Venezuela

WHEREAS there is a deliberate government policy of restricting freedom of expression and the right to information in Venezuela WHEREAS the well-known Decision 1013 by the Constitutional Division of the Supreme Court, the Telecommunications Act, the petition by the National Assembly asking the media to draft a Code of Ethics, the open administrative investigations of several media outlets to punish them for alleged violations of truthful reporting, the government's announcement that it will have a Content Law approved, and, recently the use of the government news agency Venpres to practice state terrorism and military threats to investigate journalists who stray from the official line or report corruption in government are indisputable demonstrations of the marked official policy leading to censorship and vanquishing media that do not support the current government WHEREAS the president's repeated attacks on the press in general on his weekly radio and television programs have moved on to a phase of street violence that has victimized some newspapers and television stations as well as numerous journalists at the hands of the so-called Bolivarian circles-gangs organized by the government. WHEREAS in recent days so-called Popular Courts have surfaced that have conducted trials by activists of the president's party against journalists, print media and television stations, calling them "targets" and, later, "targets of war" WHEREAS the Inter-American Human Rights Commission felt the need, in recent days, to adopt measures to protect various Venezuelan media outlets and journalists from such government-encouraged violence, but the government did not comply with them WHEREAS the Declaration of Chapultepec establishes within its basic principles Principle 1, saying that "no people or society can be free without freedom of expression and of the press. The exercise of this freedom is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people" WHEREAS Principle 4 stipulates that "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." WHEREAS Principle 5 of the same declaration says, "prior censorship, restrictions on the circulation of the media or dissemination of their reports, forced publication of information, the imposition of obstacles to the free flow of news, and restrictions on the activities and movements of journalists directly contradict freedom of the press" WHEREAS Principle 10 establishes that "no news medium nor journalist may be punished for publishing the truth or criticizing or denouncing the government" THE MIDYEAR MEETING OF THE IAPA RESOLVES to condemn the actions mentioned above and express its serious concern over the current state of the freedom of speech in Venezuela and the implications of its curtailment for the future of representative democracy and the rule of law to urge legislative, judicial and administrative authorities to comply with the principles in the Declaration of Chapultepec and the American Convention on Human Rights which, in general, are being systematically violated to recognize and encourage the bravery and commitment to service with freedom of expression of journalists and other media workers in Venezuela to contact the general secretary of the OAS, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression to inform them about the details of this resolution.