Fernández: Honduran Newspapers Deliver Photos of Resistance Participants to Police
November 2, 2009
Please Distribute Widely
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:
From somewhere in a country called América,
David B. Briones
Cyber Development Director
The Narco News Bulletin
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