Jineth Bedoya: ‘I fill my schedule because I feel like at any moment they’re going to kill me’

In just 15 minutes in her office, Jineth Bedoya, 50, finishes editing a text, receives four phone calls, carefully reviews some trips, finalizes the last details in an audio note for the launch of her documentary on sexual exploitation in Cartagena, titled It’s Not Time to Remain Silent, a name taken from the movement she founded in 2010, and reminds a clueless colleague what is commemorated on November 25. “It’s the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women,” she answers with great patience. Although she snorts when asked if her day-to-day life ever stops, she acknowledges minutes later that it is the way she found to hold on to a life. A life that has been under attack and threatened for almost three decades. “I fill my schedule because I feel like I’m up against time and at any moment they’re going to kill me,” she says in the editorial office of El Tiempo, a Colombian newspaper of which she is a gender editor.

In her office there are several purple orchids, feminist slogans, and two framed front pages: the copy from when she was on the cover of Aló magazine, and that of a Spanish newspaper from the day she told her story in public for the first time. Bedoya, a well-known Colombian journalist, was gang-raped and tortured by paramilitaries in 2000 and since then revictimization in court and threats have been routine. “The last one was yesterday,” explains Bedoya, who is also the U.N. ambassador for the eradication of sexual violence. “I did what I always do: do the best I can with my life in case today is the last day.”

Thanks to her tireless struggle, Colombia passed a law named after her movement that allocates $500,000 annually to prevent attacks on female reporters. For the journalist, although she claims it is “a balm for the soul,” it is still ironic. “I have a law, but no justice,” she says, alluding to the impunity of her aggressors. This is one of the reparation measures ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) ruling. This year, on November 25, she is launching a documentary on sexual exploitation in all the Colombian regional media where she has been investigating for five years. Anyone could ask themselves if, after so much suffering, it was worth dedicating herself to gender journalism. For Bedoya, the answer is a thousand times yes. “I will never be able to stop being a journalist,” she concludes.

Question. You started the movement It’s Not Time to Remain Silent, and now it’s a law. How do you feel when you look back?

Answer. I’m not yet fully aware of it. It all begins with going to speak to an audience in a country that is not mine and saying that I was gang raped, that I was kidnapped, tortured, and that it is difficult but that I continue in journalism. I thought that everything would remain an anecdote, but I woke up a monster, because emotionally it’s a very heavy burden; just like the path of seeking justice. What has sustained me is precisely what It’s Not Time to Remain Silent was building. Being able to accompany victims, put the issue of sexual violence on an international level, getting sexual violence included in the peace process, a national day to raise awareness about it, pushing forward a sentence before the Inter-American Court, the memory center of the movement, an education course for public servants… That’s when I say: how great this is!

Q. Kidnappings, abuse, revictimization, exile... Have you ever thought about quitting journalism?

A. Yes, I have had very clear breaking points. In 2011, when my case gained a lot of traction in Colombia, there was a tsunami of people giving information about the case. That’s when the first rapist appears, with his first and last name, and I identify him and hear from his mouth what the order was to kill me. That ended in a suicide attempt. I had to hold on to journalism tooth and nail to say: ‘I have to stop.’ And the other point was during the trial at the IACHR, because I had to reconstruct the drama of the past 20 years, not only of the episode but the threats, the tapped phones, the deteriorating health... In March 2021, when the government left me on my own, I thought about suicide again, but paradoxically journalism comes back like a superhero and rescues me.

Q. You know the grievances surrounding the armed conflict. What is your view on Petro’s plan for total peace?

A. It’s a paradox, because what is happening is what we victims have warned about in the peace processes. I was in the fourth delegation of victims and I remember that they were told that they had to fill the geographic spaces that the FARC were leaving, because that was where illicit crops were going to increase. And they were asked for guarantees so that there would be no return by the FARC or the creation of dissidents. That was premonitory. And there’s something else. They are the biggest drug traffickers in the country and those at the head of sexual exploitation and trafficking in Colombia. I do not understand how you can sit in front of a rapist and give him guarantees in the framework of a social peace, knowing that it is one of the worst crimes.

Q. So the solution lies in more punitive systems?

A. We’ve discussed this a lot with the victims: what we understand by justice. For me, it is clear that a rapist cannot be resocialized.

Q. Never?

A. Never. That’s clear to me. A person who is capable of sexually assaulting another person once will do it two or five times. But each victim is individual. The pain is so intimate and personal…

Q. You commented in a column on the president’s term “mafia dolls.” In the following seven days, there were 300,000 tweets and interactions linked to the term. What dangers are there in normalizing these attacks?

A. We women journalists have always been told that we carry the advantage between our legs. That if we have access to a source or information it’s because we are women, and that if we cannot do X or Y thing it’s also because we are women. With A we lose, and with B too. In this digital age, we have carried the worst burden. We are violated in a different way, they do not mess with our ideas but with our body. We are the bitch, the slut...

Q. We recently learned about the case of threats against Nicolás Sánchez, from (online media outlet) Vorágine. And I think about those threats and those against other journalists like Lydia Cacho and they are diametrically different…

A. Absolutely. The IACHR took a phrase that I said during the trial. I told them: If I had been Pablo Pérez, they would have shot me at the door of my house, but I am Jineth Bedoya and they raped me to tell me that this was my punishment for being a woman, not for being a journalist. This has been one of the years I have received the biggest number of threats and they are all of the same caliber: “We’re going to break your ass, we’re going to do what you liked, we’re going to cover your mug with acid.” My male colleagues are told: you have 24 hours to leave, or we will kill you.

Q. I imagine that despite how common it is, you never get used to it...

A. What human being starts the day off well if the first call they answer is from someone telling them they’re going to break your ass? And even more, knowing that one of your victimizers is free. Just yesterday I received a horrible message and I did what I always do: do the best I can with my life in case today is the last day. If it is, let it be the best. I also think that’s why I do so many things, you know? I fill my schedule because I feel like I’m up against time and at any moment they’re going to kill me.

Q. Have you been able to trust men again?

A. It’s difficult, but life itself is responsible for giving you answers, and many of those who helped me were men. Women cannot be a separate ghetto and be the poor victims. This is a construction of society.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition