(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 May 2002, RSF expressed concern that Honduran radio journalist Sandra Maribel Sánchez could be arrested and jailed for 14 years for “spying” and “illegally” working as a journalist. It urged the judge in the case not to issue an arrest warrant and to drop the legal proceedings. On her programme, “Contra […]
(RSF/IFEX) – On 23 May 2002, RSF expressed concern that Honduran radio journalist Sandra Maribel Sánchez could be arrested and jailed for 14 years for “spying” and “illegally” working as a journalist. It urged the judge in the case not to issue an arrest warrant and to drop the legal proceedings. On her programme, “Contra Punto,” carried by Radio América, Sánchez had broadcast an illegal tape recording of a telephone conversation between two public officials.
“The legal action taken against her is an attack on the free flow of information, guaranteed in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Honduras has ratified,” recalled RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard in a letter to Judge Nery Velasquez. “A conversation between two public officials is a matter of public interest, so it is the content of [the conversation], not its revelation, that is shocking,” he noted. Noting that Sánchez was accused of “illegal journalism” because she did not belong to the national Journalists’ Institute, Ménard reminded the judge that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared that forcing journalists to belong to such institutes is illegal.
Sánchez, who may also be banned from leaving the country, risks up to eight years in jail on the “spying” charge (Article 214 of the Penal Code) and up to six more for “illegal journalism” (Article 293). The charges were made possible after a complaint was filed by former justice minister Vera Sofía Rubí, who is also the former head of the state audit board. She was heard in the 1999 tape speaking to then Supreme Court chair Armando Avila, arranging to fix a court decision.
In January 2000, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression stated that “as a sentence for peacefully expressing an opinion, imprisonment constitutes a serious human rights violation.”
