(RSF/IFEX) – A year after an arson attack gutted the printing press and editorial offices of “El Diario del Fin del Mundo” daily newspaper in Ushuaia, the capital of the far-south province of Tierra del Fuego, RSF condemned the continuing impunity enjoyed by its perpetrators as well as other repeated acts of intimidation against Tierra […]
(RSF/IFEX) – A year after an arson attack gutted the printing press and editorial offices of “El Diario del Fin del Mundo” daily newspaper in Ushuaia, the capital of the far-south province of Tierra del Fuego, RSF condemned the continuing impunity enjoyed by its perpetrators as well as other repeated acts of intimidation against Tierra del Fuego journalists that have gone unpunished.
“The region’s political, judicial and police authorities must solve these crimes which are violations of the right to work as a journalist without threat or impediment,” RSF said in a letter to Tierra del Fuego Governor Mario Jorge Colazo. “We request the resumption and successful completion of the investigation into the arson attack on ‘El Diario del Fin del Mundo’. We also call on the authorities to put an end to the climate of impunity for attacks and threats against journalists, and to guarantee the right to inform the public in complete safety.”
After the 6 March 2004 fire at the “El Diario del Fin del Mundo” buildings, the police and firefighters did not take long to conclude that it was deliberate. Five days before the fire, Carmen Miranda, one of the newspaper’s journalists and secretary-general of the Ushuaia Press Union, was approached at night by two men who introduced themselves as police officers and then asked her for her colleagues’ home addresses.
The same day, Alfredo Valdéz of Radio Nacional found his car damaged and is this right spelling daubed with yellow paint. The same method had been used a few days before with Héctor Lavia, the owner and managing editor of another local daily, “Prensa”, who had been investigating the real estate holdings of one of the province’s ministers.
A year later, on 20 February 2005, Marcelo Martín, editor of the online news site http://www.sur54.com, found his car vandalised in a similar fashion. “We are not certain that this attack is linked to his work as a journalist, but the modus operandi is the same and the authorities have nothing resembling a lead,” Miranda told RSF. Martín said he had “no doubt about the link between the attack” and his website’s coverage of the southern region’s “political instability.”
On 9 March, the Ushuaia Press Union voiced its support for Martín, recalling that those responsible for the arson attack on “El Diario del Fin del Mundo” were still at large. Similarly, the police has never identified who was behind the arson attack on the “Prensa 23” newspaper seven years ago in Río Grande.
