Posted on 03/24/2003 5:03:06 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - The InterAmerican Press Association, the IAPA, said Sunday that attacks on the press continue around the globe and in the Americas, and singled out Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti for criticism Sunday.
IAPA president Andres Garcia said "attacks against the press continue around the globe and locally."
Garcia called the Venezuelan government "abusive" and accused it of threatening the media daily. Journalists in Venezuela have been threatened and shot at while covering clashes between pro- and anti-government protesters in the last year.
Garcia called attempts by the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to impose a media content law as "nothing short of censorship of the press, while it continues to tighten restrictions on the major television networks."
He announced that the IAPA will send a fact-finding mission to Venezuela soon.
Garcia also criticized the Cuban government for the recent arrest of a group of journalists, and expressed concern over Haiti, "where violence against the press continues especially to silence the few voices of dissident radio stations."
Garcia cited new types of threats to the press, especially the electronic media. He referred to the upcoming World Summit on the Information Society, which he compared to UNESCO-sponsored New World Information and Communication Order in the 1970s.
"This time they are indirectly trying to control the media, especially Internet and electronic media, under the precept that the world is experiencing a transition from the industrial society of the 20th century to information society of the 21st century," he said.
Earlier, Rafael Molina, the head of the IAPA's press freedom commission, said national security is being used as a pretext to clamp down on the media in the United States.
Molina said that after the Sept. 11 terror attacks "restrictions were imposed on the press and there were official suggestions to the media about what to publish and what not to publish, using national security as a pretext."
Molina said among the most extreme cases was last month's expulsion of an Iraqi journalist from the United States who was dubbed "harmful" to the security of the country. Iraq in return expelled four U.S. journalists from Baghdad.
Addressing the second day of the media group's meeting in this Central American country, Salvadoran President Francisco Flores said Sunday press freedom and independent media are the foundation of democracy.
"There is a close relationship between the health of a democratic system and the existence of independent media. More freedom of information and criticism implies more strength for democracy," Flores told the midyear meeting of newspaper editors from throughout the hemisphere.
Flores noted El Salvador was mainly a source of bad news during its 1980-1992 civil war, but stressed the country is now a functional democracy with individual freedoms.
"Only in freedom can a person develop," Flores said, stressing the need for El Salvador to take on new challenges such as a free trade agreement with the United States.
After his speech, Flores told journalists that El Salvador "has not declared war on Iraq. El Salvador is not part of a military coalition. What we have done is express our support for the United States.El Salvador is ready to help in humanitarian actions when the war is over."
The U.S. government has listed El Salvador as one of more then 40 countries in the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq.
Flores said in the past that El Salvador would send military officers to help in non-military activities.
***Back in the Reagan years, Jeane Kirkpatrick became a heroine in the Soviet Union for the simple act of naming names on the floor of the U.N.: naming the names of prisoners, citing their cases, inquiring after their fates. Later, in Moscow, she met Andrei Sakharov, who exclaimed, "Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski! I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag." And why was that? Because she had named those names, giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope. Kirkpatrick says now, "This much I have learned: It is very, very important to say the names, to speak them. It's important to go on taking account as one becomes aware of the prisoners and the torture they undergo. It's terribly important to talk about it, write about it, go on TV about it." A tyrannical regime depends on silence, darkness. "One of their goals is to make their opponents vanish. They want not only to imprison them, they want no one to have heard of them, no one to know who or where they are. So to just that extent, it's tremendously important that we pay attention."*** Source
………."The new Daily Journal will operate as a totally independent newspaper. Our mission will be to expand the service the Daily Journal provides to the business community, local and global. We will give special attention to key economic sectors such as oil, gas and mining as well as providing the most up-to-date and useful information on Venezuelan economics, politics and society."***
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