13 Aug 10 | Americas, Mexico
Just a few days after several thousand reporters marched in Mexico City and other cities across the country to protest attacks against the press, the journalism community is elated to have managed to organise such a gathering. But as former editor of El Universal Raymundo Riva Palacio warned his colleagues before the march, displays of protest only from the “infantry” are likely to achieve little unless news media owners join the cause.
Leading journalists made suggestions about how Saturday’s last minute marches should be followed up. On Tuesday, Roberto Rock, the former director of the daily El Universal urged march organisers to meet Frank La Rue, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion and Expression and Catalina Botero, the Organisation of American States Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, who will be visiting Mexico this week to investigate the situation of the Mexican press.
Rock is a member of the Inter American Press Association, one of the many international groups that has requested for years that the Mexican government to change the investigative system for journalists’ murders, taking it away from provincial authorities (Estados) to the federal authorities.
Elsewhere in Latin America, in Uruguay, Judge Ana María Tellechea Reck sentenced journalist Alvaro Alfonso to 24 months in prison after he was convicted of having libeled former Montevideo provincial congressman for the Communist Party of Uruguay (PCU), Carlos Alberto Tutzó López in a 2008 book. The judged also demanded the “seizure” of all editions of the book Secretos del Partido Comunista (Secrets of the Communist Party).
In Brazil Elizeu Felício de Souza, who was sentenced to 23-and-a-half years in prison for his role in the 2002 death of television journalist Tim Lopes of TV Globo is openly selling drugs in the streets of Morro do Alemão, a shantytown in the north of Rio de Janeiro.
Images obtained by TV Globo show the escaped prisoner selling drugs, armed with a rifle and pistol, next to a city construction site. Tim Lopes was killed in 2002, after reporting on the sexual exploitation of children at drug traffickers’ “funk” parties in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.
Yesterday in Bogota, Colombia, terrorists placed a car bomb near the building that houses Caracol, one of the country’s major radio stations. The bomb caused considerable damage injuring nine.
30 Jul 10 | Uncategorized
Last week’s news that Hugo Chávez has once again broken ties with Colombia was hardly a shock.
The break follows Colombia providing an Organisation of American States (OAS) meeting in Washington with video, audio and photographic evidence that Venezuela is harbouring members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc and the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Colombia’s ambassador to the OAS, Luis Alfonso Hoyos, went further alleging that the paramiltaries “eat fried pork and get fat in order to rest before launching attacks in Colombia”. Chavez denies the charges and certainly has his defenders, one being Oliver Stone, whose new film “South of the Border” has been criticised as a hagiography of South America’s Bolivarian leaders.
Another high profile fan is Diego Maradona, who was inexplicably present at the press conference where Chávez broke ties with Colombia.
The arrest of three Colombian journalists on 16 July in the Venezuelan town of El Nula seemed to many to be just another example of Latin America’s turbulent relationship with the media. Delve a little deeper, however, and there is much more to the story. The three Colombians were in El Nula on a tip off that the head of the ELN was in town. Whats more, having been detained for not having visa documentation (which they did not need under a border agreement between the two countries), they were released two days later, minus an audio tape and accusing their captors of ill treatment. All this in the same week that Venezuela was busy denying that there are terrorist camps in the country.
The story confirms that freedom of expression in Venezuela is under threat. Colombia, rated by Freedom House as only partly free and with a history of violence against journalists, is hardly without problems itself.
The Chávez government recently took control of 45.8 per cent of the staunchly anti-Chávez media broadcaster Globovision. The president of Globovision, Guillermo Zuloaga, won the 2010 Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Grand Prize for Press Freedom but has lived in exile in Florida since a warrant was issued for his arrest in June over financial irregularities.
Chávez is still undoubtedly loved by many; he survived a 2002 coup attempt after the public mobilised in his defence, despite misleading television reports accusing Chávez protestors of inciting violence. So why does he feel the need to clamp down on the press?
13 Jul 10 | Index Index, minipost
Hollman Morris, an internationally-renowned Colombian journalist, has been barred from entering the United States to take up a fellowship at Harvard University. His visa application was denied after he was placed on a Patriot Act no-fly list. Morris has previously been publicly lauded by the State Department and Human Rights Watch. His writing has been published around the world, and he has been received by the Pentagon, National Security Council, and the US ambassador in Bogota. The ban is thought to relate to Morris’ interviews with Colombia’s Farc guerillas, although critics have claimed that it stems from the Obama administration’s proximity to Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe, whose government has long been criticised by Morris.
21 Apr 10 | Index Index, minipost
On 16 April an independent photojournalist, was killed at his home in Ibagué. Arsenio Zambrano Ocampo, 62, was stabbed to death by two attackers, who were later arrested. One of the arrested was in possesion of Ocampo’s laptop. The photojournalist is the second media worker killed in Tolima within a week. Mauricio Medina was murdered on 11 April.
