Uruguay

URUGUAY For the first time, at least since the restoration of democracy in Uruguay, a journalist was killed because of the views he expressed. Julio C. Da Rosa, 36, owner and director of the CV 149 Radio del Centro radio station in Baltasar Brum, a small town in Artigas province, and the father of four, was murdered on February 24 by businessman and former secretary of the local municipal council, Nery Colombo, 63. The two were understood to have had a long-standing feud arising from allegations Da Rosa had aired about Colombo, who lost his city job as a result and was trying to get it back over public objections from Da Rosa. Colombo went to the radio station, apparently to broadcast a rebuttal, and when alone with Da Rosa pulled out a .38 caliber revolver and fatally shot him. He then killed himself. The IAPA dispatched a member of its newly-formed Rapid Response Unit, Jorge Elías, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to investigate the incident. The murder-suicide came amid a growing wave of intolerance sweeping Uruguay – exemplified by the killing of a traffic policeman by an enraged driver he was attempting to ticket. The incident led to a protest strike by traffic police and sympathy work stoppages called for in an open meeting which the press had been invited to cover, but from which reporters from the daily El País were barred – an action seen as infringing the readers’ right to know what was happening. A somewhat similar situation occurred when Río Negro Provincial Governor Rubén Rodríguez called a press conference early in February. Before it began, he ordered the editor of local weekly La Voz de Young, Ana Nela Portela de Suárez, to leave the room. Legal proceedings continue regarding discrimination in the placement of official advertising and in the granting of loans by state-owned banks to news media to the benefit or some and the detriment of others, as well as discriminatory and arbitrary imposition of taxes. The actions, initiated in the middle of last year, were reinforced by further media complaints, including those voiced in resolutions of the IAPA General Assembly in Houston. The IAPA Assembly report came to the attention of newly-installed President Jorge Batlle Ibáñez, who pledged full opennness in government to the Association’s Press Freedom Committee regional vice chairman for Uruguay. Batlle took office on March 1. Two days later, the Press Circle in Paysandú announced that one of its members, Alfredo David Brun, had received telephoned death threats. He is director and owner of the Ecos FM radio station in the Argentine town of Colón across the border from Uruguay and an associate member of the Circle. Brun has been reporting on alleged irregularities in the local municipal government.