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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Costa Rican Journalist Killed |
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by Brian Bedsworth (c/o Eric Sizemore)
(No verified email address) |
01 Sep 2001
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I found this article in the August 2001 issue of MesoAmerica, the newsletter of The Institute for Central American Studies. ICAS' website says they are dedicated to the cause of peace, justice and the well-being of the people and land of Central America. This article regards the debate over censorship in Costa Rica. |
THE DEBATE OVER PRESS CENSORSHIP IN CENTRAL AMERICA
The black graffiti scrawled across the somber stone walls of the Iglesia de San Pedro was impossible to miss. Stark and ominous, it was almost as if it was booming over a loudspeaker, demanding attention. It was loud. Louder, even than the roar of traffic on the adjacent Avenida Central.
“ Parmenio, quien te mato?” “Parmenio, who killed you?”
Even as the pedestrians quickly shuffled by, the words could not be ignored – they had already seared their place into a wounded national psyche. Similarly-worded scribbles around San Jose asked the same thing to a country too stunned to answer.
The ubiquitous graffiti, and the media firestorm that went along with it, were in response to the first murder of a journalist in Costa Rican history. Parmenio Medina, a radio producer, investigative journalist and harsh critic of several powerful interests, was gunned down 25 meters from his home last July as he returned from a taping of his radio program “La Patada.” At press time the murder was still under investigation, but because of the cold, calculated nature of the crime police suspected hired lumen (see Vol. 20, No. 7).
Aside from the gory details – Medina was shot in the face and back at point blank range – the crime shocked the country to its core for more subtle, disturbing reasons. As citizens of the most stable, longest-lasting democracy in Central America, Costa Ricans have been accustomed to enjoying a wide range of personal rights. Attacks against journalists were always something that happened in Guatemala or Nicaragua, where democracy is more suspect and the freedom of the press much more tenuous. The Costa Rican press and public saw the murder as a dangerous precedent, a major blow to their personal rights of expression. If a journalist could be killed here simply for reporting the news and expressing his opinion, just how free is the press in the freest country on the isthmus?
Eduardo Uhbam, director of La Nacidn, Costa Rica’s most widely-read daily, said if Medina’s killers are not captured and prosecuted the murder could have serious implications for the media.
“Up to the killing of Parmenio I would say that Costa Rica was a country where press freedom was respected,” he said. “The window has been broken. There is sonic limit that has been crossed.”
Reporters at La Naci6n have received threats before from drug traffickers and Guatemalan gangs, and the newspaper has even left bylines off of some stories to protect its writers. But now, Ulibarri said, threats will be taken much more seriously.
“If for some reason there is impunity [for Medina’s killers], I think the effect will be really negative. It might happen again,” he said. “Indirectly, [the murder] might cause some kind of self-censorship.”
Lauren Wolkoff, a reporter for Costa Rica’s English-language weekly The Tico Times, has covered the press freedom debate stemming from the murder.
“It makes you wonder, “well, how many more times could it occur?’ I do think it’s a major, major step in a bad direction.”
Most in the press are treating the murder as an isolated incident, an ugly stain on Costa Rica’s relatively clean human rights record. But it’s a stain that has called attention to less obvious, more deeply embedded blotches. The timing of the murder made it even more of an example for press freedom advocates. Just days before Medina’s killing, the Miami-based Inter-American Press Association 0APA) met in Costa Rica, declaring that the country’s publication and defamation laws severely limited the freedom of the press. The announcement caused a small media feeding frenzy. Some of the bolder headlines proclaimed, “Freedom of Press ... in Doubt,” “Press Feels Threats” and “Press Freedom Under the Magnifying Glass.”
The IAPA based its claim on the fact that Costa Rica is in violation of four principles of the group’s Chapultepec Declaration. Written at an IAPA conference in Mexico in ’94 and signed by Costa Rica in ’98, the document reflects the ideals of the group’s credo, which states: “the ability of nations to solve their problems depends on the ability of their people to discuss and write about them freely and without fear of punishment.” The document’s 10 principles outline the tenets of press freedom in the region, and is based on the concept that “no law or act of government may limit freedom of expression or of the press, whatever the medium.”
Top on Costa Rica’s list of offenses are the country’s ambiguous and restrictive publication and defamation laws. Perhaps the most arctic and antidemocratic is the country’s much-maligned desacato or contempt law, which makes it illegal to “offend the honor or dignity of a public official.” Truth is a defense, but the burden of proof rests on the accused.
