Journalists in Guatemala are persecuted by the same actors who have tried to judicialize the elections held this year, according to a preliminary report from the Inter American Press Society (SIP) which must be approved this Sunday by the Press Freedom Commission in the Assembly.
The document indicates that press freedom in Guatemala has been “affected” within the framework of the electoral process that took place this year, won by academic Bernardo Arévalo de León, of the progressive party Movimiento Semilla.
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“The political and social climate is polarized as a consequence of actions undertaken by Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, of the Public Ministry, and prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche, of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), against the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). ), its magistrates and directors”pointed out the regional entity.
The report also recalled the death of two journalists, constant threats to journalists and a continuous “climate of information restriction by officials who do not give interviews or statements to independent media”.
🇬🇹The Network Breaks Fear #Guatemala (RRMG), made up of several civil society organizations, documented 18 attacks against the #press and against 28 #journalists during the second round of the general elections held in August in that nation.
— SIP • IAPA (@sip_oficial) October 30, 2023
Coup
The Inter-American Press Association explained in the same way that the prosecutor Curruchiche and the criminal judge Fredy Orellana, accused by Arévalo de León of attempting a “coup d’état” to prevent his inauguration, were also part of the judicial procedure of the renowned journalist José Ramón Zamora Moroccan.
The communicator, one of the most critical of the Government chaired by Alejandro Giammattei, was arrested in 2022 and sentenced last July to six years in prison for an alleged case of money laundering, in a process where he had to change lawyers in least seven times.
The conviction against the journalist, however, was annulled this month and a new oral and public debate against him will be held next February.
Zamora Marroquín, widely decorated abroad for his journalistic work, was arrested just five days after strongly criticizing Giammattei’s government and his closest circle for corruption.
The IAPA report also recalled that the criminal persecution against Zamora Marroquín reached eight reporters and columnists from his media outlet, El Periódico, who were forced to go into exile outside Guatemala, faced with the possibility of being prosecuted for their journalistic publications.
The two murdered journalists are Edin Frangely Alonzo López, 31, and Hugo Rolando Gutiérrez Alonzo, 33.
Both were owners of an online media in the department of Retalhuleu, about 150 kilometers southwest of Guatemala City, the same place where they were shot at on August 11, as the report recalled.
