The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) noted that the year 2022 has been marked by a “general climate of insecurity” in Paraguay, which it considers to have been aggravated “by the collaboration of the state apparatus with drug-trafficking mafias”. a report, adopted this Sunday at the 78th General Assembly.
In the report on the situation of press freedom, the agency referred, among other things, to the murders of journalist Humberto Coronel and mayor José Carlos Acevedo, both in the town of Pedro Juan Caballero, on the border with Brazil, and of the prosecutor. antimafia Marcelo Pecci, victim of an attack on a Colombian island.
Also read: Check out our Uruguay coverage
Coronel, who covered corruption and organized crime, was killed last September as he was leaving the Radio Amambay 570 AM radio station, owned by the family of José Carlos Acevedo, who, according to the IAPA, was killed in May “in retaliation for the confrontation public with organized crime”.
The report warns that data from the Observatory on Violence against Journalists account for the murder of 20 journalists in the last 30 years in Paraguay since the communicator Santiago Leguizamón was killed in 1991, also in Pedro Juan Caballero.
The IAPA also cited the death last May, at the hands of assassins in Colombia, of Pecci, deputy prosecutor of the Specialized Unit for the Fight Against Organized Crime, as “an event that shook the country.”
“The connections of drug trafficking and its ramifications with state powers and important sectors of the political class, for the crimes of money laundering and smuggling, seem to be supported in this period by the indications of corruption in the state apparatus that came to light. through investigations and requests for reports in the House of Senators for former President Horacio Cartes and in the Central Bank of Paraguay,” the document added.
He also alludes to the US decision to include former president Cartes (2013-2018) and the country’s vice president, Hugo Velázquez, on its list of the corrupt.
In a review of cases affecting journalists, IAPA explained that last July the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed the innocence of journalist Édgar Chilavert in a case of child sexual abuse.
That same month, a sentencing judge declared the criminal offense extinguished and the dismissal of journalist Carlos Giménez, from the newspaper La Nación, in a suit for defamation, defamation and defamation.
Also in July, the Third Chamber of the Court of Criminal Appeals ratified the sentence of one year and nine months of probation handed down last January against journalist Marcos Velázquez.
In August, the Public Ministry announced the imputation of criminal acts of sexual harassment, sexual coercion and coercion against the journalist Carlos Granada – against whom there is an arrest warrant -, following “massive complaints” from employees of the Albavisión Group (SNT) channels. and C9N).
In September, a judge acquitted journalist Juan Carlos Lezcano and ABC Color newspaper director Natalia Zuccolillo in a defamation complaint.
Finally, IAPA found that the country’s first native digital media, El Nacional, founded in August 2020, denounced “discrimination in the distribution of official advertisements.”
With information from SWI/EFE
