WHEREAS Latin America is seeing a renewed proliferation of government attempts to impose legal provisions aimed at regulating the operation and freedoms of news media;
WHEREAS these initiatives already have the force of law in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela, where under the argument of making information more democratic, combating discrimination and producing a so-called social control of the press governments have been authorized to influence media content;
WHEREAS in Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay the governments have announced that they will introduce media laws to regulate the operation and freedoms of news media;
WHEREAS this regional trend has a philosophic origin in governments and non-governmental organizations that are convinced as they publicly proclaim that freedom of information should be limited;
WHEREAS almost all these concepts existing or planned create watchdogs over media and/or control bodies under the authority of the Executive Branch;
WHEREAS the media laws that already apply in some countries and the proposals for media laws that are being studied by others directly violate principles 1, 2, 5, 7 and 9 of the Declaration of Chapultepec
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 ao livre fluxo informativo e as limitações ao livre exercício e movimentação dos jornalistas se opõem diretamente à liberdade de imprensa.
THE IAPA GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLVES
to express its condemnation of the laws regulating news media already existing in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela in that they severely curtail the human right to freedom of expression;
to state its great concern at the possibility that these mechanisms of governmental control of the operation and freedoms of news media could also come about in Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay;
to invite the special rapporteurs for freedom of expression of the Organization of American States (OAS) and United Nations to take up this serious issue in a bid to prevent violations of the human right that they are called to protect in application of inter-American case law on the matter, whose observance is obligatory for the signatory states of the Pact of San José, Costa Rica.
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