15 January 1998

IAPA OUTRAGED AT MURDER OF BRAZILIAN NEWSMAN

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Miami, Florida (Jan. 16) -The Inter American Press Association, through its Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, today expressed its outrage at the murder of a newspaper publisher in Brazil and repudiation of anti-press remarks by a retired Argentine naval officer. Danilo Arbilla, the committee’s chairman, said both incidents "are in stark contrast to the climate of freedom of expression that should prevail in a democracy." He called on the Brazilian and Argentine governments to act to ensure that journalists in their respective countries are able to work freely without being subjected to threats and intimidation. The slain journalist was Manoel Leal de Oliveira, owner-publisher of the weekly newspaper A Região in Itabuna, in the central Brazilian state of Bahia. He was shot six times and killed by two unidentified assailants as he was arriving home at 8:30 p.m. on January 14. Oliveira, 62, was known to have many enemies in the city – his paper, the largest in the area, often sharply criticized the local government administration and police department. The motive for his murder was not immediately known but colleagues believed it was carried out in order to silence him. Arbilla, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly news magazine Búsqueda, called for an immediate official investigation into the slaying, the second murder of a Brazilian journalist in less than three months. On October 29, radio announcer Edgar Lopes de Faria was killed in Campo Grande, Matto Grosso do Sul state. A total of 15 journalists were murdered in the Western Hemisphere in 1997, according to IAPA records. The IAPA’s Press Freedom Committee also expressed its concern at remarks reported to have been made by a retired Argentine Navy captain, Alfredo Astiz, published in a Buenos Aires magazine. He was quoted as commenting on Argentina’s so-called dirty war during the recent dictatorship, in which an estimated 10,000 to 30,000 people – including scores of journalists – disappeared without trace and were believed to have been killed by the military. According to the magazine article, Astiz declared that "today, I could kill any journalist or politician" and added that "journalists do not seem to recognize that there was subversion then. They had better watch out or they will come to a sticky end. It is like that case of José Luis Cabezas. OK, so they killed him. Big deal." Cabezas, news photographer for a Buenos Aires magazine, was murdered in January last year. Arbilla, in a statement issued at IAPA headquarters in Miami, said that "this justification for a crime brings to mind all those Argentine journalists who disappeared in that era and the current precariousness of the guarantees for the safety of those many, like Cabezas, under which have to carry out their work."

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