(El Diario)
Miami (June 7, 2013)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today asked Bolivia’s tax authorities to consider the negative effects on freedom of expression of the seizure of assets carried out against the daily newspaper El Diario.
The National Tax Service (SIN) yesterday (June 6) impounded El Diario’s assets over an alleged 128 million bolivianos (18.4 million dollars) debt, among which are unpaid – for the past 10 years – worker contributions to the pension fund. El Diario general manager Jorge Carrasco said that the company is complying with payment of all its debts incurred for social charges. The impoundment, according to an official of the state tax agency, is an action prior to final shutdown of the newspaper.
The paper today published on its Web site an item headlined “We Will Continue To Loof After the Best Interests of Bolivia”, in which its editor, Antonio Carrasco Guzmán, maintained that “with these actions freedom of the press and information in the country is facing serious danger.” The article also said that some 50 National Tax Service officials habroken into the paper’s building “with unusual aggression.”
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, declared, “Without attempting to judge the administrative reasons for carrying out the action against the newspaper, we trust that the authorities will also take into account the negative consequences regarding freedom of expression that the action entails in affecting the right of the people to be fully informed.”
The executives of El Diario, founded 109 years ago and with a 200-strong staff, denounced in a press release “the intent to silence an independent news voice through an unlawful seizure of some assets, and promised to keep on operating on a regular basis.
Bolivia’s National Press Association expressed its “strong protest at the manner and operational characteristics of the way the ‘impounding’ ordered by the tax authorities was carried out.” It also complained that “in an apparent bid to publicize it” officials of the National Tax Service had alerted news media to the impoundment action.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
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