A Colombian journalist was shot dead in a coca-growing area near the border with Venezuela, an NGO tracking such crimes reported on Friday.
The reporter, Jorge Mendez, was attacked “by armed men in the town of Tibu in the Norte de Santander department, said the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) in a statement.
Mendez “was a recognized social leader, reporter and community journalist,” said the NGO.
He was killed in a region where leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries are known to operate.
Tibu is the town with the world’s biggest expansion of drug crops, where more than 22,000 hectares (54,000 acres) of coca, the base component of cocaine, are grown, according to the UN.
The former mayor of Tibu, Nelson Leal, governed for months from a distance due to threats, while the town’s prosecutor was murdered in 2021.
The Inter-American Press Association condemned Mendez’s murder and called for “a timely and exhaustive investigation,” in comments on X.
