Regional media group slams Cuba, Venezuela, United States

Regional media group slams Cuba, Venezuela, United States

March 31, 2008
Caribbean Net News

CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP): The Inter American Press Association (IAPA), in its biannual meeting Sunday, criticized Venezuela's growing restrictions on freedom of the press, Cuba's clampdown on internet access and US court pressure on reporters' sources.

The IAPA meeting, held in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' home turf to drive home their point, said his government "continued to harass the press and journalists," and refused to "open channels" of communication with IAPA on these issues.

Chavez, who last year closed the private RCTV channel for opposing his policies and is now threatening to do the same with Globovision, refused to attend the opening ceremonies of the meeting, convening instead a parallel meeting on "media terrorism."

(L-R) Gonzalo Marroquin, director of the newspaper Prensa Libre of Guatemala; Earl Maucker, director of Florida's Sun Sentinel and Enrique Santos, director of Colombia's El Tiempo newspaper, take part in the mid-year meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA, or SIP in Spanish) in Caracas, Venezuela. AFP PHOTO

IAPA's freedom of speech committee chairman Gonzalo Marroquin clarified in the meeting that by its criticism, the association was "not saying there's no freedom of the press (in Venezuela), what we're saying is that it's constantly being restricted."

IAPA's final statement recognized Cuban President Raul Castro's efforts at lifting some restrictions on Cuba's press, but slammed the "hindrance to access of blogs written in Cuba," where a mere 190,000 people have access to the Internet -- one of the lowest access rates in the world, according to IAPA.

The association also called on Castro to release 25 independent journalists languishing in Cuban jails, 12 of whom it said were in poor state of health.

The IAPA statement singled out the United States for trying to erode a reporter's right to source confidentiality, noting court "cases where federal judges force journalists to reveal their sources and impose heavy fines on them."

The IAPA meeting also issued a resolution against the growing number of unsolved murders and kidnappings of journalists in Argentina, Honduras, Haiti, Mexico and Colombia, whose governments it urged to investigate "quickly and thoroughly."

Marroquin said a copy of the resolutions adopted by the IAPA would be sent to all the governments that have been singled out.

Nearly 300 newspaper editors, publishers and reporters attended the biannual meeting of the IAPA, which groups some 2,000 media outlet owners throughout the Americas.

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