On 27 March 2024, prosecutors in Peru opened an investigation into the prominent journalist and writer Gustavo Gorriti for alleged bribery. Gorriti, who is seventy-six, is the founder and editor-in-chief of IDL-Reporteros, an investigative news website and the journalistic arm of the Instituto de Defensa Legal, an independent organisation dedicated to fighting corruption and improving justice in Peru. 

The prosecution is seeking to determine whether Gorriti offered to promote through IDL-Reporteros the work of two public prosecutors in the notorious Operation Car Wash scandal in exchange for information about their investigations into political corruption. The scandal involves Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm that has admitted paying kickbacks to politicians across Latin America in exchange for public works contracts. According to a statement from the Peruvian Public Prosecutor’s Office, the official leading the investigation, Alcides Chinchay, has requested that Gorriti reveal the sources of his stories, along with other information that might identify them, such as the telephone numbers he used between 2016 and 2021. The Peruvian constitution protects the right of journalists to keep sources confidential.

Over the past four decades, Gorriti has exposed corruption at various levels of the Peruvian political and judicial systems. He is the author of several books, including Sendero (‘Path’), exploring the origins and insurgency of the Shining Path guerrilla group, La Calavera en negro (‘The Skull in Black’), about state complicity in the rise and fall of a criminal organisation, and La Batalla (‘The Battle’), about a community of farmers joining forces with the police to defend a town in Ayacucho during a Shining Path offensive. 

The complaint that triggered the latest action against Gorriti was filed by a member of the Peruvian Aprista Party, which rose to prominence under the country’s former president Alan García. García committed suicide in 2019, just as he was about to be arrested as part of a corruption investigation in connection with Operation Car Wash. Gorriti is currently fighting cancer and completed a course of chemotherapy in December.

Gorriti is one of many journalists who have come under attack in Peru. They include Paola Ugaz (LR, March 2022 & Oct 2023), who has suffered repeated threats and defamation lawsuits. Gorriti wrote in his column in the Latin American edition of El País in 2018, ‘Fake news is nothing new. What is rather exceptional is good journalism.’

Recently, disinformation campaigns have exposed journalists like Gorriti to the threat of violence. In the last few months, several groups, including far-right activists who call themselves La Resistencia, have harassed Gorriti and other employees of his news outlet, mounting an escalating campaign of intimidation. During demonstrations, individuals have launched missiles and flares at the offices of IDL-Reporteros.

PEN believes that the judicial inquiry into Gorriti represents a violation of his right to freedom of expression and an attack on his journalism. ‘The Peruvian authorities have a history of persecuting journalists, using the judicial system to undermine and prevent the publication of their investigations. The harassment of Gustavo Gorriti violates his right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The authorities must drop this investigation immediately,’ said Burhan Sonmez, president of PEN International.

Readers might like to send appeals to the Peruvian authorities urging them to drop the investigation into Gustavo Gorriti, to provide him with adequate security to carry out his work without fear of reprisals, to cease the criminalisation of journalism and to end the legal harassment of investigative journalists as a means of silencing them and obstructing their work. 

Appeals to be addressed to:

Dina Boluarte

President of the Republic of Peru

Twitter: @presidenciaperu

Juan Carlos Villena Campana

Attorney General of the Republic of Peru

Avenida Abancay Cuadra 5

Lima 15001, Peru

Twitter: @FiscaliaPeru

His Excellency Ambassador Juan Carlos Gamarra

Embassy of Peru

52 Sloane Street

London SW1X 9SP

Fax: +44 20 7235 4463

Email: postmaster@peruembassy-uk.com

Updates: On 18 June 2024, it was announced that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi (LR, June 2012, March 2016, Sept 2020 & April 2024) has been sentenced to a further year in prison for ‘propaganda activities against the regime’. The conviction relates to her writings criticising Iran’s human rights record. The Tehran Revolutionary Court cited Mohammadi’s calls to boycott parliamentary elections due to a lack of democratic guarantees, as well as letters she addressed to the Swiss and Norwegian parliaments. This recent conviction is part of a series of measures taken by the Iranian authorities against Mohammadi’s activities in prison, from where she has continued to write and criticise the government. 

On 14 June 2024, the lieutenant governor of Delhi granted prosecutors permission to pursue their action against the writer Arundhati Roy and Sheikh Showkat Hussain (LR, Nov 2023) under India’s notorious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act over comments they made at a conference in 2010. The comments related to the Indian army’s killing of three Kashmiri civilians, whom it falsely stated were terrorists. In her speech, Roy criticised the Indian government’s administration of Kashmir.