(AMARC/IFEX) – AMARC condemns the closure of Ñemity FM community radio station and the confiscation of its equipment by the Curuguaty Public Prosecutor, National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) officials and over 200 police at 6 a.m. (local time) on 26 August 2005. Ñemity FM broadcasts from the city of Capi’ibary, San Pedro Department, northern Paraguay, and […]
(AMARC/IFEX) – AMARC condemns the closure of Ñemity FM community radio station and the confiscation of its equipment by the Curuguaty Public Prosecutor, National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) officials and over 200 police at 6 a.m. (local time) on 26 August 2005.
Ñemity FM broadcasts from the city of Capi’ibary, San Pedro Department, northern Paraguay, and is a member of AMARC and the Paraguayan Association for Community Radio Broadcasting (Asociación Paraguaya de Radiodifusión Comunitaria, COMUNICA).
CONATEL officials claim the action was carried out because the radio station does not have a broadcasting permit. However, the station has a temporary permit from the authorities and has provided CONATEL with the documentation required for a permit, as have the other community radio stations also waiting for the government to keep its promise to formally legalise the stations’ operations.
It has now been a year since the license application process began, but very few radio stations have been definitively licensed. Bureaucratic bottlenecks and lack of political will to recognise communities’ rights to organise radio stations have been identified as the reasons the government has prevented Paraguayans from exercising their right to freedom of expression and information.
AMARC has expressed particular concern about the risk of injury to journalists and community commentators posed by police operations of this magnitude in both this case and others.
COMUNICA representative Charly Mazacote told the Asunción-based community radio station FM Trinidad that “Attorney General’s representatives arrived early in the morning accompanied by over 200 police and proceeded to confiscate Ñemity radio’s equipment. COMUNICA is examining this situation and forming a committee to negotiate with CONATEL, as well as looking at the situations of other community radio stations in both Asunción [the capital] and the country’s interior.”
CONATEL had also confiscated Ñemity FM’s equipment in 2002, but protests by 700 Capi’ibary residents forced the authorities to return it (see IFEX alerts of 16 and 10 July 2002).
