Concerns for the safety of Colombian human rights defender Claudia Duque and her ten year old daughter

Front Line is extremely concerned for the physical and psychological safety of Claudia Duque and her ten-year old daughter. According to information received by Front Line in recent months, Claudia Duque has been the victim of several threatening phone-calls, voicemails and text messages since 7th September 2004.

The gravity of the threats has gradually intensified and the latest call (17th November 2004) threatened to burn her daughter alive in retaliation for her [Claudia’s] human rights activities: “though it hurts us, we have no other option but to kill your daughter, even if you go around in an armoured car, your daughter will suffer, we are going to burn her alive, we are going to scatter her fingers all over the place”. Claudia Duque reports that she has also been followed, and her home and the places she frequents patrolled.

A Colombian journalist and prominent human rights defender, Claudia Duque has been involved in raising a number of contentious issues at a local, national and international level.

In March 2004, Claudia Duque was a coordinator at the XXXV World Conference of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) in Ecuador. Recently, she also contributed a chapter on free expression to the publication entitled ‘Reelection: the myth continues’, which was launched on 8th September 2004 at the Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development. However, Front Line believes the current campaign of harassment and intimidation against Claudia Duque is in direct response to her enquiries into the possible irregularities of the murder investigation of fellow-journalist, Jaime Garzon.

Front Line urges the Colombian government to: - take effective action to prevent such violence against human rights defenders in Colombia and guarantee the safety of Claudia Duque and her daughter, and immediately fulfill all requests of protective assistance submitted by them or on their behalf - order a complete and impartial investigation into the aforementioned events, in order that the perpetrators of these crimes are not allowed to operate with impunity