It urges greater political will on the part of American governments to solve murders
MIAMI, Florida (October 22, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today condemned an attack on a journalist in Peru in which his wife was killed and called for guarantees for the physical safety of him and his son.
Gerson Abraham Fabián Cuba, host of the program “Rumba en la Noticia” (Rumba in the News) broadcast by the radio station Rumba in Chanchamayo, Junín state, at 6:00 a.m. on October 17 was at the radio station with his wife, Gloria Esther Lima Calle, and their son, who were helping do cleaning there when a person entered the station apparently to ask for broadcast of an advertisement.
According to local media another person, brandishing a pistol, also entered the station and began to rebuke Fabián Cuba over his journalistic work and struck him on the head with the gun. His 17-year-old son went to his father’s defense, as did his wife, who tried to throw the two of them out by wielding her broom when one of them shot her in the chest. The woman, 38, died on the way to hospital.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, offered his condolences to Fabián Cuba and called on the Peruvian government “to investigate speedily to determine the motives and identify those responsible.”
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, added that following the killing of the journalist’s wife “we also urge the corresponding authorities to urgently provide protection for Fabián Cuba and his son.”
The IAPA yesterday wound up its twice-yearly review of the state of press freedom at its 70th General Assembly in Santiago, Chile, prominent among its conclusions being the fact that violence in the region has left 11 journalists murdered – three in Honduras, three in Paraguay, two in Mexico and one each on El Salvador, Colombia and Peru, and noting a significant increase in nearly all the countries of the Americas in physical attacks on journalists in the last six months.
The hemisphere organization condemned these murders and in a resolution called for “greater political will, rigorous and urgent administration of the available legal instruments to determine the motives for the crimes and punishment of the perpetrators and masterminds.”
Paolillo also mentioned the need to adhere to the content of international documents such as the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Declaration of Chapultepec, in which it is established that murder and any kind of violence against journalists, and the lack of justice and impunity, restrict freedom of expression and of the press, and call upon governments “to prevent and investigate” incidents and “punish their authors.”
The documents adopted during the IAPA meeting are available in English, Spanish and Portuguese on the IAPA Web site http://www.sipiapa.org/en/asambleas-inform/as-2014-2-general-assembly-santiago-chile/.
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.
