Press Freedoms Lag in Latin America

  
According to Tony Pederson, president of the Inter-American Press Association, 220 journalists have been murdered in Latin America over the past 11 years. The majority of the murders have never been solved. So far this year, 11 journalists have been assassinated for reasons believed to be connected to their work: five in Mexico, two in Colombia and the rest in Paraguay, Uruguay, Guatemala and Haiti. The figures are alarming and raise serious concerns about the state of press freedoms in Latin America.

The murderers in these cases ranged from members of guerrilla armies, the military and paramilitary groups to common criminals and lone fanatics. The most recent victim was Marisol Rebelo, a 25-year-old Colombian journalist killed in the doorway of her home in Tumaco by an attacker who shot her and fled on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice. Rebelo directed a government-sponsored local newscast.

"The situation is making the free gathering of information more difficult all the time," Amnesty International noted in a report about freedom of the press in Colombia. "Like many other sectors of the population, journalists find themselves trapped in the crossfire between drug traffickers, guerrillas, paramilitaries and the armed forces."

The killings may be the worst attacks against the press in Latin America, but they are not the only way in which freedom of expression is stifled. In some countries of the region, tactics include kidnappings and disappearances, as well as official intimidation and censorship.

In an interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nación, the Interamerican Press Association's Pederson commented that although the days when "dictators shut down newspapers and threw their editors out into the streets" have passed, other threats to freedom of the press persist. He cited as examples government efforts to manipulate the press in Peru and Venezuela. His organization released a report on Venezuela in March detailing government pressure and persecution of journalists.

During the recent presidential elections in Peru, NGOs in that country denounced the government's efforts to control access to the media. Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori made the Committee to Protect Journalists' list of the "Ten Worst Enemies of the Press" for the second time this year, along with Cuban leader Fidel Castro (who made the list for the sixth time), Iranian spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. The report accused Fujimori of using "an arsenal of tactics," including surveillance, smear tactics and trumped-up charges, to decimate "what was, just five years ago, a thriving and vigorous press." The Castro regime was criticized for attacking independent journalism by "interrogating and detaining reporters, monitoring and interrupting their telephone calls, refusing to let them travel freely, and routinely putting them under house arrest." The World Association of Newspapers also cited Cuba as the Latin American country least tolerant of freedom of information, opinion and the press.

One positive development in the region was the recent conviction of four people for the 1975 murder of journalist Orlando Martínez in the Dominican Republic, during one of the presidencies of long-time political leader Joaquín Balaguer. The defendants, who included a retired general of the Dominican Army, received sentences of 30 years in jail.

Despite such encouraging cases, however, covering the news continues to be dangerous work in Latin America. The region is far from fulfilling the conditions demanded by the Interamerican Press Association, which has argued that "without freedom of the press, democracy cannot exist or survive."