IAPA says measures in Venezuela are troubling

The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed concern about the economic measures taken by the Bolivarian government against journalists and the media in that country, in what they believe could be a campaign of harassment against the independent press.

The IAPA asked Venezuelan government for more transparency in their actions with journalists, stressing cases like the one on last July 27, when the Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz, requested the freezing of the bank accounts from the director of “El Nacional”, Miguel Henrique Otero, due to an alleged personal lawsuit from the journalist against the former mayor and former director of the same newspaper, Alfredo Pena, who has been exiled for a decade.

Otero believes that the action of the attorney is part of a government campaign to “silence, intimidate and discredit” with a strategy in which “they buy media, make media buying, threaten the media, close media, they file cases against journalists, editors” .

Miguel Henrique Otero

The IAPA, with more than 1300 publications in the American Continent, has warned several times over measures of harassment against the independent press in Venezuela.