(IPYS/IFEX) – Early on the morning of 4 October 2006, unidentified persons stormed into the headquarters of Radio La Consentida and set fire to the transmission booths. They wrote death threats against journalist Romualdo Santiago on the walls. The attackers signed the threats with the initials of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – Early on the morning of 4 October 2006, unidentified persons stormed into the headquarters of Radio La Consentida and set fire to the transmission booths. They wrote death threats against journalist Romualdo Santiago on the walls. The attackers signed the threats with the initials of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (Asamblea Popular del Pueblo de Oaxaca, APPO), a social organisation that, during the last three months, has seized several state-owned and private communications media to demand the removal from office of Oaxaca State Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz. The owner of the radio station, Congress member Humberto López-Lena Cruz, has dismissed the possibility that APPO is responsible for the attack and did not rule out the possibility that it was linked to his criticisms of Governor Ruiz Ortiz and of former governor José Murat. Oaxaca is situated in southern México.
On the afternoon of 4 October, APPO ended its occupation of the headquarters of Radio Oro, taken over in August. The APPO members had destroyed the computers, transmission equipments and archive material.
Since June, Oaxaca has been in the midst of a social conflict that has affected press freedom (on previous protests and related conflict, see IFEX alerts of 26 and 25 September, 31, 28, 24, 23, 22 and 10 August, 25 and 24 July, and 19 June 2006). IPYS believes that APPO has infringed on freedoms of the press and of expression, using the restriction of these rights as an instrument to pressure for their demands to be met.
