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AG threats to K/News… Miami-based press association supports protection for local journalists
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has welcomed precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in favour of journalists with the Kaieteur News in Guyana.
The protection requested to the Guyana government is for the newspaper’s Publisher, Glenn Lall, Editor Adam Harris, and senior reporter Leonard Gildarie.
The IACHR on November 5 ruled that the lives and personal integrity of the three were in danger after they were threatened for publishing reports of serious wrongdoing by the government. The government had 15 days to provide the journalists with concrete protection, investigate the matter and report periodically to the IACHR on actions that it will be taking on both matters.
The Government of Guyana has since disclosed that it has responded to IACHR but did not reveal details.
IAPA President Gustavo Mohme, Editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, expressed his pleasure at the IACHR decision.
“This is an important message. The action helps to safeguard the journalists, but more than that it protects the people’s right to receive information of great public interest.”
In explaining the basis of its decision the IACHR said that Kaieteur News had published articles of involvement by senior government officials in secret deals, of the sale of public assets and of bribery. However, the last straw was contained in a recording of a telephone conversation between the South American country’s Attorney General, Anil Nandlall, and Gildarie in which the official threatened the journalist and advised he stop working because his newspaper could suffer the consequences of its publications.
Following the paper’s formal complaint to the authorities neither the Attorney General nor the government denied the facts nor was the report investigated or any protection given to the journalists.
Claudio Paolillo, Chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and Editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, stressed the “great preventive character” of the precautionary measures “necessary in a country and in a continent where there should be more political will and action on the part of governments to investigate murders of journalists and break the vicious circle where violence and impunity are nourished.”
The IAPA said its attention to this case is due to a background of violence against this newspaper. Five employees of the paper were executed in an attack on its press on August 8, 2006.
Last week, amidst mounting pressure, Director of Public Prosecution, Shalimar Ali-Hack, came out and said that based on the complaint made by Lall, there was no evidence to charge the Attorney General. That decision had been met with widespread disbelief, including condemnation from a lawyer of the newspaper.
The conversation between Nandlall and the reporter has been also widely condemned by a wide cross section of Guyanese, including the lawyers’ associations and local and international media bodies.
In the profanity-laced conversation, the Minister admitted to using state funds for personal reasons; of having knowledge of an attack on the newspaper; of knowledge of intervention by Government officials in an investigation; and of attempting to procure a female reporter for sex for an uncle.
He also claimed he was a high classed Indian, a “Chatree”.
The tape had been one of the most downloaded ones on social websites this year.
Nandlall claimed that the conversation was a private one. Initially, Government had insisted that it was manipulated. They did not explain what “manipulated” meant.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida.
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