Miami (March 7, 2014)— The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) denounced today the legal action taken by a judge against executives of the Venezuelan newspaper TalCual indicates a strategy of governmental censorship practiced by all the branches of government with the objective of violating freedom of expression and the right of all people to information.
National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello filed a suit against TalCual executives Teodoro Petkoff, Manuel Puyana, Francisco Layrisse and Juan Antonio Golía and columnist Carlos Genatios alleging defamation. The suit was accepted by Judge Bárbara Gabriela César Siero of the Caracas 29th Court. She also issued precautionary measures against the plaintiffs, prohibiting them from leaving the country and ordering them to present themselves before the court each week.
The dispute has its origin in an article by Genatios in which he quotes the phrase “if you don’t like insecurity, leave,” said by Cabello during a press conference on October 9, 2012, which he now denies.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, declared, “This action of censorship of an independent media outlet was not just a whim of a judge but a government strategy that for over a decade has shown a pattern of effective censorship of traditional news media and is in clear violation of the people’s right to seek and receive information.”
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, said the IAPA has always warned, since the beginning of the Chavez escalation against freedom of expression, on the gizmos Venezuelan government uses to "justify censorship and encourage the media silence."
Paolillo voiced IAPA’s critics regarding the clause “timely, truthful and impartial information” that is included in the Constitution; it also expressed concern on the Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television which had the original excuse of being a system of protection of minors but was used to shut down radio and television stations; of the creation of a monopoly of governmental, not public, media, of the telecommunications reform that enables the government to intervene in the Internet and its contents; of the legal prosecution of journalists, as is happening now with TalCual; and of the economic sanctions imposed against traditional news media, whether through disproportionate fines or restrictions of the importation of newsprint as is happening to newspapers.
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.
