United States

WHEREAS several foreign journalists have been detained by U.S. military forces in Iraq and later released, sometimes with no explanation for their arrest WHEREAS the U.S. government has yet to fully explain the circumstances that resulted in a U.S. tank firing on the Palestine hotel in Baghdad killing Ukrainian cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Spanish television reporter José Couso on April 8, 2003 WHEREAS eight foreign journalists — one Austrian, one British and six French — were detained at Los Angeles International Airport and then denied entry to the United States because they held only short-term visas WHEREAS the Pentagon denied Human Rights Watch’s request to attend and observe military commission trials of detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba WHEREAS a federal grand jury probing the leak of a CIA officer’s identity to columnist Robert Novak is seeking White House records of contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news organizations WHEREAS a federal judge last October ordered five journalists to reveal their confidential sources for reports on accusations of espionage against scientist Wen Ho Lee, formerly employed at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory WHEREAS the U.S. Treasury Department recently warned publishers that they face serious legal consequences (possible “trading with the enemy” charges) if they edit in any way manuscripts from Iran and other nations with which the United States maintains a trade embargo WHEREAS Principle 5 of the Declaration of Chapultepec states, “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” THE MIDYEAR MEETING OF THE IAPA RESOLVES to remind the U.S. government that each and all of these acts and decisions threaten or violate the guarantees of freedom of the press as contained in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution, established case law, and relevant provisions of the Declaration of Chapultepec specifically, the Inter American Press Association asks that foreign journalists be permitted to enter the United States and work on short-term visas and that the U.S. customs service and the U.S. military in Iraq respect the professional status and dignity of foreign journalists, that the Pentagon open any Guantanamo tribunals to the widest possible press coverage, that federal grand juries and federal judges refrain from attempting to discover journalists’ confidential sources, and that the U.S. Treasury Department rescind its bizarre interpretation that any editing of manuscripts from nations on the U.S. government’s trade embargo list somehow constitutes possible “trading with the enemy.”