Addresses UN, UNESCO, OAS, IACHR to intervene in case against Zuloaga
Miami (April 12, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has called for the support of inter-governmental agencies to safeguard freedom of the press in Venezuela and intercede before president Hugo Chávez on the legal action taken against journalist Guillermo Zuloaga.
The organization’s senior officers addressed United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director General Irina Bokova, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Executive Secretary Santiago Cantón, in communications sent in late March.
The letters, signed by IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, and the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, expressed concern at March 25th events that saw Zuloaga, a journalist and president of Globovisión TV, arrested and released shortly thereafter on charges of dissemination of false information and insulting the Venezuelan President in statements he made four days earlier at the IAPA’s Midyear Meeting in Aruba. In the IAPA’s opinion the act “reinforced the widespread view that press freedom and free speech in the country are in marked deterioration.”
The IAPA specifically requested the United Nations to intercede before the Venezuelan government to respect, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom of the pres and of expression and to restore the rights of citizens in that country. UNESCO was asked to maintain on its agenda the serious deterioration of press freedom in Venezuela and give it priority status during its general and regional assemblies.
The organization also insisted that the OAS direct President Chávez to take under consideration the Inter-American Democratic Charter, whose Article 4 states that there can be no true democracy without freedom of the press. Both the OAS and the IACHR were asked to insist that the government authorize their agencies permission to verify in loco the state of press freedom and free speech in the South American country.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org
