Attacks on the Press - Committee to Protect Journalists

attacks on the press in 2009americas: hondurasdenied the accusations. The government placed two journalists with close tiesto Correa in charge of the stations, and said it would auction them to recoupUS$661 million it said was owed to Filibanco’s investors. By late 2009, though,both stations remained under official control.Violence and obstruction were reported in provincial areas. Several individualsburst into the offices shared by local TV station Telecosta and RadioGaviota in the northern city of Esmeraldas in April and destroyed the outlets’broadcasting equipment, Fundamedios reported. According to Telecosta’spresident, the attack was likely retribution for stories criticizing local authorities.Later that month, a group of protesters in the southern province of ElOro besieged the offices of local radio station Onda Sur and warned the staffto stop reporting critically on a local mayor’s bid for re-election, the regionalpress freedom group Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) said. In May, assailantsbelieved to be from the same group broke the station’s windows, sprayedthe building with gasoline, and lit it on fire, IPYS reported. The building sustainedminor damage.In the country’s interior, police routinely harassed and detained local journalists,press freedom advocates reported. Francisco Farinango, a reporter forthe local Radio Intipacho in the northern Pichincha region, was briefly detainedin January while reporting on a protest by the indigenous Tupigachi communityagainst a law that allows for mineral extraction in their territory, according tolocal press freedom groups. That same month, Adolfo Caiminagua Herrera,a correspondent in the southern city of Machala for the national daily DiarioOpinión, was arrested while photographing police at a local voting center. IsraelDíaz, a cameraman for the local TV station Lago Sistema Televisión in theprovince of Sucumbíos, was beaten by police officers as he attempted to cover aroutine police operation in April, the groups said. Díaz was not seriously hurt,but his colleague, Vicente Albán, a reporter for the same station, was detainedfor several hours.In June, the Criminal Court of El Oro sentenced Milton Nelson ChacaguasayFlores, director of the weekly publication La Verdad in the city of Machala,to four months in prison on libel charges. The case stemmed from a 2007 storyaccusing Finance Minister Francisco Quevedo Madrid of having links to a mancharged in a nationwide Ponzi scheme. Chacaguasay had barely been out of prisonwhen the sentence was imposed. He had been freed in May after serving mostof a 10-month prison sentence on separate libel charges.A second journalist was jailed on defamation charges during the year. FreddyAponte Aponte, a reporter for local radio station Luz y Vida in the southwesterncity of Loja, was released in January after serving most of a six-month term. Hehad been convicted of defaming a former mayor.HONDURASt o p developments»»Coup damages press freedom, revealspartisan media divide.»»Supporters of both sides in the conflictwage attacks on the press.key statistic2 2Days that Radio Globo andCanal 36 were off the air due togovernment censorship.The june coup that ousted president manuel zelaya, along withthe bitter stalemate that ensued, damaged press freedom in Honduras andheightened partisan divisions in the news media. An interim governmentcracked down on news coverageand withstood intenseinternational pressure untila scheduled Novemberpresidential election broughtPorfirio “Pepe” Lobo, a conservativebusinessman, to office.As Lobo pledged reconciliation,Zelaya decried thevote as tainted.The election divided theregional and internationalcommunity. The UnitedStates, which initially soughtto reverse the coup, ultimately backed the vote as credible, as did several othernations. Venezuela, whose leader, Hugo Chávez, was a strong Zelaya supporter,refused to recognize the election, joining regional powers Brazil and Argentinain dismissing the vote as tainted. International electoral groups declined tomonitor the vote, The Washington Post noted, because of the political conflictand irregularities such as the silencing of pro-Zelaya media.The political crisis began June 28 when Zelaya—who was pursuing a controversialproposal to eliminate presidential term limits—was arrested by the armyand put on a plane to Costa Rica. As veteran congressional leader Roberto Michelettiwas sworn in as interim president, security forces closed local broadcasters,blocked transmission of international networks, and briefly detained reporters,CPJ research showed.A day after the coup, armed soldiers arrested five foreign correspondents andtwo support workers inside their hotel in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Adriana Sivori,a reporter for the Venezuelan government-backed regional network Telesur, herproducer María José Díaz, and her cameraman Larry Sánchez were detained,along with Nicolás García and Esteban Felix, a video journalist and photographerreporting for The Associated Press, and their two unidentified assistants. All ofthem were released a short time later, according to CPJ interviews. Cable televisiontransmissions were blocked intermittently during the 48 hours after thecoup, interrupting coverage from CNN and Telesur. By using law enforcement8 48 5