Attacks on Journalists Persist p.

By: Robert U. Brown

Although only two totalitarian governments remain, free press efforts in the Western Hemisphere are still being hampered
ALTHOUGH TOTALITARIAN governments have disappeared mostly from this hemisphere?with the exceptions of Cuba and Haiti?newspapers and journalists are still under attack for their efforts in behalf of a free press.
The Committee on Freedom of the Press of the Inter American Press Association reported to the midwinter meeting of the board of directors in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last week that at least nine journalists have been killed in the last eight months in Latin America. Dozens more have been detained or harassed or driven into exile.
IAPA is pursuing a policy of carrying the fight for a free press into the enemy camp when possible. In the last six months, it has organized four missions to different countries. One of them to Santiago, Chile, headed by IAPA president Alejandro Junco de la Vega of El Norte, Monterrey, Mexico, met with President Aylwin and succeeded in delaying the introduction of a controversial press law. The president has called for more extensive study.
Another mission was sent to southeast Mexico to gather information with respect to the murder of publisher Ignacio Mendoza Castillo.
In that area "there is a climate of hate and antagonism between certain sectors of the press and the officials," president Junco reported. "Criminal law in the southeastern Mexican states can be, and has been, used to threaten critical journalists with imprisonment. It has been used at the discretion of state officials, including public prosecutors, agents of government ministries and judges to carry out unilateral prosecution of journalists."
The IAPA board voted to continue the mission practice and voted to send fact-finding missions to Venezuela, where there has been continued harassment of journalists by government officials, and New York, where it has been more than a year since the murder of journalist Manuel de D?os Unanue.
A third mission is planned to investigate the illegal takeover of the newspaper Vanguardia by employees in Chihuahua and neither the courts nor the government has done anything to stop it. The IAPA board voted to inform all international companies doing business in the state of Chihuahua of those dangers.
IAPA heard reports from all countries in the hemisphere on the state of freedom of the press. It concluded the fight for press freedoms must go on.
It cited harassment of the press in Guatemala and said not a single one of the brutal murders of Guatemalan journalists in recent years has been prosecuted. "Death threats, physical attacks by armed thugs, the burning of newspapers?all are done with total impunity . . . at least partly due to the negative atmosphere created by President J?rge Serrano Elias' verbal attacks on the press."
Rather than send a mission to Guatemala, the IAPA board voted to hold its midwinter meeting there next March.
Cuba and Haiti once again received the title of the worst horror stories of the hemisphere.
In Cuba, the presence of printer's ink under the fingernails of a journalist was sufficient for his arrest. In Haiti, the deaths and disappearances of journalists are not even accurately tallied, the report said.
IAPA's free press committee noted that Florida journalist Tim Roche was ending his first week in jail while the meeting was in progress. "Like any self-important dictatorship anywhere, the state of Florida sent Tim Roche to jail for 30 days when he refused to reveal the identity of his source."
The report concluded:
"In Canada, a more subtle threat to press freedoms erodes those freedoms just the same. There, some advertisers are taking advantage of the recession by demanding more favorable news coverage in return for continued advertising.
"The 'ultimate censorship,' however, remains the most effective, though most dastardly, way to silence troublesome journalists.
"In Mexico, four journalists have been murdered since October. In Colombia, four journalists have been murdered. In Venezuela, another four journalists died in the weeks following the latest coup attempt.
"Death threats and other intimidation of journalists and the media darken press freedoms in Honduras, Paraguay and Peru.
"With a free press the cornerstone of a democracy, democracy itself must be said to be a tenuous proposition in the Americas today."
The IAPA General Assembly will be in Bariloche, Argentina, Nov. 15-18.