(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a 24 May 2000 WAN press release: Paris, 24 May 2000 For immediate release WAN Asks Colombian Guerrillas To End Media Violence The World Association of Newspapers has called on Colombia’s leading guerrilla movement to renounce violence against the media as a precondition for peace negotiations in the country. WAN, […]
(WAN/IFEX) – The following is a 24 May 2000 WAN press release:
Paris, 24 May 2000
For immediate release
WAN Asks Colombian Guerrillas To End Media Violence
The World Association of Newspapers has called on Colombia’s leading guerrilla movement to renounce violence against the media as a precondition for peace negotiations in the country.
WAN, which represents more than 17,000 publications in 93 countries, has told the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that it must condemn and disassociate itself from the continuing campaign of violence and intimidation against journalists in the country.
In a letter to the FARC Commander, Manuel Marulanda Velez, WAN expresses its “outrage” at the violence which has killed more than one hundred journalists over the past ten years and seeks assurances that FARC “condemns and disassociates itself from these inadmissible acts”.
WAN gives details of seven assassinations since last October and cites an intensive series of kidnappings of journalists and bombings or attempted bombings of news enterprises in recent times. “Death threats and extortion are common and in this terrible climate of violence and fear, many of Colombia’s best journalists have been forced to flee the country”, wrote Timothy Balding, Director General of WAN.
He continued : “The FARC is very frequently identified internationally as the perpetrator of much of this violence. You have personally been cited as saying that the media must ‘pay their debts’ to you, which appears as a clear incitation to continue attacks on the press.
“Any credit that the FARC has gained for its cause on the international scene is fast diminishing, specifically, because of these attacks on the media community. The World Association of Newspapers calls on you … to ensure that your movement immediately ceases any campaign of violence and intimidation against media. In the absence of any assurances from you on this respect, we shall be obliged to intervene, notably with European governments, to make them fully aware that negotiations towards the peaceful future cannot go forward and receive their support”.
The letter also stresses that freedom of expression and freedom of the press are “fundamental and absolute preconditions in any modern society”.
Mr Balding continued: “They imply that journalists, or indeed any citizens, must be completely free to criticise, interpret and condemn. Journalists are not combatants in war and civil conflict. They must be allowed to do their work free of fear and threats, as they see fit. This is the price of democracy”.
Finally, WAN offers to send a delegation to meet the FARC to discuss the threats, killings and kidnappings of journalists and to help “find the way forward for the establishment of freedom of the press in the future of Colombia”.
WAN has also written to the Colombian High Commissioner of Peace, Mr Camillo Gomez, to express its deep concern about the “deteriorating situation for freedom of the press in Colombia”.
WAN tells the High Commissioner: “the re-establishment of a climate in which journalists can work free of fear and violence is in our view an absolute pre-condition of the successful accomplishment of your peace negotiations”.
“In these circumstances, WAN respectfully calls on you to place freedom of the media, which is fundamental for any modern democracy, as a top priority in your negotiations, particularly with the guerrilla groups who have been identified as perpetrators of this violence.”
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 63 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and seven regional and world-wide press groups.
