a1456: Chicago Tribune: Journalists attacked-SA and Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>


By Michael McGuire
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 20, 2002

LA ROMANA, Dominican Republic -- Serious assaults on
journalists have eroded freedom of the press in South
America, Mexico and Haiti, where four news people have been
murdered since October and others have been kidnapped,
imprisoned and intimidated, the Inter American Press
Association said Tuesday.

"It has been proved that when there is no firm political
will, no rigorous police investigation and the absence of
rapid legal action to find those responsible for the
violence, it emboldens violent behavior against
journalists," said Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPA's
Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information.

Molina said that since the IAPA last met five months ago,
two journalists have been murdered in Colombia and one each
in Haiti and Mexico. The government has inspired violent
incidents against the press in Venezuela, and continuing
attacks have been carried out against journalists in
Brazil, Cuba, Guatemala and Peru, among others.

A total of 250 journalists have been slain since the IAPA
began keeping count in 1988.

Venezuela and Haiti were among the nations identified by
the IAPA as the worst offenders against the press.

"Freedom of speech [in Venezuela] has been gravely
threatened in recent months by violations jeopardizing the
effective exercise of democracy and the rule of law," the
IAPA said in its country-by-country report on conditions
for newspapers and the broadcast media in the Western
Hemisphere. "The media, publishers and journalists continue
their work out of courage and civic duty, since journalism
cannot be practiced without dangerous consequences."

The report said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's
"well-known intimidation, insults and injury of publishers
and journalists on weekly radio and television broadcasts
have crossed over into systematic incitement of hatred and
direct instigation of mob violence against journalists."

Dramatic incidents against the press have occurred in
Haiti, where journalists are threatened by the government
officials and police, and the recent murders of journalists
Brignol Lindor, Jean Leopoldo Dominique and Gerard Denoze
remain unsolved, said Molina.

In Colombia, where two journalists were killed because of
their work, 17 news people have been threatened since last
October's biannual meeting of the IAPA, the report said.
Seven were threatened by right-wing extremists and two by
guerrillas of the leftist FARC. The eight remaining
journalists were threatened in anonymous leaflets,
apparently by drug traffickers. Nine of the 17 were taken
from their homes to Bogota, the nation's capital, for their
own protection. Two fled the country.

In Mexico, the dilemma faced by many journalists working in
regions controlled by drug lords is to look the other way
or risk their lives.

"As a common saying in the region goes, `They have to
choose between two metals: gold or lead,'" said the IAPA
report on Mexico. "Those making deals with drug traffickers
run no less a risk."


Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune


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