Miami (February 19, 2014).— An international delegation of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) begins tomorrow a two-day visit to Guatemala to take an on-site look into the state of press freedom in the Central American country.
The IAPA group, headed by the chairman of the organization’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, will be in Guatemala City February 20 and 21 to meet with officials and social and journalistic sectors to take up matters of concern regarding press freedom, among them the case of the newspaper elPeriódico and its president, José Rubén Zamora, and the official strategy for the protection and safety of journalists in the country.
The delegation has scheduled meetings with Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, Vice President Roxana Baldetti, Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, Human Rights State Attorney Jorge De León and Member of Congress Nineth Montenegro.
The IAPA’s agenda includes meetings with representatives of the Guatemalan Chamber of Journalism, the Association of Journalists of Guatemala (APG), social organizations Acción Ciudadana (Citizens Action) and Centro de Defensa de la Constitución (Constitution Defense Center) and news media, among others.
The report on Guatemala presented last October at the IAPA’s General Assembly said that the country last year had shown signs of deterioration in press freedom, it recorded the murder of journalists Carlos Orellana Chávez and Luis de Jesús Lima, in apparent reprisals for their work. These crimes remain unsolved.
Accompanying Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, will be Edward Seaton, former IAPA president, Seaton Newspapers, Manhattan, Kansas; Danilo Arbilla, former IAPA president, Búsqueda, Montevideo, Uruguay; Fernán Molinos, vice chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, La Prensa, Panama City, Panama; José Roberto Dutriz, vice chairman for El Salvador of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, La Prensa Gráfica, San Salvador, El Salvador, and Ricardo Trotti, IAPA press freedom director.
At the end of the meetings the IAPA will hold a press conference on Friday (February 21) at 3:30 p.m. in the Rosul Room of the Real Intercontinental Hotel, to present the mission’s conclusions.
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.