The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) sentenced this Friday the shooting against Ecuador’s RTS television channelas well as the Threats to the editor of the Extra newspaperGalo Martinez Leisker.
In a statement, the president of the SIP, Jorge Canahuatiand the chairman of the press freedom and information commission of the same entity, Carlos Jornet, stressed that “These acts of violence seek to intimidate journalistic activity and provoke information self-censorship“.
According to the IAPA, two subjects who were riding a motorcycle were captured by security cameras when they fired at the access door to the RTS channel in the city of Guayaquil at dawn this Friday.
The perpetrators of the attack, he adds, also left a pamphlet signed “La Nueva Generación” in front of the television channel, an apparent allusion to one of the Mexican drug cartels.
The brochures contained death threats against the editor of Extra and against the newspaper’s vendors, as well as “prohibiting” their sale in Guayaquil and in the cities of Esmeraldas, Machala and Cuenca, the details read.
Canahuati, president of Grupo Opsa, from Honduras, and Jornet, journalistic editor of the newspaper La Voz del Interior, Argentina, added that in recent days the IAPA has received complaints about the “intimidating increase” in the presence of drug cartels. Mexicans in the Ecuadorian province of Guayas, and “the insecurity suffered by journalists in that part of the country”.
The directors of the IAPA stressed that, as established in the Chapultepec Declaration, the Decalogue on the principles of freedom of expression and of the press in a democracy, “pressure, intimidation, violence of all kinds and impunity for aggressors severely limit the freedom of expression and of the press “.
The organization, which is based in Miami, Florida, called on authorities to swiftly investigate these acts of violence to identify and prosecute those responsible.
Previously, the IAPA condemned the attacks on an Ecuadorian journalist
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) condemned the acts of violence committed in Ecuador against a journalist at the end of September, as well as asking the authorities to carry out investigations to highlight the responsibilities.
The entity reported in a statement that a reporter from the Guayaquil Expreso newspaper, whose name was not disclosed, reported that on September 19, unknown bombs fired two explosive devices, known in Ecuador as tumbacasas, at the door and a window of the his house. The incident ended without any injuries or material damage.
Granasa, editor of the daily Expreso, ratified its support for the work of its journalists in the face of threatening actions and rejected all forms of intimidation “in relation to the publications they produce”.
The president of the IAPA, Jorge Canahuati, and the chairman of the body’s press freedom and information committee, Carlos Jornet, condemned “the intimidation against the journalist” and urged the authorities to “urgently order an investigation and that justice is administered. “
With information from agencies
DB
Source: Clarin
