(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 23 April 2004 IAPA press release: IAPA calls for urgent probe into murders of journalists MIAMI, Florida (April 23, 2004) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on the governments of Brazil, Paraguay and Peru to launch immediate investigations into the murder of two journalists in recent […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 23 April 2004 IAPA press release:
IAPA calls for urgent probe into murders of journalists
MIAMI, Florida (April 23, 2004) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today called on the governments of Brazil, Paraguay and Peru to launch immediate investigations into the murder of two journalists in recent days so as to bring those responsible to justice.
Alberto Rivera Fernández, a reporter for Radio Frecuencia Oriental station in Pucallpa, some 500 miles northeast of the Peruvian capital of Lima, was host of a program called “Transparencia” (“Transparency”) in which he criticized how local officials were performing their duties. On the afternoon of April 21, he was shot twice at point-blank range. The motive for the killing was not immediately known. Rivera was the second journalist to be murdered in Peru in recent months.
Samuel Román, a reporter for the Ñu Verá radio station in the Paraguayan township of Capitán Bado, on the Brazilian border, was murdered on April 20. Two men riding a motorcycle shot him 13 times as he was heading to his home across the border in the Brazilian town of Coronel Sapucaia. Román hosted a program entitled, “La Voz del Pueblo” (“Voice of the People”), in which he raised questions about the conduct of Coronel Sapucaia city officials. The 450-mile-long Paraguay-Brazil border is known as a hotbed of corruption, smuggling and organized crime.
Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, called on officials in the area “to make resources available as soon as possible in order to determine who ordered the murders of Rivera Fernández in Peru and Roman on the Brazil-Paraguay border and who actually carried them out, as well as the motives for these crimes, so that the guilty may be brought to justice.”
Molina, of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic newspaper El Nacional, stressed the need to solve the murders and announce the results of the investigations as a matter of urgency. He added, “We are concerned at the trend towards making reporters the target of public officials rankled by criticism and at the violence that is being seen in countries where usually differences with the press do not reach such extremes.”