(IPYS/IFEX) – On 3 September 2003, journalist Marco Antonio Apaza Carpio was subjected to defamatory comments when he opened his television programme to telephone calls regarding alleged irregularities at San Agustín National University (Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, UNSA), in the city of Arequipa, capital of Arequipa region, in the southern part of the country. […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On 3 September 2003, journalist Marco Antonio Apaza Carpio was subjected to defamatory comments when he opened his television programme to telephone calls regarding alleged irregularities at San Agustín National University (Universidad Nacional de San Agustín, UNSA), in the city of Arequipa, capital of Arequipa region, in the southern part of the country.
On 2 September, the journalist, who hosts the programme “Telediario”, aired Monday through Friday between 7:00 and 10:00 a.m. (local time) on Arequipa’s Canal 4 television station, discussed a report previously released on the Sunday programme “Cuarto Poder”, which receives national coverage. The programme disclosed a series of irregularities that the national treasury inspection body (Contraloría General de la República) had allegedly detected at the university. Apaza Carpio invited the university’s rector, Rolando Cornejo Cuervo, the primary person implicated in the complaint, to speak on his programme. When Cornejo Cuervo did not show up, the journalist decided to open the telephone lines to calls from individuals who wanted to express their opinions.
During this part of the programme, a woman called and accused Apaza Carpio of attempting to “discredit” the UNSA because he had been thrown out of the university, allegedly due to a “sexual harassment” complaint from a student named Martha Castro. The woman hung up without identifying herself. Two more calls with accusations of the same nature were received later in the programme. The journalist decided to continue with the programme despite these telephone calls.
Apaza Carpio told IPYS that the complaint mentioned in the telephone calls had never been launched against him and that he had no record of a student by the name of Martha Castro. As such, he considered the calls to be a desperate attempt to defend Cornejo Cuervo made by those who are close to the rector.
Apaza Carpio said that since that day he has been receiving obscene and threatening telephone calls, in which the callers pressure him to stop “defaming the university.”
He also indicated that three days after the programme, he received a call from Cornejo Cuervo’s wife, Rosa Guerra, who is also implicated in some of the complaints about irregularities at the university. She criticised him for “lacking truthfulness in his reporting.”
Finally, on 10 September, the manager of the television station, Ariel Hinojosa Ponce, received a letter signed by Cornejo Cuervo in which the journalist was accused of “disseminating information using internal documents, infringing on the confidentiality of the documents to distort the facts and truthfulness of the information, and damaging the university.” The letter further stated that both the Law Faculty and the Legal Council Office would initiate appropriate legal action.
