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The Inter American Press Association indicated that the situation of journalists in Latin America has worsened in the last six months, due to the number of convictions and murders recorded in that period. Among the most dangerous countries to practice this profession are Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Next week, the IAPA will hold a meeting to address the safety of communicators in the region, among other issues.
The “repression” and “violence” against journalists in Latin America have worsened, according to Ricardo Trotti, executive director of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA).
In the last six months, the situation of press freedom in the region “has only worsened,” whether through “convictions, imprisonment or physical violence,” said the IAPA director.
And it is that there were 13 journalists murdered in Latin America during the first months of the year, eight of them in Mexico. This represents an average of “One journalist killed per week,” Trotti explained.
For his part, Carlos Jornet, the president of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, explained in an interview with France 24 that this “extremely high” number of murders, together with the “imprisonment of journalists,” reveals the “deficiency” of protection and security systems for these professionals.
Something that, he assures, generates “frustration and impotence”, since it represents a rapid setback in the field of freedom of the press and expression in the region.
The IAPA, he reported, will seek a way to “guarantee the free exercise of journalistic practice” at its semi-annual meeting that begins next Tuesday, April 19, and ends on Thursday of the same week.
Convictions, physical violence and murders
The executive director of the IAPA referred to the situation of journalists in countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Venezuela and Mexico. He pointed out that the most recent reports reflect that “we are not talking about simple slaps against press freedom, but about systematic attacks.”
In Nicaragua, for example, three journalists from the newspaper La Prensa are in prison with sentences of up to 13 years in prison, while the newspaper “is still occupied by the Police,” Trotti stressed.
In El Salvador, the Legislative Assembly recently approved a series of reforms to the Penal Code and the Law for the Prohibition of Gangs, which “practically prohibits the media from publishing on issues of street or gang violence,” explained the IAPA’s executive director.
As for Mexico, the “most dangerous” country in the region to practice journalism, with “a high rate of impunity,” Trotti assured that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his officials have “carried out 71 stigmatizations of journalists” in what so far this year.
All these things harm “the free flow of information in the coverage of communicators,” said Trotti, director of the IAPA.
Violence against journalists, topic during meetingno of the SIP
The IAPA will meet for two days to read several reports that reveal the “serious problem of access to public information” as well as “the lack of transparency” of the States to “inform or provide access to information to journalists” on matters related to corruption or public health.
They will also address the heavy prison sentences that have been imposed on some participants in the 2021 popular protests in Cuba.
Among the participants scheduled for this biannual meeting are the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Pedro Vaca, the UNESCO representative, Guilherme Canela, and the Minister of Heritage of Canada, Pablo Rodríguez .
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