Impunity Peru

WHEREAS journalist Pedro Flores Silva of Canal 6 de Televisión in Casma, Ancash department, was attacked by a gunman on September 6, 2011, and died of his injuries two days later WHEREAS on August 29, 2013, Janett Mónica Lastra Ramírez, a judge for the National Criminal Court, opened criminal proceedings against Marco Antonio Rivero Huertas, mayor of the Comandante Noel district in Casma province, for having ordered the killing; against Bladimir Anderson Castillo Castro and Emilio José Ciriaco Agreda, for having carried out the killing; and against José Félix Ferreyra Carbajal, city manager; Antonio Azalde Lluen, legal counsel to the municipal government; and Miguel Humberto Becerra Pérez, the mayor’s father-in-law, for acting as primary accomplices to the offense of aggravated homicide in the killing of journalist Pedro Flores Silva WHEREAS those who carried out the killing of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández in Pucallpa on October 21, 2004, while he was working at the Frecuencia Oriental radio station in Pucallpa, have been convicted, but those who ordered the killing have not been convicted WHEREAS on September 4, 2013, the Transitional Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court, with Justice César San Martín Castro presiding, set a 15-day deadline for a decision on the appeal of the May 2012 acquittal of Luis Valdez Villacorta and Solio Ramírez Garay on charges of ordering the killing of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández in retaliation for his reporting on drug trafficking, illegal land transactions, and irregularities in this region in northeastern Peru; and prosecutor Pablo Sánchez Velarde supported the petition to set aside the acquittal and open new proceedings to determine who ordered and/or masterminded the killing WHEREAS Principle 4 of the Declaration of Chapultepec states: “Prior censorship, restrictions on the circulation of the media or dissemination of their reports, forced publication of information, the imposition of obstacles to the free flow of news, and restrictions on the activities and movements of journalists directly contradict freedom of the press” THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES To request that the justices of the Transitional Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court act within the framework of the law to ensure that those who ordered the killing of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández are duly punished and that this crime does not go unpunished, and that they rule in an objective, unbiased manner on the appeal of the acquittal of Luis Valdez Villacorta and Solio Ramírez Garay on charges of ordering the killing of Rivera To request that Dr. Janett Mónica Lastra Ramírez, a judge for the National Criminal Court, act within the framework of the law and with all due speed to take any measures needed to ensure that those involved in the killing of journalist Pedro Flores Silva are punished.