April 26th, 2013
The Guatemalan daily El Periódico and Fundación MEPI have published an exposé of corruption in the current Guatemalan government. The story, with information and documents gathered during the first year in office of president Otto Perez Molina and vice president Roxana Baldetti, detailed a multi-million dollar web of corruption in a country where 50 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day.
After the story was published on 8 April, the newspaper was immediately the hit with a cyber attack, according to El Periodico’s publisher, José Rubén Zamora. The website went dead and nobody could read the story for a few days. Readers who did manage to access the website had their computers infected with a virus. The attack was the latest salvo against the daily, which focuses on exposing government corruption. Zamora said it was the sixth attack against its website in the last year. He said each attack had occurred after the newspaper published investigations into corruption in Molina’s government. Zamora said that they have been investigating the attacks — which have been coming from a neighbourhood in Guatemala City. “We will pinpoint the exact area soon”, he said. The Inter American Press Association wrote a letter to Guatemala’s government expressing their concern over the attacks.
According to Zamora, officials have pulled government advertising from the newspaper, and constantly harass independent advertisers who work with the daily. In the last two decades, Zamora has been at the helm of two newspapers. His first paper was Siglo Veintuno, which he left after disagreeing with his co-owners over the paper’s robust coverage of corruption and government abuses. He has been target of kidnappings and death threats, and even had his home invaded by armed men in 2003, who held his wife and three sons hostage for several hours at gunpoint. Zamora won the Committee to Protect Journalists Freedom of the Press award in 1995, and in 2000 was named World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute.
I asked Zamora why he continues to put his life in danger with government exposés:
Ana Arana: You knew the danger with this story, why did you want to publish it?
José Rubén Zamora: It is indispensable to stop the corruption and self-enrichment by the Guatemalan political class. They forget that our country is overwhelmed by misery, malnourished children, and racism. Guatemala is a country without counterweights or institutional balances to protect it from abuses. That is why to write about these stories is our obligation. If we did not focus on these issues, why should we exist?
Our stories are written so Guatemalans get strong and do not accept abuses of those in power. We also do it to get information on corrupt practices and human rights violations in Guatemala out in the international community.
AA: What is the real problem in Guatemala?
JRZ: I think there is an excessive concentration of power and money, and a serious penetration of organised crime, especially drug trafficking organisations, in spheres of power.
AA: Do you fear any further attacks against the newspaper?
JRZ: Yes, I expect them to harass us through taxes, and to engage in defamation campaigns to discredit the newspaper. Sources close to the Presidency have said that the government is trying to organised a commercial boycott that could take the newspaper towards bankruptcy.
November 30th, 2012
A blogger sued for libel by a Tanzanian media tycoon won her case today (30 November). At the High Court in London, Mr Justice Bean ruled in favour of Sarah Hermitage, who used her Silverdale Farm blog to criticise Reginald Mengi, Executive Chairman of IPP Ltd — a company with significant media interests in Tanzania.
Hermitage and her husband Stuart Middleton were driven from Silverdale Farm in Tanzania by threats and harassment. The court heard Megni’s brother Benjamin took possession of the farm following their departure. A defining factor in the ruling was the hostile coverage of Silverdale Farm by the IPP-owned newspapers. Mengi was ordered to pay £1.2million towards Hermitage’s legal costs.
Hermitage said today:
I set up my Silverdale Farm blog in 2009 to document our horrific experience in Tanzania, and to expose as a warning for others the corruption we encountered and our helplessness with no protection from the local Courts and officials.
To find myself then sued for libel in my own country, facing a claim of legal costs of £300,000 from Mr Mengi before the proceedings had even started, was itself frightening and oppressive.
November 16th, 2012
In Mexico drug cartels continue to dictate news agenda and in some areas, have even infiltrated the newsroom. A new investigation by Fundacion MEPI reveals the extent to which news outlets fear of cartel retaliation and a shortage of accurate government information keep the public in the dark
(more…)
April 27th, 2012
On 24 April,
Chinese petitioner Hu Lianyou was sentenced to two years in prison for defamation after comments made about a local police chief online, according to Chinese state media. Hu allegedly wrote posts on popular websites accusing two officers, including police chief Zheng Hang, of corruption and beating him during an interrogation. The petitioner requested that the trial take place in a more neutral court, rather than in his native Dong’an county, where he has a history of criticising authorities. His request was denied, according to the
Chinese Media Project.
March 15th, 2012
Burma’s mining ministry have said they will
file a lawsuit against a news journal following allegations of corruption. An article in weekly publication The Voice said that the Auditor-General’s Office had discovered fraud in the mining, information, agriculture and industry ministries. It is believed that the article was published without approval from the country’s censors. The mining ministry’s director general Win Htein denied the accusations, and said the report had harmed the ministry’s dignity.
January 31st, 2012
A
Cuban journalist is facing more than
ten years in prison for alleged corruption offences. José Antonio Torres, a correspondent for Granma, the party newspaper, in Santiago de Cuba, was detained on 11 March, 2011 after writing two articles criticising a major government infrastructure project. In the articles, Torres said experts undertaking the rebuilding of a key aqueduct intended to supply water to the city’s inhabitants, had claimed that “ineptitude” and “poor workmanship” had caused parts of the aqueduct wall’s veneer to fall off. The journalist also wrote that the project should have been “better planned.” Torres was
initially charged with being an “agent of the CIA” and leaking confidential information abroad.
January 4th, 2012
Vietnamese journalist Nguyen Van Khuong was
arrested this week on suspicion of bribery after he ran an expose on corruption among traffic police in his newspaper, Tuoi Tre. The reporter is said to have paid a bribe of 15 million dong (458 GBP) to a police officer to secure the release of an impounded vehicle. The officer in question was arrested after Khuong’s story was published, and Khuong was suspended by the paper on 3 December. Tuoi Tre
quoted him as saying he had made an error in gathering evidence for a series of stories about police corruption, but he did not say he had provided the bribe.
October 17th, 2011
The car of a popular
Bulgarian journalist was
blown up on Thursday, after a makeshift bomb was attached to the vehicle. Sasho Dikov, programme director of the Channel 3 TV station, was not injured by the blast outside his home in a residential area of Sofia. The journalist, who has been a fierce critic of the center-right government said the attack was to intimidate him, and “anyone who speaks the truth.” Dikov said the attack would not stop him from discussing the alleged failure by Prime Minister Boiko Borisov’s government’s to cope with corruption and organised crime.
