IAPA Vice President Covers for Press Censorship in Honduras (Update: IAPA Responds)

By Al Giordano

Edgardo Dumas, publisher of the pro-coup daily La Tribuna in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and the country’s former Defense Minister, is saying that he speaks for the Inter American Press Association (IAPA where he sits on one of 13 committees) to claim there is no media censorship under the coup regime in Honduras.

(This would not be the first time that the IAPA and its newspaper owners acted in ways contrary to their stated mission in Latin America.)

Well, of course his newspaper isn’t being censored: It spouts only the authorized propaganda of the coup regime.

Dumas said, in this interview today with W Radio in Bogotá, Colombia:

Dumas: Right now, today, July 2, I don’t see any limit on freedom of the press. The four newspapers are putting out the impartial and true news… No TV or radio station has been interfered with.”

Q. Are you sure that the press is functioning normally today in Honduras?

Dumas: I am absolutely certain... I have no doubt about it.

Q. So the rumors that are coming about censorship aren’t true.

Dumas: They are totally and absolutely false.

Q. You are a representative of the IAPA, no?

Dumas: Yes

Q. And as representative of IAPA you support the coup?

Dumas: I don’t support a coup because there has been no coup…

Q. The cutting of CNN was a coincidence?

Dumas: There were no cuts… right now the press is working independently without any restriction… That CNN is badly informing, I have no doubt… CNN is broadcasting on the payroll of the dictator of Venezuela Hugo Chavez.

Q. It pains me to ask this question. Should a representative of IAPA, who represents journalists like us, take sides in a situation like this?

Dumas: I’m not taking sides. I’m trying to be the most objective and impartial I can be…

Q. Pardon me. You say CNN is at the service of Chavez, isn’t that taking sides?

Dumas: …It is not informing the world of what is happening in this country

Q. Mr. Dumas. Are you saying that as a representative of the IAPA?

Dumas: I am vice president of the committee of Press Freedom of the IAPA in Honduras.

Q. Is what you are saying, has it been consulted with the IAPA or is it your personal opinion?

Dumas: It’s my personal opinion.

="MsoNormal">Q. A vice president…

Dumas: For three years I’ve been informing with the IAPA… about freedom of expression in our country…

Q. It’s clear. For you there is no repression, there has not been a coup, there is no disinformation, what is happening is of total normality, and it is CNN and the international press that is disinforming?

Dumas: Exactly.

Q. Thank you very much, Mr. Dumas.

Every board member of the IAPA must be made to watch these following videos, demonstrating the brutal closure of TV and radio stations under the coup regime in Honduras.

Watch the coup's soldiers taking Channel 36 TV off the air:

Watch the coup's soldiers force Radio Progreso 103.3 FM to cease broadcasting:

That scene is from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, after the station had reported that a coup d’etat had taken place. Spontaneously, listeners of the station in the nearby neighborhood gathered outside its gates to find out what happened. That turne d into a demonstration in defense of the radio station, with chants of “People! Unite!”

At seven minutes into the video, a radio station employee comes out and says “we’ve decided to stop broadcasting.”

Here’s what happened next:

A radio station employee explains how they were convinced by the soldiers to stop broadcasting. A local citizen then addresses the crowd: “Radio Progreso is the voice of all the people of Progreso…. They are informing us that to avoid confrontations… they have decided to close operations... They are going to close the radio frequency… Radio Progeso asks that the people organize ourselves.”

Then a group of soldiers leaves, heading for one of the various trucks they arrived in, as people yell “get out, get out.”

Even the Miami Herald, publishing from the city where IAPA is based, has reported the true facts about massive media censorship under the coup regime, so the IAPA can’t claim to be unaware of it:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- At the close of the one of this week's nightly news broadcasts, Channel 21 news anchor Indira Raudales made a plea: ``We have a right to information! This can't be happening in the 21st century!''

If Raudales offered more details, viewers did not hear them: the screen briefly went to static.

Her on-air appeal for freedom of the press came as the newly installed Honduran government kept several news outlets closed, detained international reporters, and periodically interrupted the signal of CNN en español.

Reporters for The Associated Press were taken away in military vehicles and Venezuela's Telesur network -- and any other station supportive of toppled president Manuel Zelaya -- are still off the air.

Stations that are broadcasting carry only news friendly to the new government. Several local papers have yet to publish information about Zelaya's international support in neighboring countries.

''They militarized Channel 36, which is owned by me,'' said Esdras López, director of the show, ''Asi se Informa.'' ``They brought more than a battalion -- 22 armed men -- took the channel and said nobody could come in and nobody could come out...

The dishonest statements made by Dumas, in the name of the Interamerican Press Association, are an outrage.

All too typical of so many IAPA member newspapers - it is a trade association for industry owners, after all - they are pro-regime in their own land, and therefore do not provoke the censorship and repression that authentic and independent journalists incur, so they are willing to go to the extreme of lying to cover up repression against the more journalistic competition.

