Death threats, malicious phone calls and danger are a constant presence in the lives of journalists in Colombia, said four panelists Friday at Harvard Law School's Pound Hall.

"Journalists in Colombia are intimidated," said Andres Cavelier, a Colombian journalist working as a correspondent in Washington, D.C.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), the Human Rights Program, the Harvard Law School and other campus groups sponsored "Writing Under Fire: Freedom of Expression and the Colombian Peace Process," a panel discussion about self-censorship and the ongoing Colombian peace process.

Maria Cristina Caballero, a research editor for Semana Magazine and currently a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, said death threats forced her to leave Colombia.

"The number of death threats now show that enemies are everywhere," she said.

Just after participating in a yearlong journalism program at Harvard in 1996-97, Caballero recalled one of her first stories back in her home country. She was sent to cover a massacre in which more than 30 people were killed, literally "cut in pieces," she said. It was just one example of how journalists are constantly reporting on violence and putting themselves in situations where extremely malicious people are ready to take action, she said.

In covering the violence in Colombia and the attempts at peace, Caballero published a 60-page special in a magazine called Cambia, in which she revealed how so many Colombians "feel they need arms to survive here," she said.

June Erlick, the publications director at DRCLAS, said she became profoundly aware of the restrictions on the press in Colombia when her published interviews of author and journalist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, caused him to seek asylum in Mexico because of death threats.