MIAMI, Florida (July
28, 2000)-The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today delivered to
the executive secretary of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,
Jorge Taiana, the findings of an investigations it conducted into the 1997
murders of a journalist in Brazil and another in Mexico.
The formal submission was made following the IAPA-sponsored Conference on
the Inter-American Declaration on Freedom of Expression, held yesterday
at the IAPAs new headquarters building in Miami.
The chairman of the IAPAs Impunity Committee, Alberto Ibargüen, presented
the documents to Taiana. They concerned inquiries into the murder of Edgar
Lopes de Faria in Brazil and of Benjamín Flores González in
Mexico.
Ibargüen, publisher of The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida, explained
that both cases were investigated by members of the Rapid Response Unit,
set up in January this year by the IAPA. It is made up of investigative
reporters who conduct on-the-spot inquiries into murders of colleagues in
the Western Hemisphere in a bid to bring the guilty to justice.
Lopes de Faria, murdered on October 29, 1997, was a radio commentator and
television talk show host in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul state, Brazil,
and Flores González, killed on July 15, 1997, was the editor of the
daily La Prensa in San Luis Río Colorado, Sonora state, Mexico. In
both cases, the Rapid Response Unit found irregularities in the official
investigations.
"For the IAPA this action represents the culmination of a stage. In
submitting the documentation to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
we seek to have our denunciation placed before the highest levels of government
so that the cases may be solved and in the end the murderers be brought
to justice," Ibargüen said.
Taiana praised the work that the IAPA was carrying out on the issue of unpunished
crimes against journalists and declared that "although we cannot bring
the victims back to life and it is always sad to receive denunciations,
especially if they refer to murders, we certainly can go about getting the
cases solved."
The IAPA findings in the two murder cases had the support of, and were signed
by, former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, whose editor husband Pedro
Joaquín was murdered in 1978.
The IAPA has now provided documentation to the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights a total of 15 cases of murdered journalists. Details are
posted on the Associations dedicated Web site, www.impunidad.com
Figures compiled by the hemisphere free-press organization show that from
October last year to date 16 journalists were murdered - six of them in
Colombia, five in Mexico, two in Guatemala and one each in Haiti, Paraguay
and Uruguay. The death toll for the past 12 years stands at 226.