(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 20 July 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA Calls for More Action in Murder of Paraguayan Journalist MIAMI, Florida (July 20, 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 Paraguayan […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 20 July 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA Calls for More Action in Murder of Paraguayan Journalist
MIAMI, Florida (July 20, 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 Paraguayan President Nicanor Duarte Frutos requesting his help to solve the murder of journalist Salvador Medina Velásquez.
He was 27 years old when on January 5, 2001, he was shot to death in Capiibary, San Pedro province, Paraguay, after exposing corruption in his reports, broadcast on a community radio station. Although the person who carried out the attack was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison, the sentence has yet to be upheld by the Supreme Court. Witnesses say there are more people involved in the murder.
The IAPA is waging a hemisphere-wide campaign, titled “Let Us Put an End to Impunity,” so that those responsible for the murder of 287 journalists in the last 17 years do not continue to go unpunished. Advertisements 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 posed 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.
