Miami (December 10, 2013)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today asked Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto to look into complaints being made by the editor of the Chihuahua newspaper El Pueblo, Ildefonso Chávez Olveda, who has been on a hunger strike since December 2.
Chávez Olveda began his protest eight days ago in protest at the withdrawal of official advertising by the state government and its refusal to pay its debt to the newspaper owed for it, among other violations of press freedom.
In a letter sent to the Mexican president, Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, expressed his organization’s concern at the health risk implied by the journalist’s protest “and what brought it about.”
In addition to the plea to look into the matter Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, attached a letter that the IAPA had sent last week to Chihuahua Governor César Horacio Duarte Jáquez, which referred to the discriminatory use of official advertising, to a defamatory campaign and to other attacks on press freedom denounced by the journalist.
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.
