Miami (September 3, 2009)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the murder in El Salvador of Franco-Spanish news photographer and documentary maker Christian Poveda and called on the country’s authorities to investigate promptly and apply the law to its fullest against those responsible.
Poveda’s body, bearing four gunshot wounds, was found yesterday September 2 afternoon in Tonacatepeque in the northern part of the capital, San Salvador. With wide experience covering armed conflicts, Poveda, 54, first arrived in El Salvador in the 1980s to report on the civil war. He worked as a photographer for US magazines Time and Newsweek and Paris Match of France.
“We wish to express our strong condemnation of this crime and our condolences to the victim’s family and friends,” said the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, who once worked with Povard as a Newseek correspondent covering the El Salvador civil war. Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, added, “El Salvador, as his adopted country, has just lost a great journalist and human being and I, in particular, have lost my ‘brother’.”
IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón, in an open appeal to El Salvador’s President Mauricio Flores urged him to take all the necessary steps “to investigate this crime thoroughly, pursue the guilty and uncover their motives.” He added, “We believe that an immediate investigation is a deterrent to those who think they can kill journalists and limit the public’s right to know with total impunity.”
While the reasons for Poveda’s murder were not immediately known it is believed it could be linked to his work after he produced a documentary “La Vida Loca” (The Crazy Life), which portrays the phenomenon of youth gangs with a focus on the Mara 18, and during the making of which he was a witness to seven murders. Poveda had been threatened by gang members, his colleagues reported. His body was found in an area controlled by Mara 18.
Since 1987, 15 other journalists have been assasinated in El Salvador: In 2007 Salvador Sánchez; in 1997 María Lorena Saravia; in 1991, Jorge Euceda and Pedro Martínez; in 1989 Eloy Guevara, David Blundy, Elibardo Quijano, José Ceballos, Aníbal Dubón, Oscar Herrera, Alfredo Melgar, Cornel Lagrow, Roberto Navas, Mauricio Pineda and Francisco Peccorino.
So far this year 14 more journalists have been murdered in Colombia (1), Guatemala (2), Honduras (2), Mexico (7), Paraguay (1) and Venezuela (1).
