It criticizes official silence concerning ‘programmed shortage’ of supplies for newspapers
Miami (October 1, 2013)—The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro was accused by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today of “maintaining a convenient double morality” in financially strangling newspapers in the South American country by restricting their access to imports of supplies essential for their publication.
In reacting to a El Impulso newspaper editorial on Sunday, that explained that from today onwards it will be reducing the number of its pages and the use of color due to a lack of production supplies, the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, denounced this “crafty and hardly creative manner of silencing the independent and critical voices in the country.”
The editorial in El Impulso, published in Barquisimeto in the northwestern state of Lara, said that after 11 months of complaints there persists an “official silence” and it has been unable to have the government authorize access to foreign currency for the purchase of newsprint, ink, printing plates, spare parts for its presses and other essential materials.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared that this is a “convenient double morality of the government of President Nicolás Maduro, a kind of programmed shortage.”
He added that “on the one hand the government accuses private businessmen of speculating and causing the problem of shortage of products of primary need for the family shopping basket, while it omits to refer to the lack of supplies for the publication of newspapers, the government being the only one responsible that can authorize their importation.”
The newspaper explained that “it has been a real Calvary” to obtain import permits, an issue that IAPA has been insisting for several weeks now, after it was learned that a number of inland newspapers had to stop publishing due to lack of supplies, among them El Sol de Maturín in Monagas state; Antorcha in Anzoátegui state; El Caribazo, La Hora and El Caribe in Nueva Esparta state, and Los Llanos and El Espacio in Barinas state.
In order to import foreign supplies and goods’ newspapers (or newsprint distributors) need to have a foreign currency quota that is granted by the Foreign Currency Administration Commission (Cadivi) after it receives a “certification of products not nationally produced,” which in the first instance should be issued by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MILCO. This can take months to occur.
This is a link to the El Impulso’s editorial: http://bit.ly/1bXSOaA
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 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.