Vienna – The number of journalists killed in Latin America fell last year to 11, four fewer than in 2004, but self-censorship increased in the region, the Vienna-based International Press Institute said in its latest annual report released Thursday.
Three reporters were killed in Haiti, two in Brazil, two in Colombia, two in Mexico and one each in Ecuador and Nicaragua in 2005.
According to IPI, a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists dedicated to safeguarding press freedom, reporters in several Latin American countries were prosecuted for slander and libel, which in turn has led to “a great deal of self-censorship.”
The IPI also condemned the use of official advertising to “punish or reward” publications and broadcasters and said “the excessive use of force against journalists by the police and army was also a cause for concern.”
The IPI, however, characterized as a “blow against impunity” the fact that several people received lengthy jail sentences for the slayings of journalists in Brazil and Colombia.
In Cuba, the Institute said Fidel Castro’s Communist-ruled government continued to exercise “tight control over (the island’s) journalists,” regarding them as “counter-revolutionaries.” Cuban security forces in 2005 “systematically monitored, harassed or detained” independent journalists who had not been arrested during a huge 2003 crackdown on the dissident press, the IPI said.
The IPI also said Venezuelan socialist-populist President Hugo Chavez stepped up pressure on the press with last year’s enactment of the Social Responsibility Law for Radio and Television, which expanded the “categories of government officials protected by insult provisions.”
The Institute said the threats to press freedom in Mexico have continued since one-party rule ended there in 2000.
“Journalists in the capital, Mexico City, were generally able to report freely, but journalists reporting on drug trafficking, official corruption and other illegal activities in the northern states bordering the United States and in the southern states of Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca were increasingly targeted by those seeking to prevent the media from exposing their activities,” the IPI said.
