LIMA, Peru (September 29, 2010)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) announced here today it will shortly be calling for entries in an unusual song contest titled “Lend Your Voice for Those Who Have No Voice” as a new way to create through social networks people’s awareness of its campaign against impunity and to involve them in it.
The announcement was made by IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre at the conclusion of the Forum on Electronic Democracy and Freedom of Expression on the Internet, held here by the organization’s Internet Committee over the past two days and featuring speakers from Peru, United States, Germany and Spain.
The music contest, consisting of songs and videos and which will be officially launched on November 1 on the Web site www.impunidad.com, is designed to reach a mass audience via YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other networks, extolling freedom of expression and the right to know. Members of the public can register, sing, vote for a preferred topic and sign a letter of support for the IAPA campaign, all online.
Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, said, “We want to call upon the people in all the countries of the Americas to come together with a single voice to sing about injustice and crimes, urging once again the authorities of the most affected countries in the Americas to show greater political, legislative and judicial will for murders of journalists to be investigated and the guilty to be brought to trial, thus reducing the level of violence against the press and the lack of punishment.”
The IAPA for 10 years now has been carrying out an intense international program, calling on newspaper readers throughout the Americas to give their support and sign a letter addressed to the president of a country concerned, drawing attention to an ineffective criminal justice system that neither moves investigations ahead nor punishes those guilty of murdering a member of the press.
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. The IAPA Impunity Project is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and has the mission of combating violence against journalists and lessening the impunity surrounding the majority of such crimes. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org; http://www.impunidad.com
