The Other Americans: Press Freedom is Under Attack in Central America
World Press Freedom day rang hollow across the region, where newsrooms have been shuttered, journalists detained, and one outlet is relocating to another country.
BY JEFF ABBOTT MAY 5, 2023 5:25 PM
May 3 marked the thirtieth annual World Press Freedom Day, promoting an independent media free from government censorship and violence around the globe. But as the international community commemorated the day, it was difficult to celebrate in Central America, where the media has become a target of the far right in recent decades.
The day before World Press Freedom Day, on May 2, the criminal trial against renowned Guatemalan journalist and founder of the newspaper El Periódico, José Rubén Zamora, began in Guatemala City. The case against him has represented one of the gravest attacks on press freedoms in the country.
“I am a political prisoner,” Zamora told journalists as he entered the courthouse in Guatemala City. “I’ve been treated as such.” He added: “In this trial they are going to sentence me.”
The case is reflective of continued rollbacks of democratic norms by authoritarian governments in the region. The goal is to silence critics and those who investigate acts of corruption.
“The case against [Zamora] is one of the principal illustrations that the co-optation of the judicial system has grave consequences for the freedom of speech,” Carolina Jimenez Sandoval, the president of the Washington Office on Latin America, said during a press conference in Guatemala City on April 21, following a visit to Guatemala along with observers from Human Rights Watch and the Kennedy Center. “His arrest seeks to send a message to journalists to silence [them].”As a result of this case, they show that persecuting the press is a fairly clear objective in a strategy of silencing [critics].”
Zamora is facing charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling. He was arrested in July 2022, and has spent months in pre-trial detention. But these charges are dubious at best, as the case was developed in just seventy-two hours.
More:
https://progressive.org/latest/other-americans-press-freedom-under-attack-central-america-abbott-050523/
José Rubén Zamora
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The Case against Journalist José Rubén Zamora Was Built in 72 Hours
Carlos Alonso
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Julie López
The president and director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, and assistant attorney Samari Carolina Gómez Díaz will spend at least three months in pre-trial detention on the basis of a single testimony and supposed evidence that Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), told El Faro were collected in just 72 hours between July 26 and 29.
The FECI chief told El Faro that he met key witness Ronald Giovanni García Navarijo, a former executive of the Workers’ Bank (Bantrab), in person on the first day of evidence collection. Authorities claim that in the three ensuing days they verified the former banker’s word and audio and text messages that he submitted to prepare, in the afternoon on Friday, July 29, to execute a raid of Zamora’s home and the offices of elPeriódico, where they detained eight employees for 16 hours and prevented them from contacting anyone.
At the time of the raids the Public Prosecutor’s Office froze the newspaper’s bank accounts, only to release them days later after discovering that they contained the equivalent of just $500. Despite the raid of the workplace and the frozen accounts, Curruchiche has insisted in public statements that Zamora’s detention has to do with "his activity as a businessman, and not with his journalistic work."
On Tuesday, Aug. 9, Judge Freddy Orellana remanded Zamora in custody on charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling, and for Gómez on accusations of leaking confidential information. The audio recordings, text messages, and cash presented in court in hearings that Monday and Tuesday were all provided by García Navarijo. Defense attorneys Christian Ulate and Armando Mendoza argue that the evidence is based solely on the testimony of a man accused since 2016 of money laundering and embezzlement. They also assert that the Public Prosecutor’s Office taMMmpered with evidence.
More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202208/centroamerica/26331/The-Case-against-Journalist-Jos%C3%A9-Rub%C3%A9n-Zamora-Was-Built-in-72-Hours.htm
