(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2005 IAPA press release. IAPA CALLS FOR ACTION IN UNPUNISHED MURDER OF AMERICAN JOURNALIST Expresses regret at deaths of two media professionals MIAMI, Florida (April 25, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called on newspaper and magazine readers in the Western Hemisphere to add their […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 25 April 2005 IAPA press release.
IAPA CALLS FOR ACTION IN UNPUNISHED MURDER OF AMERICAN JOURNALIST
Expresses regret at deaths of two media professionals
MIAMI, Florida (April 25, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) called on newspaper and magazine readers in the Western Hemisphere to add their signatures to a public letter sent to Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo requesting his help to solve the murder of journalist Todd Smith. He was killed on November 19, 1989, in Uchiza, a village in the Peruvian jungle.
Smith was investigating drug trafficking as a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, in Florida. Two of the murderers were sentenced by a judge, but are now free, and although investigations and witnesses identified those that allegedly planned the murder, the officials at the time did not investigate them and the case was closed in 1996, leaving it in impunity.
The IAPA is waging a hemisphere-wide campaign, titled “End Impunity”, calling for the murders of 285 journalists in the last 17 years to not continue to go unpunished. Interactive ads are being published in more than three hundred newspapers and magazines throughout the Americas, inviting readers to join the campaign by adding their signatures to a petition posted on the Web site http://www.impunidad.com
The IAPA’s hemisphere-wide campaign against impunity, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, also includes investigative reporting programs, training for reporters working in hazardous environments, and the monitoring of the state of press freedom in the Americas.
The IAPA also expressed regret at the deaths of two media professionals while covering the news on the streets in Ecuador and Haiti.
Chilean news photographer Julio García, 58, suffocated and died when tear gas was fired during demonstrations in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito that led to the hasty change of government on Tuesday, April 19.
In Petit-Goãve, Haiti, Robenson Laraque, a reporter for Tele Contact radio, was shot and fatally wounded while watching clashes between police and supporters of the former Haitian president on March 20 from the radio station’s balcony.