In ’94, La Nacion editor and columnist Bosco Valverde was convicted under the law for calling three local judges “stubborn.” Valverde’s is the only conviction ever handed down under the desacato law in Costa Rica, but just the fact that it is on the books is enough to make journalists here uncomfortable and more likely to censor themselves. That same year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared that desacato laws violate the American Convention on Human Rights.
Also rar4ing high on the list of undesirable laws is the “reproduction of offenses” law, under which media are held liable for reproducing erroneous accusations even if they were obtained from a reputable source. La A'acion reporter Mauricio Herrera was convicted under the law in ’99 and sentenced to 160 days in jail, which divas later substituted by a fine. Herrera wrote a series of stories about Felix Przedborski, a former Costa Rican diplomat in Europe, and used sever
Rounding out Costa Rica’s top three most restrictive press laws is the “right to reply” law, which requires the media to publish the response of someone who claims to have been harmed by information in a report. The media must comply within three days or face heavy fines or jail time.
“Foreign courts, such as the U.S. Supreme Court, have already ruled that the ‘right to reply’ flaw] is a mechanism that can lead to self-censorship,” the IAPA’s Jairo Lanao told The Tico Times.
Ulibarri said the increased use of these laws against journalists in the Costa Rican Supreme Court in recent years is a disturbing trend. “There has been some sort of legal siege against the press,” he said.
Making things even more difficult for the press, Costa Rica’s defamation laws are criminal rather than civil, as in most other democracies, and carry steeper penalties. “Here, theoretically, we could serve jail time,” Wolkoff said.
While the IAPA conference was still going on in San Jose, La Nacion published a poll of 97 reporters from 20 different print and broadcast media. At 82%, the vast majority said the country’s press laws hindered their work, and even more – 94% – said they should be reformed. More than half polled said they had censored their own work in response to threats of legal action, which free speech advocates and critics of the laws say is the current legislation’s most heinous side effect.
While recognizing the need for media to do their job responsibly, critics say Costa Rica’s laws go too far.
The Association of Journalists, along with various media directors, presented several suggestions, including reforming the desacato and reproduction of offenses laws, to Congress on 23 July. The plan, known as the Law of Freedom of Expression and Press, is being reviewed by the congressional commission.
In response to Medina’s death and to intense media pressure and. public demonstrations, on 31 July Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly formed a commission, comprised of five legislators and three media specialists (who will have a voice but not a vote) to study the issues. The group must present its final proposal to congress within 90 days.
“I think tint many politicians have felt that this is a public opinion issue,” Ulibarri said of the recent talk of reform. “Some of these people are acting because of social pressure.”
But regardless of the motives, Ulibarri said reform would definitely be welcome. “I think at least on the legal side it will necessarily change things.”
While Costa Rica may be moving reluctantly toward reform, the same cannot be said for its neighbors in Central America. Desacato laws exist in every country on the isthmus, and weaker democratic traditions mean the media in the rest of Central America have faced more repressive laws, violence and intimidation, and influence from powerful interests. In some countries the situation is only getting worse for journalists.
President Mireya Moscoso of Panama has drawn criticism from local journalists, as well as international groups like Reporters With-out Borders, for her administration’' recent attempts to limit press freedom. The proposed “Press Law” would create a licensing organization that has the ability to punish journalists, a violation of the Chapultepec Declaration. The law also attempts to define exactly who can be a journalist in Panama – another violation (see Vol. 20, No. 7).
In Nicaragua, journalists must be licensed to practice, a violation of Chapultepec’s eighth principle.
However, Guatemala has been called the Central American nation most hostile to the press. “Guatemala might have more flexible [press] laws, but having flexible laws on the books is only one thing,” Ulibarri said. Government corruption trickles down to the media and has helped to create a government monopoly of VHF television. Minister of Communications Luis Ribbe has used the monopoly to conduct smear campaigns against independent journalists and media, with newspapers Prensa Libre and El Periodico receiving the brunt of the attacks. President Alfonso Portillo has not intervened to protect the press. The IAPA also says limited accessibility to many officials in the Guatemalan government makes it even harder for journalists to do their jobs.
Death threats and intimidation are often the methods of choice for those in Guatemala who wish to silence the media. The IAPA calls Guatemala, “a country with a sad history of violence against the press.”
- Brian Bedsworth
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See also:
www.mesoamer.org
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