US denies visa to Colombian journalist

US denies visa to Colombian journalist
Frank Bajak, AP, July 8, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hgl6QDMsRPSO9Wa32a9Az-rEpdQAD9GR91280

Bogota, Colombia - The U.S. government has denied a visa to a prominent Colombian journalist who specializes in conflict and human rights reporting to attend a prestigious fellowship at Harvard University.

Hollman Morris, who produces an independent TV news program called "Contravia," has been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe, Washington's closest ally in Latin America.

The curator of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which has offered the mid-career fellowships since 1938, said Thursday that a consular official at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota told him Morris was ruled permanently ineligible for a visa under the "Terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act.
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"We were very surprised. This has never happened before," said the Nieman curator, Bob Giles. "And Hollman has traveled previously in the United States to give speeches and receive awards." He said he had written the State Department to ask it to reconsider the decision.
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"We're frankly shocked. We feel it's outrageous," Joel Simon, executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, said of the visa denial. He said the committee had discussed its concerns with State Department officials but was not provided with an explanation. "They told us they discussed this with Hollman and that's just not true," Simon said.
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Morris was also among journalists, judges and opposition politicians whose phones were illegally tapped by Colombia's DAS state security agency. Nearly two dozen former DAS officials have been arrested on criminal conspiracy charges in the scandal and are awaiting trial.

Morris is listed in a 2005 DAS memorandum obtained by prosecutors someone being under surveillance for showing "opposition tendencies to government policies."

Reached by the AP, Morris would neither confirm nor deny that he had been turned down for the visa. "Things are in motion," he said, adding that he had obtained a DAS document that described a campaign to discredit him internationally, including by stripping him of a visa.

Giles said the U.S. consular official cited Section 212(a)(3)(B) of the Patriot Act as the reason for the visa denial. It renders ineligible for a U.S. visa anyone who engages in terrorist activities, belongs to a terrorist organization or endorses terrorist activities.
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