His Excellency Alfonso Portillo Cabrera
President
Casa Presidencial
Guatemala City
Guatemala
Fax: +502-239 00 90
Vienna, 30 March 2001
Your Excellency,
The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors and media executives, is deeply concerned over the safety of Silvia Gereda, editor of the investigative unit of elPeriódico, as well as two other reporters for the independent Guatemala City daily.
According to information before IPI, Gereda was leaving the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, where she was attending classes, when she was approached by a man who grabbed her by the neck and threatened to kill her and two of her colleagues if elPeriódico continued to publish stories about corruption at the state bank, Credito Hipotecario Nacional. Hours before this incident, Gereda had been stopped by a man who identified himself as an employee of the state bank and told her that she was being followed and her every movement monitored. He warned her that both she and her colleagues, Luis Escobar and Enrique Castańeda, were in grave danger.
The threat against Gereda and her colleagues is not the first case of harassment or intimidation directed at journalists working for elPeriódico, which is known for its critical coverage of official corruption. In February, over 50 armed demonstrators tried to force entry into the offices of the daily. IPI was informed that the demonstrators were identified as being followers of both the ruling Guatemalan Republic Front party (Frente Republicano Gautemalteco) and the Minister of Communications, Luis Rabbé. The minister’s position has been repeatedly questioned by elPeriódico, which alleges that Rabbé distributed millions of dollars in public works contracts to non-existent construction companies. In an apparent campaign to intimidate elPeriódico, the television news programmes “Notisiete” and “Telediario”, as well as the radio news programme “Sonora”, have sought to discredit the daily, and Rabbé even issued a veiled threat against the newspaper’s founder and president, José Rubén Zamora.
In May 2000, several reporters from elPeriódico were threatened or intimidated while working on a story about a secret intelligence agency run by the Presidential High Command (Estado Mayor Presidencial) under the direction of a retired military officer, Jacobo Salán Sánchez. One of the reporters was followed by a car without licence plates, while others received threatening telephone calls.
The death threat is one of the most widely used methods of silencing journalists in Latin America. Although such threats are often the precursor to murder, the authorities often do not take them seriously or fail to act upon complaints from journalists.
Given Guatemala’s unfortunate history of violence against journalists, the failure to act upon these threats is all the more alarming. IPI therefore urges Your Excellency to authorise an immediate and thorough investigation into this latest incident and to do everything in your power to ensure that journalists working for the independent media in general and elPeriódico in particular are able to carry out their profession without fear of intimidation.
We thank you for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
Johann P. Fritz
Director
