(IPYS/IFEX) – On 29 April 1999, during a press conference on press freedom organized in New York by Freedom House, Peruvian businessman Baruch Ivcher showed official confidential documents that reveal a new governmental plan of attack against the press. **Updates IFEX alerts of 30 April 1999; for background on Ivcher being stripped of his citizenship […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – On 29 April 1999, during a press conference on press freedom
organized in New York by Freedom House, Peruvian businessman Baruch Ivcher
showed official confidential documents that reveal a new governmental plan
of attack against the press.
**Updates IFEX alerts of 30 April 1999; for background on Ivcher being
stripped of his citizenship and television station ownership rights see IFEX
alerts of 6 November and 15 July 1998, 19 September, 12 September, 29
August, 6 August, 24 July, 14 July, 3 June and 29 May 1997**
Fujimori “wants to even further silence the press, because of his intent to
be re-elected,” said Ivcher, who is a majority shareholder of Frecuencia
Latina-Channel 2 and who was stripped of his Peruvian citizenship and of his
right to manage the channel by the government. This occurred shortly after
the regime’s intelligence services were implicated in cases of corruption
and human rights violations that were reported on the programme
“Contrapunto”, which is broadcast on Channel 2.
Ivcher supported his accusation by exhibiting a confidential Peruvian
intelligence service document that describes a plan to persecute
journalists. The document was addressed to the director of Army Intelligence
and foresees a “daily and nightly vigilance of the journalists who
investigate delicate matters,” as, for example, the torture case against the
former agent of Army Intelligence, Leonor La Rosa, who is now living in
Sweden under political asylum.
The businessman suggested that the dailies “El Comercio” and “La República”
are also included under this plan. “They have decided to try to finish them
off. The government plans to follow the journalists and find some evidence
to use against them.” He also stated that “Fujimori intends to finish off
the press. I was the first one, but he wants to finish off whatever elements
are opposed to his government’s legal and political ‘bulldozer’.”
Ivcher said that in the near future he would reveal about two hundred secret
documents that “clearly show the persecution,” and although thus far he has
not been given permission to do so by the persons who provided them to him,
“this could endanger some lives,” he warned.
Recommended Action
Send appeals to authorities:
origins
Appeals To
Alberto Fujimori Fujimori
President of the Republic
Lima, Peru
Fax: +51 1 426 6535Jorge Santistevan de Noriega
Ombudsman
Lima, Peru
Fax: +51 1 426 6657
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