I call upon the IAPA to denounce his statements, correct them through its own public statement, and summarily remove Edgardo Dumas from all positions within the organization.

If you’d like to do the same, here is an online form at its website where you can send them a message.

Or you can call (305) 634-2465.

If you get a response out of IAPA, write me at narconews@gmail.com so we can share it with all.

Update: IAPA executive director Julio Muñoz thanked me for passing along this information, and shortly thereafter sent us this statement:

Complaints of restrictions on the press continue

Miami (July 2, 2009)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today repeated its call for full respect for press freedom to the new Honduran authorities. The call came as the organization's ongoing monitoring of the situation in the Central American country compiled complaints from news media and journalists that they are still restricted, intimidated and attacked while they attempt to report.

IAPA President Enrique Santos Calderón declared, “To guarantee to the people their right to receive full information the government should not only cease any limitations on the work of the press but also protect and ensure that all media, no matter what their editorial policies, can work freely and in safety.”

“Freedom of the press and of expression is a shared asset belonging to all within a society,” Santos Calderón stated. “And nobody has the right to claim he has the legal authority to decide what the people or society can or must receive as information.” He cited Principle 1 of the Declaration of Chapultepec, which reads “The exercise of this freedom (of the press) is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people.”

The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Robert Rivard, editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, added that “we cannot allow ourselves to be misguided by the existing polarization and permit discrimination against the media, reporters and columnists who might be on one side or the other politically.” He recalled that the basis “of press freedom is plurality and diversity” and that “in this conflict we are seeing that all reporters and editors are being affected in one way or another by the conflicting groups.”

IAPA concern is based on numerous actions and complaints in the wake of last Sunday’s coup d’etat, especially incidents, restrictions and censorship that the broadcast media have been subjected to. Although some television channels have returned to the air following Sunday's suspension, including state-run Canal 8and  privately-owned Canal 6 and Canal 11, there have been complaints about control of the information being put out; international television channel Telesur, meanwhile, remains off the air.

In another offense, correspondents from The Associated Press (Esteban Félix, Nicolás García and two of their assistants) and Telesur (Adriana Sivori, María José Díaz and Larry Sánchez) were arrested on Monday while sending video and photos from a hotel room in the Honduran capital when armed members of the military burst in and took them to the Immigration Service office. They were released after it was found they were in the country legally.

Reporters, photographers and cameramen from various news media have filed complaints of attacks by the Common Crimes Unit of the Attorney General’s Office. Among them were three reporters with the Canal 42program “Entrevistado” (Interviewed) who were attacked on Sunday with sticks and stones by demonstrators yelling insults who then seized and smashed their cameras. A similar situation was reported by Radio Globoin Tegucigalpa, from where journalists were temporarily taken to the local Attorney General’s Office, whileRadio Progreso in El Progreso, Yoro province, was “invaded by a contingent of around 25 soldiers” according to a press release issued by the station.

Another TV station not allowed to broadcast was Canal 66 Maya TV. In statements to the San Pedro Sula newspaper Tiempo, Eduardo Maldonado, a former presidential candidate and host of the radio and television program “Hable como Habla” (Say What You Will), reported that on Sunday “They shut us down and locked us out, saying it was on orders.” He added that although broadcasts were resumed on Monday “We didn’t put out full information, only the official line.”

 

Print media, while less hindered in its efforts to report the news in both its print editions and its online versions, was nonetheless not exempt from restrictions and hostility by the warring groups. Some editors, after receiving constant threats against themselves and their journalists -- in their newsrooms and in cell phone messages -- have decided to protect their families by moving them out of their hometowns or out of the country.

Among other developments, the San Pedro Sula newspaper La Prensa reported that on Monday a mob threw sticks and stones at the front of its building and painted slogans in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. News photographer Juan Ramon Sosa of La Tribuna was beaten up, insulted and had his camera taken by members of the federal police in Tegucigalpa while covering a demonstration. Meanwhile, several newspapers saw their distribution facilities damaged, from vending kiosks to delivery trucks.

Carlos Mauricio Flores, editor of the Tegucigalpa daily paper El Heraldo, confirmed to the IAPA that its reporters have received phone threats and he also revealed that last Saturday (June 27) “a self-styled People’s  Commando sent to several e-mail addresses a message with degrading photos and text about at least eight journalists from independent media and called on the public to punish them.”

On a final note, the IAPA officers pointed out that many of the attacks on the Honduran press, especially those encouraged by the government, have been criticized by the organization for years now. It cited, in particular, discrimination in the placement of official advertising and the use of state resources to reward or punish journalists, as well as payments to reporters, the constant damaging remarks made about journalists and media by senior officials, the use of public media outlets as organs of propaganda, and the limitation and manipulation of official information.

In recent years a number of Honduran journalists have been forced to leave the country and there is still a high level of impunity in the unsolved cases of the murders of two journalists and two news media consultants.

That's quite the opposite version of events as that forwarded by Mr. Dumas.

IAPA made no direct comment in response to my questions about his standing to make such statements for the organization.