A homemade bomb badly damaged journalist Edvan Ríos Chanca’s home in Huancayo, in the central region of Junín, at dawn yesterday, shaking but not injuring its four inhabitants, one of them a child, according to regional newspapers and the Press and Society Institute (IPYS), which defends freedom of expression and information.

“We condemn this attack and demand a full investigation into its origin and perpetrators,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Some newspapers say the police think the bombing was the result of a personal grudge. We urge the authorities not to neglect the possibility of a link to the sensitive stories Ríos has covered.”

Ríos currently works for the weekly Hildebrandt en sus Trece, and until recently worked for Correo de Huancayo, a daily for which he often covered local corruption stories.

Covering such a sensitive issue as corruption exposes journalists to serious and even fatal reprisals in a country such as Peru, where the level of violence and impunity is high. Violations of freedom of information are often blamed on local government officials or their henchmen.

The hostile environment for the media is compounded by the many abusive judicial proceedings and the fact that press offences have still not been decriminalized.