On 7 September, Peruvian journalist Pedro Alonso Flores Silva was shot twice on his way home, in the province of Casma, 14 hours away from the nation’s capital, Lima. He was intercepted by a hooded man who attacked him. He died two days later in hospital. According to Flores’ wife, the attack came three months after her husband started receiving death threats regarding accusations made against the municipal mayor Noel Marco Rivera.

Flores was the second journalist murdered in Peru this year. The first was Julio Castillo Narváez, from La Libertad – a region 8 hours away from Lima – who was also shot by unidentified persons. Castillo had once denounced alleged corruption linked to a regional counsellor of the former ruling party, APRA.

These two cases highlight the risk that Peruvian journalists experience when carrying out their jobs. It is obvious that the situation taking place in regions outside the capital is quite serious. While in Lima freedom of the press is consolidated and protected by institutions, the situation is different in the rest of the country. Both in the mountains and the jungle, journalists are alone and they face powerful systems.

In such places, lost among hills and rain forests, and enveloped by the cold, the life of journalists is different than that of their colleagues in the capital. It is a separate world – one in which these hard-working reporters daily confront mayors, regional presidents and regional counsellors who live as feudal lords in these regions. Power is on their side. They believe that they are invincible. Untouchable. Divine.

But it is journalists who end up bringing these men down, making them crash to the floor. Reporters make them human, and they show the world how vicious and corrupt these men are. This is what leads to the prosecutions, the hunting, and the intimidation of the men and women whose only crime is to tell the truth or to try to get to it. Journalists committed to their people and community interests.

On 8 September, the oldest and most prestigious newspaper in Peru, El Comercio, sympathized on its editorial page with Paul Garay Ramirez, a journalist from Pucallpa who has been serving an 18-month sentence for alleged defamation since April of last year. The reason? He had investigated a lawyer and revealed that some judges have been bribed. According to El Comercio, “All this seems to also reveal that there is an atmosphere of reprisal and revenge, as well as intimidation towards the press that denounces and investigates the … behaviour of certain authorities.” And this is even more noticeable in provinces where the authorities serve as “almighty gods”.

Behind all these cases lies the topic of decriminalization of press crimes in Peru, which is of the utmost importance in order to prevent these abuses and mistreatment. It is necessary that freedom of the press, of opinion and of expression be respected in a country that considers itself democratic.

The topic was debated in October 2008 when TV host Magaly Medina was sentenced to five months in prison for having allegedly defamed a Peruvian soccer player from Hamburg SV. She was released after 76 days and her case became the first of its kind in the last 30 years.

Since then, a discussion regarding decriminalization of calumny, defamation and insult has begun. The Peruvian criminal code states in articles 130, 131 and 132 that if such crimes are committed through books, press or other means of communication the punishment may include payment of a fine, and imprisonment for no less than one year and no more than three years.

At the moment, Paul Garay is the only Peruvian journalist in prison. Oswaldo Pereyra Moreno was released after an appellate court annulled the sentences of a lower court based on procedural errors.

Peru’s Congress approved a bill this year that eliminates jail as a sentence for defamation crimes, substituting it with fines and community service. However, President Ollanta Humala must approve this norm. No defamation cases should ever be tried in criminal court.

In the absence of criminal defamation laws, bad governors and corrupt authorities would no longer be able to hide behind legislation to intimidate the press. There is movement worldwide to decriminalize such crimes and Peru should follow that example if it intends to stand apart from the group of countries like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, where freedom of the press is being stifled.

In our country, most of the cases involving the murder and intimidation of journalists occur in the provinces, the remote areas where drug trafficking, delinquency and corruption thrive because the perpetrators collude with governmental systems and small powerful groups. We do not want a covert dictatorship in our country; but it looms on the horizon if we continue to criminalise press crimes, and tolerate threats and attacks against journalists.