Guatemala: IAPA calls for probe into attacks on journalists

MIAMI, Florida (August 23, 2006)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today asked the Guatemalan Attorney Generals’ Office to investigate a number of recent attacks on journalists in the Central American country, including an attempted murder, threats to four newsmen and the forcible detention of six others.

Vinicio Aguilar Mancilla, host of the program “Hablando se entiende la gente” (If You Talk It Over, You’ll Sort It Out) broadcast by Radio 10 radio station, was attacked this morning as he was about to jog with a group of friends when two men on a motorcycle came up to him and shot him in the face and hand. He was rushed to Guatemala City’s Herrera Llerandi Hospital.

Gonzalo Marroquín, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the Guatemala City newspaper Prensa Libre, shortly afterwards visited Aguilar at the hospital, where he was recovering from his injuries. Aguilar told Marroquín that he did not know the motive for the attack.

Marroquín called on the Attorney General’s Office “to investigate as a matter of urgency the incidents that have occurred this week involving journalists, so as to determine who was responsible and ensure that violence against the press does not go unpunished.”

In another incident, in the city of Antigua, four journalists reported having received threats in an apparent reprisal for their allegations of wrongdoing by Mayor César Antonio Siliézar Portillo and his administration. They were Prensa Libre correspondent María Teresa López Lima, Oscar Enrique Flores Sosa, editor of the newspaper La Voz de Antigua, and columnists José Antonio Palomo Cajas and Carlos Roberto Mérida Reynoso.

López Lima said that the mayor’s brother-in-law, Military Police Captain Marvin Estuardo Mena Pons, had her under investigation, according to what she had learned from his wife, who showed her a case file containing her photograph, personal details, and a list of telephone calls she and her mother had made. The woman said her husband was conducting the investigation on the orders of Mayor Siliézar Portillo, who was annoyed at what she had been writing about him.

On August 16, López Lima reported on the matter in a radio broadcast, saying the military police officer and the mayor would be to blame should there be any threat to her life and to her family. Minutes later the officer turned up at the radio station and hurled abuse at her.

Journalists Mérida Reynosa, Palomo Cajas and Flores Sosa and their family members have also received telephoned threats after alleging the mayor’s involvement in corruption.

Another incident occurred on August 11. Reporters Aurora Samperio and Dario Chiquito from the news program “Guatevisó,” Rosario Avila and Hamilton Patxán from Telecentro 13 television and Rafael Rosales and Edgar López from the newspaper Siglo Veintiuno were threatened and held for more than three hours by groups of armed peasants in Senahú in the northern Guatemalan province of Alta Verapaz, the scene of an ongoing labor and land dispute.         

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