(AMARC/IFEX) – On 10 September 2003, at approximately 10:30 a.m. (local time), two Communications and Transport Secretariat (Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, SCT) agents attempted to confiscate La Voladora community radio station’s equipment. The agents, identified as Mauricio Rojas Cabrera and Fernando Salvador Gómez Rebollo, entered the station’s premises by force, breaking locks and beating […]
(AMARC/IFEX) – On 10 September 2003, at approximately 10:30 a.m. (local time), two Communications and Transport Secretariat (Secretaría de Comunicaciones y Transportes, SCT) agents attempted to confiscate La Voladora community radio station’s equipment. The agents, identified as Mauricio Rojas Cabrera and Fernando Salvador Gómez Rebollo, entered the station’s premises by force, breaking locks and beating on the doors. La Voladora is an AMARC member located in Mexico state.
According to a press release issued by AMARC representatives in Mexico, the SCT inspectors threatened the station’s personnel and attempted to force their way into the broadcast studio, but were prevented from doing so by a human barricade. The incident took place despite the protests of the station’s lawyers, who noted that the agents’ inspection certificate was invalid because it contained errors regarding the station’s location.
The station’s announcers immediately began to alert the community regarding what was happening and asked for assistance. At that time, the station’s signal was interfered with and the announcement was replaced with music. The agents left the station when they realised their path was blocked, but threatened to return with the security forces to confiscate the equipment.
This incident took place two weeks after the initiation, on 24 August, of a working group that included representatives of the SCT, AMARC, the Interior Ministry’s Human Rights Unit, the government’s director of radio and television and the Indigenous Communities Development Commission (Comisión para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas).
In addition, Interior Minister Santiago Creel Miranda recently promised human rights organisations that the situation faced by community radio stations, including issues regarding licencing, would be resolved.
On 14 August, Media Regulations Sub-Secretary José Durán Reveles assured AMARC, the Mexican Commission for the Defence and Promotion of Human Rights (Comisión Mexicana para la Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos), the National Network for the Protection of Journalists (Red Nacional de Protección a Periodistas) and the National Center for Social Communication (Centro Nacional de Communicacion Social, CENCOS) that community radio stations would not be harassed until a solution was found for their licencing.
Despite these good intentions, the SCT has clearly demonstrated its lack of interest in negotiating solutions to the situation and has, instead, broken the agreements that have been reached.
Faced with this threat, AMARC urges the federal government to instruct its secretariat to stop slowing down the negotiating process initiated by the Interior Ministry, which received the approval of Eduardo Bertoni, Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, on his recent visit to Mexico.
AMARC further urges the organisations and government bodies that form the working group to accelerate the analysis and resolution of the situation faced by community radio stations.
Likewise, AMARC calls on the federal government to protect the physical integrity of journalists and their radio equipment and defend the right of citizen’s groups to exercise freedom of expression in service to their communities via community radio stations.
