(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 31 August 2001 IAPA press release: IAPA to send mission to Guatemala, Honduras MIAMI, Florida (August 31, 2001) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) announced today that a delegation will visit Guatemala and Honduras next week to review in public forums the two Central American countries’ legislation restricting […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 31 August 2001 IAPA press release:
IAPA to send mission to Guatemala, Honduras
MIAMI, Florida (August 31, 2001) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) announced today that a delegation will visit Guatemala and Honduras next week to review in public forums the two Central American countries’ legislation restricting freedom of the press.
The delegation, headed by the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Rafael Molina, editor of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, magazine Ahora, will be in Guatemala City September 4-5 and the following two days in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. In each city, it will hold a National Forum on the Declaration of Chapultepec to promote the fundamental principles of freedom of expression guaranteeing the right of people to information and ensuring the consolidation of democracy.
The activities in Guatemala begin on Tuesday, September 4 with visits to the country’s leading newspapers and a dinner with news media directors. The following day, the IAPA will meet privately with Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo.
Subsequently, a panel discussion will be held on “Press Freedom and the Declaration of Chapultepec” at the Westin Camino Real Hotel in Guatemala City, in which a group of experts will discuss laws governing the press in the country, following which the delegation will meet with legislators, politicians, judges and Supreme Court justices.
As part of their official visit to Guatemala, on September 5 the hemispheric free-press organization representatives will bestow the name of Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer, who disappeared in October 1980 after being kidnapped, on a section of a city street and will attend a memorial Mass in her honor at the national cathedral. The ceremonies stem from investigations carried out by the IAPA into Flaquer’s disappearance and presumed death, under its Unpunished Crimes Against Journalists project, initiated in 1995.
In Honduras, the IAPA delegation will meet with President Carlos Flores in the city of San Pedro Sula to discuss the situation of press freedom in his country. The IAPA has also scheduled a panel discussion on freedom of expression at the Autonomous University of Honduras’ Northern Regional Center.
In addition to Molina, the IAPA delegation will also be made up of former Presidents James McClatchy, McClatchy Newspapers, Sacramento, California, and Andrés García Lavín, Novedades de Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico; 2nd Vice President Andrés García Gamboa, Novedades de Quintana Roo, Cancún, Mexico; the regional vice chairman for Guatemala of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, Prensa Libre, Guatemala City; Press Freedom Coordinator Ricardo Trotti, and Chapultepec Project Lawyer Jairo Lanao.
