PARAGUAY

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It has been a year since the disappearance of radio journalist Enrique Galeano, and attacks on journalists continue. President Nicanor Duarte Frutos signed the Declaration of Chapultepec on February 22, 2007, formally committing Paraguay to unrestricted defense of press freedom. However, Duarte Frutos made some statements that caused concern at the end of the ceremony by recommending self-censorship mechanisms in the media and for journalists. The central topics of conversation between an IAPA delegation and President Duarte Frutos and representatives of the Legislative and Judicial Branches were the murder of Santiago Leguizamón, which has remained unsolved since 1991, and the disappearance of Galeano, a journalist from the northern city of Yby Yaú a year ago, apparently at the hands of drug traffickers with the support of local politicians. The Galeano case is still stalled. The prosecutor’s office has not been able to gather enough information for a single charge. The police investigation has remained paralyzed. Important testimony that supports the idea that politicians and police officers were involved has been ignored. What is worse, the government, without offering any proof, said in a report sent to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in December that Galeano is alive and could be in the Chaco region of Argentina. It supports this idea with an alleged psychological profile of Galeano, who is described as a person with a “flight tendency,” or seriously unstable. Despite supporting this unfounded theory, the security agencies have not requested help from Argentina to prove it. At the same time, civic groups and residents of the Yby Yaú area have tried to keep the Galeano case in the public eye as a priority in the battle against impunity. The Galeano case is fundamental for the advancement and consolidation of press freedom in light of events since the last IAPA assembly. Most of the attacks on journalists occurred in rural areas or near borders with other countries. In these places the vulnerability of journalists’ work is alarming. These are some examples: On November 11, announcer Arnaldo Ríos of radio station Yerutí FM in Caazapá was threatened with a handgun in public by Tito Prieto, the Colorado Party candidate for City Council. Prieto responded to criticism expressed on the radio program by yelling, ¨I am going to kill you.” On the 23rd of this month, Rosendo Duarte, correspondent of the daily abc Color in the frontier city of Salto de Guairá, said he had received several telephoned death threats. He had recently published information about the smuggling gang that operates in the area near Brazil. On December 13, Antonio Amarilla, a reporter for the regional daily Vanguardia in Ciudad del Este was threatened with death. The people who called mentioned recent articles in the newspaper, which is based in the dangerous border area with Brazil. On February 15, Vernicio Scherer, a Brazilian on trial for fencing stolen cars, threatened to kill Javier Núñez, correspondent of Canal 9 television and the daily Última Hora in Coronel Oviedo. On the17th of this month it was reported that a radio program in the region of Ybycuí was censored, supposedly on the orders of the influential government party senator, Julio César Fanego. The program, hosted by journalist Aldo Lezcano, criticized the legislator’s arrogant attitude and abuse of power. Just two days later, journalists in Alto Paraná department reported restrictions on their work and verbal attacks in the Ciudad del Este municipality and in the regional Public Ministry office. On March 6, Alberto Núñez, correspondent for the dailies La Nación and Crónica in Capiibary, San Pedro department, was taken hostage for a half hour by a group of lumber traffickers. He was beaten and threatened, and his camera was destroyed. For several months Núñez had been publishing a series of articles about the lumber traffic, the destruction of the forest reserve and police complicity in this illegal activity. The person accused of this serious attack is a man identified as Marcial Centurión, who heads a group that does illegal logging and lumber trafficking. Once again, the prosecutor´s office and the police have been unable to protect the journalist and his family and to guarantee the safety of other media outlets in the area. Despite the testimony of several witnesses, the police have not yet detained any of those who committed the attack on Núñez. The failure to defend Núñez is epitomized by the fact that the police chief, Enrique Isasi, took it upon himself to threaten the reporter. Angry about the series published by the journalist about the lumber traffickers and the damage to the forest reserve of Capiibary, Isasi said in the presence of witnesses: “Stop pressuring the rolleros (lumber traffickers) because you are just a journalist; you are worthless.” Many defamation lawsuits have been filed in the courts, and there is a disturbing tendency to impose upon journalists and the media sentences that are disproportionately harsh. On October 14, appeals court judge Arnaldo Martínez Prieto filed a civil suit for 5 billion guaranis (about $1 million) against the daily abc Color for moral damages. Martínez was on the court that revoked the sentence of former president Juan Carlos Wasmosy in the case of irregular financial help from the Instituto de Previsión Social (IPS) to the Banco de Desarrollo. On the same day, lawyer Oscar Schouten filed a suit against journalists Héctor Guerín and Fermín Jara for defamation. The journalists had published news stories linking Schouten with the so-called Trademark Gang that brings merchandise into the country illegally. On December 5, the Supreme Court upheld the 10-month prison sentence imposed on Luis Verón of abc Color. Verón was sued by Luis Pereira Javaloyes, an architect, after articles criticizing restoration work done on the Temple of Piribebuy, a historic and cultural landmark. The court ignored the reports of well-known experts who confirmed that the temple and the altarpiece of the church had been damaged. At the end of that month, Carlos César Rojas Mignarro, who has a colorful history of swindles, shooting, embezzlement and sexual harassment, filed a defamation suit against Alejandro Domínguez Wilson-Smith, editor of La Nación. The newspaper had published news that Rojas Mignarro was implicated in a financial investigation of the robbery of checks from the Education and Culture Ministry. Just days earlier, Juan Carlos Galaverna, a senator of the governing Colorado Party, threatened to file a new lawsuit against abc Color, alleging that an editorial the day before had proposed that he be killed. Earlier, Galaverna had won a judgment for several hundred thousand dollars from that newspaper.

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