IAPA rejects restrictions for IACHR and Rapporteur

IAPA General Assembly

Yesterday, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed “their strong rejection to any weakening of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States (OAS) that could decide the governments of the continent.” This purpose of the meeting would be held with the foreign ministers, on 22 March, in Washington.

These were the conclusions that IAPA highlighted in its biannual meeting, which concluded yesterday in the Mexican city of Puebla. “The Press freedom in the Americas continues hacked by authoritarian and intolerant governments.”

The first point that the IAPA complaint is that there is “a common modus operandi of undemocratic practices in the Western Hemisphere” developed “especially in Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Guatemala.”

Additionally, the organization maintained that apart from government advertising, “openly and growing sums amounting to millions, is still used as a method of discrimination against non-addicted media in these countries.” It also accuses reporters of seeking to destabilize and make opposition to governments simply for doing their job, which is to inform and comment.

Legislatively speaking, laws that “hinder the work of the critical press and interfere in journalistic content” are being developed in “Ecuador, Chile, Honduras and Costa Rica.”