Honduran Newspapers Deliver Photos of Resistance

Fernández: Honduran Newspapers Deliver Photos of Resistance Participants to Police

November 2, 2009
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Dear Colleague,

Narco News has learned of and confirmed a Honduran daily newspaper practice of handing over photo images of resistance members at anti-coup marches to the National Police, and that this practice has been going on since the June 28 coup d’etat.

Belén Fernández reports:

“Andrés Pavón, president of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), confirmed that the presence at marches of photographers from the daily El Heraldo had not resulted in extensive photographic coverage of the events in the paper itself, causing him to question the real purpose of the images. Speaking at the Burger King outside the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa where Zelaya continues to be confined, Pavón defined newspaper contributions to police archives as journalistic terrorism – a different take on the media terrorism that coup president Roberto Micheletti had accused Channel 36 of on September 21 for reporting that Zelaya was in Tegucigalpa and not in a Managua hotel.

“El Heraldo, La Prensa, and La Tribuna – essentially interchangeable mouthpieces for the Honduran coup government – appear on the list of members of the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA), whose mission according to the organization’s website includes ‘defend[ing] press freedom wherever it comes under threat in the Americas.’ Ricardo Trotti – Press Freedom Director for the organization representing newspaper owners throughout the hemisphere – responded over the phone to a request for the definition of ‘press freedom’ utilized by the IAPA, his first response being that he did not understand the question; his second was that the Declaration of Chapultepec, adopted by the Hemispheric Conference on Freedom of Expression in Mexico City in 1994, provided some aspects of the definition but that press freedom was an abstract rather than a concrete concept….

“…According to the source who revealed the direct cooperation between Honduran papers and the police, the practice of ceding photos has diminished in accordance with the diminishing attendance at marches of relevant photographers, perhaps due to fear of reprisals. Campesino leader Rafael Alegría commented near the Congress building in Tegucigalpa the other day that the Resistance was ‘neither surprised nor scared by’ the image-sharing but that it remained committed to peaceful action.”

Read Fernández’ complete article online at Narco News:

http://www.narconews.com/Issue61/article3913.html

From somewhere in a country called América,

David B. Briones
Cyber Development Director
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconews.com

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