(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is an 18 September IAPA press release: IAPA protests attacks on La Razón staff in Bolivia Calls for action to ensure paper’s unfettered distribution MIAMI, Florida (September 18, 2006) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today protested attacks on employees at the La Razón newspaper in Bolivia by street newsvendors […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is an 18 September IAPA press release:
IAPA protests attacks on La Razón staff in Bolivia
Calls for action to ensure paper’s unfettered distribution
MIAMI, Florida (September 18, 2006) – The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today protested attacks on employees at the La Razón newspaper in Bolivia by street newsvendors who are boycotting distribution and sales of the paper. The free-press organization joined a demand for official action to ensure full and unfettered circulation of the paper.
On Sunday (September 17), some 200 staff of La Razón, among them executives, reporters and photographers, went on the streets in La Paz to sell copies of the paper due to a dispute newsvendors are having with the newspaper’s management that has led, since last week, to disruption of single-copy sales.
The newsvendors, belonging to the Bolivian Federation of Newsvendors, took up positions around the city in a bid to stop La Razón from being sold and, according to sources in the paper, clashed with and injured the secretary of the newspaper’s Workers Union Committee, Oswaldo Aguirre, pre-press chief Angel Miranda, and other employees and volunteers trying to hawk the paper. In some cases, copies of the newspaper were seized.
La Razón managers reported that the newsvendors had initially prevented the paper from being sold on Saturday (September 16) by occupying the distribution centers, forcing the company to make a new complete print run.
The dispute had arisen in late August when the Bolivian Federation of Newsvendors presented the company with a 10-point petition that included a demand for “the total transfer of subscriptions by the company over to the newsvendors.”
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, deplored the violence to which the La Razón employees were subjected and declared, “This aggressive attitude undermines free circulation, thus curtailing the public’s right to information and restricting freedom of the press by preventing a media outlet from freely choosing how to get its product to the public.”
Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, added, “What is needed is a prompt response from the government in order to ensure the unfettered circulation of the newspaper, an investigation into what has occurred and for those responsible to be punished.” Recalling the IAPA-sponsored Declaration of Chapultepec, he added that “the destruction of media facilities and violence of any kind . . . are acts that must be investigated promptly and punished harshly.”
La Razón on Sunday managed to achieve its sales goals. The company announced today that the newspaper would be distributed free of charge for readers in a number of Bolivian cities.
