WHEREAS the Venezuelan National Assembly passed an amendment to the Telecommunications Act on September 29, 2016, seeking to protect the Venezuelan people from a government that persecutes journalism and tries to silence the media, as the government persists in its refusal to acknowledge the democratically elected, and legally and constitutionally legitimate, members of the National Assembly
WHEREAS the Venezuelan government continues to refuse to comply with the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which over a year ago ordered that the broadcast signal of the Venezuelan television network RCTV be restored, that its illegally seized equipment be returned, and that compensation be provided to the victims of the abuse of power and human rights violations for which the court holds the Venezuelan government responsible
WHEREAS the arbitrary detention of journalist and director of the digital newspaper Confidential Report, Braulio Jatar, who is in a maximum security prison and subjected to humiliations and whose case was movingly introduced by his sister Ana Julia Jatar. This is the only case of a newspaper editor jailed in Venezuela
WHEREAS the Principle 6 of the Declaration of Chapultepec says: No people or society can be free without freedom of expression and of the press. The exercise of this freedom is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people".
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES
To request that the Venezuelan government put an end to the harassment, threats and extortion through tendentious interpretations of the regulatory framework for the media, and that it sign into law the aforementioned amendment to the Telecommunications Act that was passed by the National Assembly
To demand that the Venezuelan government comply with the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the case of RCTV, and to urge the Organization of American States to proceed with the appropriate analysis and, if appropriate, seek measures from the aforementioned court in a case that reflects a grave violation of human rights by the Venezuelan government.
