The petition is another step in the IAPA’s hemisphere-wide campaign to raise awareness about journalists’ killings that have gone unpunished.
The IAPA has asked readers for the past six months, through ads in more than 160 Western Hemisphere publications, to subscribe to its “Let Us Put an End to Impunity”. Readers can sign up at the website www.impunidad.com for the campaign that is designed to halt unpunished crimes against media professionals committed over the past 15 years.
Rocha produced a popular radio program in Texeiras de Freitas, Bahia. He had offered on the air to deliver to a criminal court judge a file on organized crime, including the names of policemen and politicians involved in a series of murders that rocked the city.
Rocha was unable to make good his offer because he was kidnapped April 22, 1991, and presumably murdered. An investigation led to the arrest of several suspects. The prosecutor petitioned jail time for some of them. But all were absolved because, it was alleged, the victim’s body had not appeared. The case has been shelved.
The IAPA has a space at its website (www.impunidad.com) where readers can sign a letter that will be sent to Bahia’s attorney general, Achiles de Jesús Siquara Filho.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is funding the campaign promoted by the IAPA through its Impunity Committee. The project also includes investigative reporting programs, training for reporters whose work puts them at risk, and monitoring of press freedom conditions in the Americas.
Regional newspapers and magazines, whether they are IAPA members, have cooperated voluntarily with the campaign by providing space on their pages every month for the IAPA-produced ads.
The August publicity attracted thousands of readers to sign a letter addressed to Colombia’s attorney general, Luis Camilo Osorio. The letter requested his intervention to find those guilty of murdering Elizabeth Obando Murcia in Colombia last year.
FUENTE: nota.texto7
