Posts Tagged ‘Latin America’
September 6th, 2011
The Organization of American States’
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has accused
Venezuela of
censoring the country’s media. IACHR criticised
measures taken against satirical magazine
6to Poder, which was briefly censored for a cover portraying six government officials as cabaret dancers. The organisation released a statement saying that such instances “are against the regional standards for freedom of expression and create an intimidatory environment, encouraging self-censorship.” They also referred to a case against opposition politician Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, who was
sentenced to two years in prison in July 2011 for “distributing false information“, having accused Hugo Chávez’s government of supporting drug trafficking.
September 6th, 2011
The
Cuban government this weekend
revoked the press credentials of journalist Mauricio Vicent, correspondent for Spanish newspaper
El País. Cuban authorities said that Vicent, who has been a reporter on the island for twenty years, had portrayed a “biased and negative image” of Cuba. Since 2007, the Cuban government has prohibited reporting by foreign correspondents from the
Chicago Tribune, the
BBC and Mexico’s
El Universal.
September 2nd, 2011
The bodies of Marcela Yarce, the founder of a political magazine, and Rocio González, a freelance journalist,
have been discovered by joggers in El Mirador park in Iztapalapa,
Mexico City. The women’s necks showed strangulation marks and their hands were tied behind their backs, said a spokesman for Mexico City police. Authorities gave no motive for the killings. Yarce founded Contralinea magazine, and González was a freelancer and former reporter for the Televisa television network.
August 31st, 2011
A judge has this week
lifted a week-old court ruling banning the distribution of a
Venezuelan magazine after it published a satirical article featuring government officials portrayed as cabaret dancers, which had been deemed offensive to women and public officials. However, the weekly, 6to Poder, was still prohibited from referring to the case in print or from publishing similar content. The paper’s owner and a top executive were charged last week with inciting hatred, insulting a public official, and publicly denigrating women. The criminal cases against them are ongoing.
August 24th, 2011
A court in Caracas has
issued a temporary injunction to prohibit the publication and circulation of satirical magazine 6to Poder after it published a cover with six
Venezuelan government officials portrayed as cabaret dancers on 21 August. On the same day, the Bolivarian Intelligence Service arrested the magazine’s editor, Dinorah Girón, and put out a warrant for the arrest of the president of the company, Leocenis García.
August 24th, 2011
Three journalists from TV station Canal 9 in
Paraguay, and the ex-director of the National Television System, Ismael Hadid, are
on trial for defamation and libel. Reporter Silvio Cuevas, host Yolanda Park, and the channel’s press director, Andrés Caballero, were sued by a lawyer, Evelio Fabio Salinas, after Cuevas in May 2010 interviewed a woman who accused the lawyer of falsifying birth certificates in order to facilitate adoptions.
August 23rd, 2011
Columnist Emilio Palacio, who was last month
sentenced to three years in prison and fined 40 million USD for calling
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa a “dictator,”
presented a video to the district attorney on 18 August that he will use to appeal his sentence. Palacio presented an anonymous video in which Correa orders his agents to take control of police strikes and protests in September. In the video, Correa states that those responsible should be “shot in the chest for treason”. Palacio said the video contradicts the president’s original testimony that he did not order the military to fire on protesting police officers.
August 22nd, 2011
A journalist with newspaper El Mío, was
beaten and then detained as he left the newspapers premises in Anzoátegui, northeastern
Venezuela. Óscar Tarazona was getting into a car when he spotted the police officers, Tarazona claims he walked over, identified himself as a journalist, and officers proceeded to beat him, handcuff him and take him to a police station. The initial attack was
caught on video. Tarazona was released and subsequently filed a formal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office. The state’s chief of police, Francisco Ortiz, said that he stood behind the officers.
