Report of Impunity Committee Presented by Committee Chairman Alberto Ibargüen to the IAPA 57th General Assembly Monday, October 15, 2001 Washington, D.C. I begin this report by asking for a minute of silence to honor the 12 journalists who were murdered in the past three months since our Midyear Meeting in Fortaleza. They are Colombian journalists Flavio Bedoya Tovar, Yesid Marulanda Romero, Pablo Emilio Parra Castañeda, Arquímedes Arias Henao, José Dubiel Vásquez, Jorge Enrique Urbano and Eduardo Estrada Gutiérrez; Saúl Antonio Martínez of Mexico; Parmenio Medina of Costa Rica; Juan Carlos Encinas of Bolivia, Jorge Mynor Alegría Armendáriz of Guatemala and Mário Coelho de Almeida, Jr. of Brazil. These people join a long list that now totals 243 cases of journalists murdered in the past 13 years. Unfortunately, the majority of those crimes remain unpunished and that is why this Committee, the IAPA and the generous support that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation give us for this project are so important. Despite this tragedy that afflicts the family of journalists of the Americas, I wish to report today on one of our greatest achievements, which is linked to the case of Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer Azurdia, kidnapped and presumed killed in 1980 – a case that we have been tirelessly investigating for seven years now and bringing to the attention of international and governmental agencies. On September 5 this year a high-level IAPA delegation traveled to Guatemala to participate in the initial ceremonies to pay homage to Flaquer’s memory, part of 12 points of the “friendly settlement” that we forged between the IAPA and the government of Guatemala, under the supervision of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The first ceremonies in homage to Irma Flaquer consisted of the naming of a street in downtown Guatemala City after her, the installation of a bronze plaque on the monument to freedom of expression and a memorial service at the national cathedral. As part of the agreement with the IAPA, the Guatemalan government has already set the amount of monetary compensation it will shortly pay to the victim’s family. A very important aspect of that mission to Guatemala was the meeting with Supreme Court Chief Justice Hugo Leonel Maul Figueroa, who promised to use his good offices with the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the investigation into the Flaquer case to be reopened and the attempts to identify those behind the crime and those who actually carried it out. The Impetus Committee, set up in March this year and made up of representatives of the Guatemala Presidential Human Rights Commission and of the IAPA, has already met four times and will continue overseeing other points of the agreement, which include the naming of a library room, establishment of a scholarship, and spurring legal proceedings in the case. We would like to stress just how important such an agreement is in the Flaquer case, as it will enable us to seek similar outcomes in the cases of other crimes against journalists that we are investigating in other countries. To date, as can been seen on our Web site, www.impunidad.com, we have investigated 34 murders, 15 of which we have submitted to the scrutiny of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Within those 15 cases, and as part of our work this year, we have refused to sign a “friendly settlement” with the government of Colombia regarding the murders of Guillermo Cano and Carlos Lajud Catalán, because we feel that government has not yet exhausted all possible resources to bring those responsible for the murders to justice. We are also awaiting a decision on the part of the government of Mexico to act on two public reports that the IACHR issued following our investigations into the murders of Víctor Manuel Oropeza and Héctor Félix Miranda. We understand that progress will be announced soon in the murder of Guatemalan journalist Jorge Carpio Nicolle, a case that we have been investigating and supporting since 1995. I would also like to point out that in recent months we have gone on two important missions. President Danilo Arbilla and Coordinator Ricardo Trotti were present at the Third Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April and the Organization of American States’ general assembly in San José, Costa Rica, in June. At the two meetings, the IAPA reaffirmed its call to government leaders to ensure that crimes against journalists not be subject to any statute of limitations, that they be dealt with at the federal level to offer greater assurance of justice being done, and that national legislatures pass laws to bring the masterminds of crimes to justice. In addition, it advocated that multilateral and bilateral international cooperation and aid agencies should make it a specific condition of eligibility for assistance that recipient countries respect free speech and press freedom. Finally, I wish to report that thanks to the excellent work of this Impunity Commission’s Rapid Response Unit from last March to date the following murders have been investigated and followed up: Juan Carlos Encinas of Bolivia; Mário Eugenio Rafael de Oliveira, Reinaldo Coutinho da Silva and Mário Coelho de Almeida, Jr. pf Brazil, and Eduardo Estrada Gutiérrez and Amparo Leonor Jiménez of Colombia.