lost and witnesses killed. The case was paralysed for years. But Bedoya did not stop. She gathered evidence, discussed her case in Colombia and abroad, and continued her coverage of the same corruption and crimes. A year after the attack, she began working for the newspaper El Tiempo, where she is currently a special correspondent.

Fabiola León Posada, correspondent in Colombia for Reporters Without Borders (RSF) who has followed Bedoya’s journey for justice for two decades, explains that “Women in Colombia have been treated as spoils of war.” Aside from the regular attacks on journalists, female journalists face the added threat of sexual violence. Armed groups have intimidated female journalists and are even less prone to talk about it. Many would not go to cover a story alone, but that is not always possible, she adds.

“Jineth’s fight saved my life”

In 2010, Bedoya created the campaign No es hora de callar (It’s not time to shut up) to help women in Colombia who have been victims of violence. A year later, the Foundation for Press Freedom in Colombia (FLIP) supported Bedoya in bringing her case against the Colombian government’s mishandling of her investigation before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

“When self-love is ripped from us, re-establishing it is the hardest,” Bedoya said in her TedTalk in 2019. “I have been transforming my pain for 19 years by understanding others’ pain, and today I feel like a new, renewed person.”

“I was kidnapped a year after Jineth,” Duque says. “I am convinced Jineth’s fight saved my life. Her fight generated huge solidarity and an enormous political cost to the paramilitaries.” Bedoya’s fight for justice, she says, showed there could be consequences even in a country where crime against journalists is often unresolved.

“Jineth’s case goes beyond journalism,” León says. “No es hora de callar has become a success in Colombia against violence against women.” With the campaign, Bedoya has reached women all over Colombia, encouraging them to talk about what happened to them.

Her fight has awarded her laureates worldwide, such as the IWMF Courage in Journalism award in 2001 or the UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 2020. ”Her case was emblematic,” Nadine Hoffman, IWMF deputy director, says. “Having someone like Jineth, who’s willing to stand up and be an advocate for all of those other journalists, not just for herself, is really meaningful. It’s not a comfortable thing to speak publicly, but it is extremely brave.”

León points to an instant in the 23-year search for justice. “It was an important moment when, in 2016, Bedoya returned the settlement money she had been awarded” by the Victim’s Integram Attention and Reparation Unit due to the mishandling of her case, which had been unresolved for 16 years at the time. “With these victims, after a while, many people just say, ‘oh, just move on, and stop bothering with this.'” León explains that paying a settlement has been a tactic for the government when cases move into international courts. “It becomes a quick fix.” However, when the money was rejected, “Jineth proved to many it was not about the money.”

In 2021, more than two decades after her attack, the IACHR ruled that the Colombian state had failed to investigate and prosecute the attackers. Throughout the years, Bedoya pointed to her mother as a significant source of support. She was also threatened due to her daughter’s work and was one of the affected parties recognised by the IACHR ruling. “She is brave, a fighter, and my support; who pulled me up when I wasn’t able to carry on,” Bedoya wrote in 2018.

Among the reparations, a fund of half a million US dollars a year for sexual violence prevention was mandated. “It hasn’t been done,” Duque says. “So far, the government’s commitments to fulfilling the Inter-American Court ruling are empty promises.”

Journalism: the oxygen to carry on

“There aren’t any other women with Jineth’s visibility in Colombia,” León says. “Finally, there was a hero.” Duque agrees, “the strength of her fight, the mobilisation she managed in the untiring search for justice, is a giant example for other women.”

“My life was destroyed. They killed me on the morning of May 25th,” she testified in 2021. “I have grown courage relying on journalism, which has been my oxygen to carry on, and on the women who, like me, have been victims of sexual violence.”

León explains: “Her life changed with the circumstances. A big part of her life became a search for justice,”. That is not unique to her. Many threatened journalists in Colombia tend to focus on finding justice, León says. They begin taking notes of cars’ licence plates that might be following them or the phone numbers that called them. They review their memories, interview people, and try to find justice. Family, friends, and relationships suffer, León adds. “Most journalists we help at RSF don’t want to tell their families what they are going through. I have had cases where romantic partners can’t stand the pressure any longer and can’t understand why journalists have that need to want to carry on investigating.”

Colombia stands out for its legislation protecting freedom of expression but not for its implementation. One of Colombia’s critical programmes is the National Protection Unit (UNP), which provides security for journalists under threat. According to the RSF correspondent, the UNP has some problems: long processing times for requests, journalists’ families are often not included in the protection, insufficient staff, and coverage in rural areas is usually not included.

There have also been scandals inside the UNP. “In 2021, I discovered a massive spy operation via the armoured cars’ GPS, which had been collecting journalists’ data for years”, Duque says. “The government has been collecting information illegally about all our movements.” The case is currently before Colombia’s Constitutional Court.

Even with security given to her, Bedoya was again kidnapped by the local guerrilla leader of The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a Marxist guerilla group, in 2003, as her security detail could not travel to the area in Puerto Alvira where she was reporting. On another occasion, her security detail was arrested as part of a kidnappers’ ring operation. “It was emotionally very hard. I couldn’t trust anyone,” Bedoya testified.

When Bedoya first told her story abroad, she remembered many asked her if she was suicidal for continuing to cover the conflict in Colombia and wanting to “be on the trenches, and go in military helicopters, and be on the guerrilla camps,” she told Oxfam Intermon, the Spanish affiliate of Oxfam International.

However, she said that was untrue: “I want to live intensely because I don’t know how long I will live. Because today I am still threatened. Because I don’t have a personal life. I sacrificed my personal life. I didn’t get married. I didn’t have children. But I found thousands of women to fill that space.”

Colombia ranks #148 in the RSF global index for 2022, where it “continues to be one of the western hemisphere’s most dangerous countries for journalists.”