Impunity/Peru

WHEREAS on April 21, 2004 Alberto Rivera Fernández, host of the program “Transparencia” (Transparency) broadcast by radio station Frecuencia Oriental in Pucallpa, was murdered; WHEREAS the perpetrators were convicted, but not the alleged masterminds, and in an oral trial of the latter numerous acts of wrongdoing were denounced; WHEREAS on August 24, 2010 the Office of Control of Judgeships (OCMA) issued a report that despite confirming the series of acts of wrongdoing committed in the proceedings by the judges and holding that Jorge Alberto Aguinaga Moreno, José Chávez Hernández, Malzón Urbina la Torre and Luis Orlando Carrera Contti engaged in very serious shortcomings in their role as members of the Lima Higher Court’s Third Criminal Division for Freed Convicts in establishing for the judges only slight administrative penalties; WHEREAS the First Division of the Supreme Court has scheduled for November 12 a hearing to uphold or overturn the acquittal in February 2010 of the former mayor of Coronel Portillo. Luis Valdez Villacorta, and former judge Solio Ramírez on charges of having masterminded the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández; WHEREAS the Executive Council of the Judiciary in Administrative Resolution No. 187/2010 of May 26, effective from the date of its publication in the official gazette El Peruano on October 5, 2010, widened the competence of the National Criminal Court and the Lima Provincial Criminal Courts to hear in addition cases of the following crimes against journalists committed because of their work: homicide, murder, serious injury, abduction and extortion; WHEREAS Principle 4 of the Declaration of Chapultepec states “Freedom of expression and of the press are severely limited by murder, terrorism, kidnapping, 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 IAPA GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLVES to praise the judicial authorities for the incorporation of a special jurisdiction to deal with cases of murder of journalists given its momentous importance for the front attack on impunity; to express to the judicial authorities of Peru, in light of the imminent ruling by the Supreme Court regarding the masterminding of the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández, great concern at the lack of punishment for the murder which would set a nefarious precedent for the exercise of freedom of the press and of expression in the country.