(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 10 February 2005 IAPA press release: IAPA expresses concern at wave of violence in several countries MIAMI, Florida (February 10, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern at a recent wave of violence directed at news media and individual journalists that is creating setbacks for […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 10 February 2005 IAPA press release:
IAPA expresses concern at wave of violence in several countries
MIAMI, Florida (February 10, 2005) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern at a recent wave of violence directed at news media and individual journalists that is creating setbacks for press freedom in Mexico, Haiti, Ecuador and Uruguay and said it would raise the issue at its meeting in Panama City, Panama, in March.
The Miami, Florida-based organization learned that reporter Jorge Cardona, from the Televisa television network in Monterrey, Nuevo León state, northern Mexico, escaped uninjured in an attack on February 7. His car, parked outside his home, was struck by 48 bullets. The reason for the attack is unknown.
The chairman of IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, called on the Mexican authorities to launch “an immediate investigation into this attack.” He noted that four journalists were murdered in Mexico last year, three of them in states on the Mexico-United States border. They were Francisco Arratia Saldierna, killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Francisco J. Ortiz Franco, in Tijuana, Baja California, and Roberto García Mora García, in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
In Haiti, Raoul Saint-Louis, a reporter for Megastar radio station, was shot in the hand on the night of February 4. He said that he had been receiving death threats over the telephone in recent weeks after criticizing the lack of action *against corruption and proverty by the administration of Prime Minister Gerard Latortue.
Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, declared that the IAPA was “continuing to keep a close watch on the serious plight of press freedom in Haiti” – a pledge made during an emergency forum held by the organization last week in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, which was attended by nearly 100 local journalists. He added that “we will also continue insisting that the January 14 murder of journalist Abdias Jean be solved, as well as other unpunished crimes.”
Regarding Ecuador, the IAPA protested a dynamite attack on Radio Canela radio station in the city of Macas, some 125 miles from the Ecuadorean capital, Quito, that was carried out early in the morning on February 4. No one was injured in the attack, but some $20,000 worth of damage was done to the station..
In Uruguay, police recently raided the home of journalist Dostin Armand Pilón in search of a tape recording of a broadcast by Radio Centro station in Cardona, 120 miles northeast of Montevideo. Pilón had been investigating allegations of child prostitution in the area, implicating members of the police department.
Although the judge who authorized the house search verbally apologized for his action, he did not rescind the order, which the local press said only fed self-censorship and violated Uruguay’s Broadcast Law. The law stipulates that radio stations, and not individual journalists, are responsible for holding tape recordings for a determined length of time.
Marroquín said that the IAPA will take up these and other attacks on press freedom over the past six months during the organization’s Midyear Meeting in Panama City, Panama, March 11-14. He announced that the IAPA plans to send an international delegation to Ecuador in late April to meet with news media representatives, reporters and local officials.
