(IPYS/IFEX) – On 26 October 2005, a group of journalists were insulted and threatened by demonstrators who allegedly were students of the Libertador Experimental Pedagogical University (Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador, UPEL). The journalists were covering a demonstration outside the Aragua state governor’s offices, in the city of Maracay, some 96 km from Caracas. “El Carabobeño” […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On 26 October 2005, a group of journalists were insulted and threatened by demonstrators who allegedly were students of the Libertador Experimental Pedagogical University (Universidad Pedagogica Experimental Libertador, UPEL). The journalists were covering a demonstration outside the Aragua state governor’s offices, in the city of Maracay, some 96 km from Caracas.
“El Carabobeño” newspaper reporter Gina Reyes Demei, her photographer, Cesar Pérez, and Reinaldo Campins and Maria Eugenia Hermoso, journalists for Color TV and Color FM, respectively, were insulted and stopped from passing by the demonstrators as they were headed towards Miranda and Bolivar avenues. The streets had been blocked by burning tires and barricades for motives which are still unknown.
Reyes told IPYS that the demonstrators demanded that the journalists leave and take no photographs. Pérez insisted that the right to take photographs on public streets was protected under the Constitution. One of the demonstrators responded by breaking a bottle on the ground and threatening him with it. The journalists were forced to leave the area.
