Guatemala

In this period there have been a number of incidents that assault freedom of the press through intimidation of news media and journalists in a bid to stop them reporting adverse information about public officials. A serious incident occurred involving the newspaper La Hora. On February 26 two officials of the Public Prosecutor’s Office turned up at the paper in an intimidating way, asking if it had sent reporters to the place where data is processed from the Mi Familia Progresa (My Family Progresses) program, an official government effort, much criticized for its lack of transparency. The government of President Alvaro Colom had a complicated strategy to prevent details of the beneficiaries of this program being able to be inspected by opposition Representative Nineth Montenegro, who brought legal action that resulted in the Education Ministry being ordered to hand over the data. In the middle of these proceedings on February 17 La Hora published a scoop on where this program processes the data on people who for sending their children to school are paid 300 Quetzals ($36) a month per child in the poorest areas. Days later, two inspectors from the Public Prosecutor’s Office turned up at La Hora. On March 2, Amílcar Velásquez Zarate and Gloria Porras, General Prosecutor and Secretary General of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, respectively, recognized that the visit to the newspaper made by the two young officials had, as well as investigations about the reporters, were inappropriate. The La Hora editor criticized the swiftness that a public prosecutor had shown in the denunciation of the program run by the First Lady, Sandra Torres de Colom. In another development the Guatemala City government has launched a smear campaign against newspapers and journalists, distributing thousands of leaflets to the public changing news reports or lying to set the population against the media, using official resources for that purpose. The newspaper s El Periódico and Prensa Libre reported that on March 12 leaflets defaming the media were being handed out at bus stops managed by the city government after the second of the two had reported on the anomalous way the concession of the new transportation system had been carried out. Both papers reported that when their photographers took some shots of people who were handing out these leaflets the municipal security staff were called in and they prohibited any more pictures being taken. The mayor of Guatemala City, ex-president Álvaro Arzu, has on many occasions publicly described himself as an “enemy” of the print media, which he accuses of lying. The tendency to threaten journalists in inland Guatemala is continuing. That is where organized crime, drug trafficking and corruption of municipal officials are the main causes of violence against correspondents.