EL SALVADOR
The climate of openness and reconciliation that the country has experienced since the signing of the peace agreement in Chapultepec was interrupted by a series of incidents at the end of October and the beginning of November. Two such incidents - an attack on Diario de Hoy and threats to a journalist
- directly impacted the practice of journalism, which also has become more difficult in the climate of tension that the country is undergoing with the approach of general elections, scheduled for March 1994.
The most important events this year included:
August 19 - Radio Sampul, an inland community-owned radio station, was denied an officiallicense to broadcast.
October 30 Antonio Velado Rojas, a radio announcer and reporter for the Latin American and Third World Press Agency (ALALP), received a death threat in a recorded message on his telephone
answering machine which he found when he called to arrange an interview with Humberto Centeno, the former telecommunications labor leader. The caller identified himself as "the messenger of death."
Centeno had earlier alleged the existence of a telephone spy network run by the Defense Ministry from the installations of the National Telecommunication Administration. The Salvadoran Newspaper Association (APS) protested the incident.
On November 1, a group identifying itself as part of a former guerrilla movement, now transformed into a political party, the National Liberation Front (FMLN), demonstrated in front of the
Diario de Hoy. During the demonstration, the crowd threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the newspaper's building. A rock struck one of the paper's news photographers covering the demonstration.
The attack had been preceded by accusations by Joaquin Villalobos, the FMLN director, that the Altamirano family who own Diaria de Hoy financed the death squads that have reappeared in El Salvador recently. Fabricio Altamirano, the newspaper's executive editor, roundly denied the charge
and said the attack by the crowd was due to criticism and public charges that the newspaper had printed about the discovery of hidden FMLN arms caches. Both the lAPA and the APS protested the attack.
The Electoral Code which was issued last year remains in force. It contains regulations on political advertising which are viewed as threatening freedom of expression. It stipulates that such advertising can be televised only during certain time slots. It says that the advertising must be fair, but offers no
definition of fairness.
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Madrid, Spain