Impunity - Argentina, Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic

WHEREAS former policeman Aníbal Luna, convicted for the crime against photographer José Luis Cabezas on January 25, 1997, was freed at the end of August after serving two-thirds of the sentence imposed by an appeals court in Buenos Aires province, and, because of the same appeal, an application of Law, No. 23.390 (“two for two”), the civilians involved, known as “Los Horneros,” were also freed in 2005 WHEREAS Eduardo Heriberto Mass Bol, correspondent of Radio Punto, was murdered September 10 in Cobán, Alta Verapaz, in the north of Guatemala, and Government Minister Carlos Vielman and the national attorney general, Juan Luis Florido, promised to conduct a rapid and thorough investigation WHEREAS Jean Leopold Dominique, a political commentator on Radio Haití Inter was murdered April 3, 2000 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and investigations for a reopening of the case are stalled and the crime has not been solved WHEREAS Juan Andújar, correspondent of the newspaper Listín Diario in Azua, Dominican Republic was murdered on September 14, and while the main suspect is in jail, there has been no legal resolution of the case; and the murders of Gregorio García, March 28, 1973; Orlando Martínez, March 17, 1975, and Narcisco González, May 26, 1994, have not been solved WHEREAS Principle 4 of the Declaration of Chapultepec says “Freedom of expression and of the press are severely limited by murder, terrorism, kidnapping, pressure, intimidation, the unjust imprisonment of journalists, the destruction of facilities, violence of any kind and impunity for perpetrators. Such acts must be investigated promptly and punished harshly THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES to deeply deplore the release of those convicted for the Cabezas crime and trust that conditions will be created so that those responsible will be severely punished to urge the Guatemalan authorities to investigate the murder of Mass in order to clarify who is responsible and find out the motives to demand that the Haitian government reopen the Dominique case to bring those responsible to justice to reiterate to the judicial authorities in the Dominican Republic the need for a more effective process in the Andújar murder, and that the authorities in charge follow up and intensify the investigations of the unpunished crimes against García, Martínez and González.