Miami (October 15, 2009)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today denounced a recent decree in Honduras that permits the government to cancel broadcast licenses of radio and television stations that it considers a danger to national security. The decree is a serious attack on press freedom and the right of all Honduran citizens to receive critical information, the organization said.
Executive decree # 124-2009, published on October 7 in the Official Gazette, states that the country is in decline and blames this fact on news media which “have generated an atmosphere of social anarchy and encouraged vandalism to the point of upsetting public order and the security of the state.” In the same tone, it warns that those that “issue messages that foster national hatred ... could have their rights of use revoked or cancelled.”
IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón declared, “It is unheard of for a government that claims to be ruled by laws and the Constitution would issue decrees that refute the right to equality under the law and possibly bring about prior censorship, and that ignore all the laws that already regulate the alleged offenses that this decree seeks to punish.”
Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, added, “This is nothing more than a mechanism and flagrant excuse for censorship that can be used to justify the shutdown of any news media that maintains a critical position towards the government or its officials. It is an abuse of privilege on the part of the government against all citizens.”
Among the justifications established by the decree figures “when news media disrupt national security, public order or public health and morale it is imperative to enforce regulations established in the current legislation which concurs with the American Convention on Human Rights,” whereby "the government, as owner of the broadcast frequencies, may revoke or cancel the use of granted by CONATEL of radio and television operators that issue reports that incite national hatred, violation of protected legal assets or an atmosphere of social anarchy against the democratic state that leads to the disruption of social peace and human rights.”
Under terms of an earlier executive decree which suspended constitutional guarantees last month, CONATEL, the state agency responsible for issuing broadcast licenses, shut down Canal 36 television, Radio Globo radio station and the La Catracha signal repeater facility on September 28. Nonetheless, after that decree was suspended on October 5 the government did not re-open these media outlets that were identified with ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, called for the repeal of the new decree and insisted that the blacked-out media be reinstated, “the full existence of freedom of the press and of expression are an essential condition for resolution of the internal conflict.”
