Venezuela

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IAPA Midyear Meeting, March 29 to 31, 2019, Cartagena, Colombia
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WHEREAS

the government has intensified the repression of foreign journalists, deporting them and robbing them of their journalistic materials and equipment, going to the extreme of carrying out the arrest at the Miraflores Palace of journalist Jorge Ramos of Univisión on the orders of dictator Nicolás Maduro, due to his disagreement with the interview; the interview is in the possession of dictator Maduro, together with the Univisión filming equipment and cell phones

WHEREAS

there is a strategic and structured plan of the government to do away with the news media that remain active, using administrative repression, police and paramilitary violence against independent journalists who report on what is happening, including foreign correspondents

WHEREAS

military tribunals are being used to jail and deal with civilians, including local reporters, by which they commit abuses, showing a lack of awareness of proceedings and solitary confinement

WHEREAS

Venezuela's Press and Society Institute, which is carrying out permanent monitoring of acts of censorship and abuse of power made against journalists, reported that between January 1 and March 12 there have been produced 155 violations of freedom of expression

WHEREAS

the independent news media, which cannot report by traditional means, try to report on items that the government is blocking or seek to distort or neutralize through cyber campaigns that include automated systems and companies outside the country, and the Maduro dictatorship massively uses the false mechanism of fake news to mislead public opinion

WHEREAS

Principle 1 of the Declaration of Chapultepec establishes: "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 IAPA MIDYEAR MEETING RESOLVES

to condemn the Nicolas Maduro dictatorship for its systematic violation of freedom of expression and of the press through the persecution of the independent press, the blocking of news portals and the shutdown of media

to condemn the regime for the deportation, harassment, robbery of equipment, arrest of foreign and local journalists

to warn about the use of public money to make big cyber campaigns of development of fake news, discrediting and distorting information with political objectives.

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