Miami (September 23, 2011)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned the legal and physical harassment suffered by journalists in Latin America this week and cited cases reported in Venezuela, Argentina and Nicaragua which the organization will detail during its upcoming General Assembly in Lima, Peru, October 14-18.
IAPA President Gonzalo Marroquín expressed his concern at the intermittent judicial harassment of Venezuelan journalists. He said that the IAPA will keep a close watch on the Attorney General’s summons served on four newsmen of the weekly 6to Poder on a charge of “inciting hatred” after the publication was temporarily removed from circulation for publishing a cover story sarcastically referring to senior public officials.
Federico Olioso, Gerardo Laya, Jesús Linares and José Gregorio Martínez were summoned to appear in court in the case that the weekly’s editor, Leocenis Garcia, has been arrested for.
“Judicial persecution, instilling fear and managing to create self-censorship are the trademarks of the Venezuelan government,” declared Marroquín, president of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Siglo 21, “and that is why I believe we are faced with one more typical case of harassment of the media.”
Argentina
In another development, co-chair of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, voiced the IAPA’s concern at a request by an Argentine federal court judge that six newspapers in Buenos Aires report to him about journalists that write news items and investigative reports on inflation indices.
The unusual judicial request involves the papers La Nación, Clarín, Ámbito Financiero, El Cronista Comercial, BAE and Página 12 and is related to lawsuits by the government against independent economists. The case reflects a long-standing controversy in Argentina over official inflation numbers from the state agency INDEC, which differ substantially from what private sector companies and the federal Congress report.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, news weekly Búsqueda, said the court request “is as unusual as it is improper, as it shows a lack of respect for the work of the press and the right to keep sources confidential and seeks to impose on the press the role of judicial assistant, one that does not belong to it.”
Nicaragua
Marroquín and Paolillo expressed concern at the lack of safety of Nicaraguan journalist Silvia González, correspondent of the newspaper El Nuevo Diario in the northern city of Jinotega who has decided not to return to her homeland after receiving death threats in recent months that have been basically ignored by the authorities.
González said the threats are linked to her reports of corruption and abuse of authority involving officials belonging to the governing Sandinista National Liberation Front party operating in the region.
The two IAPA officers said the organization will be “closely watching this case of forced exile” and that they trusted that “President Daniel Ortega will take the necessary steps so that none of González’s children or other family members, who are still in Nicaragua, suffer any reprisal.”
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and 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.
