(RSF/IFEX) – In letters addressed to Minister of the Interior Jaime Mayor Oreja, President of the Basque country government Juan José Ibarretxe, and President of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) Xabier Arzalluz, RSF resolutely denounced the assassination attempt on journalist Jesus Maria Zuloaga in Madrid. “This cowardly act threatens the security of all Spanish journalists. […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In letters addressed to Minister of the Interior Jaime Mayor Oreja, President of the Basque country government Juan José Ibarretxe, and President of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) Xabier Arzalluz, RSF resolutely denounced the assassination attempt on journalist Jesus Maria Zuloaga in Madrid. “This cowardly act threatens the security of all Spanish journalists. We ask you to take all necessary measures to guarantee the journalist’s safety,” said Robert Ménard, the organisation’s secretary-general. RSF also expressed its concern about the deteriorating working conditions for journalists in the Spanish Basque country, recalling that “Basque intellectuals and leaders have recently made threatening comments against the press”. RSF noted that this was “the third assassination attempt against Spanish press workers in the past month”.
According to the information collected by the organisation, on 25 April 2000, Spanish police intercepted a parcel bomb addressed to journalist Zuloaga at the headquarters of the Madrid daily “La Razon”. The parcel, which was the size of a video cassette, was discovered during a scanner security check carried out at the newspaper’s mail reception area. The parcel was then taken away for analysis by the police’s bomb disposal experts. Zuloaga is a specialist in matters concerning the organisation Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA).
On 28 March, in Seville (in the country’s south), Carlos Herrera, National Spanish Radio’s (RNE) star journalist, received a box of cigars containing explosives. The journalist was able to inform police in sufficient time for them to defuse the bomb. A week earlier, on 21 March, a home-made bomb had caused material damage at journalist Pedro Briongos’ parents’ home. Briongos is a correspondent with the daily “El Correo” in Bilbao (in the country’s north). On 18 February, sympathisers of the Basque independence movement called for a boycott of several national media, including the dailies “El Correo”, “El Diario Vasco” and “El Diario de Navarra”. The next day, Arzallus had accused many journalists of being “anti-nationalist Basques.”
