It condemns harassment in Cuba of independent news agency
Miami (June 12, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today welcomed a ruling by a Honduras court sentencing the murderers of journalist Alfredo Villatoro to life imprisonment.
Villatoro, host of the news program “Diario Matutino” broadcast by HRN radio in Tegucigalpa, was kidnapped on May 9, 2012 and his body was found six days later. The Criminal Court sentenced, yesterday (June 11), Marvin Alonso Gómez and brothers Osman Fernando and Edgar Francisco Osorio Arguijo to life imprisonment.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, declared, “We applaud the fact that in this case justice has been served.” Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, added, “In addition to the correct action for the murder of Villatoro we are pleased that the Honduras government is taking steps to show its determination to put an end to violence and impunity,” a reference to the recent passage by the Honduras Congress of a law for the protection of journalists.
That law arises from the “Tegucigalpa Action Plan,” a document drawn up at the Conference on Security, Protection and Solidarity for Freedom of Expression that the IAPA held in Tegucigalpa in August 2012 together with the Honduras News Media Association (AMC). At the time it was proposed to create an institutional mechanism for the protection of the most vulnerable groups of journalists, among other recommendations.
Cuba
In another development Paolillo denounced a campaign of harassment and aggression in Cuba launched against members of the Hablemos Press Information Center news agency (CIHPRESS) and condemned an attack yesterday on its director, Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez.
Guerra Pérez was attacked in Havana by a person sent by the political police, injuring him in the face, the agency reported on its Web site www.cihpress.com. The day before he had received a telephoned threat.
CIHPRESS also reported on recent violent actions against its members in the past two months by political police that include “coercion and intimidation, jailing, arbitrary detentions, death threats, harassment, character assassination, beatings, seizure of tools” and the blocking of their mobile phones, among other acts.
“We condemn the threatening actions against the news media, to which unfortunately the archaic Cuban regime has made us become accustomed to,” said Paolillo, who also expressed his “solidarity with the independent journalists who, going against the current, survive in the face of an archaic government that does not recognize the fundamental right to freedom of expression and of the press.”
Several days earlier more than 70 members of the Ladies in White movement were detained for five to 12 hours when they attempted to attend a Sunday Mass at various churches around the country.
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.
