IAPA resolved to:
---Urge Argentina not to enact a tax on newspaper ads, which
could
threaten the survival of small newspapers.
---Demand an investigation into the unsolved January 1997
slaying
of Jose Luis Cabezas, a crusading Argentine photographer killed
while looking into suspected government corruption.
---Ask Brazil's Supreme Court and justice minister to ensure
that
large damage awards ordered by courts against news organizations
don't threaten press freedom.
---Urge St. Kitts and Nevis to investigate the firebombing of
The
Observer newspaper's offices.
---Express concern at recent court decisions in Costa Rica,
including the conviction of three journalists on charges of
libeling a justice minister --- something with which they had not
been originally charged.
---Demand that Cuba revoke a recently enacted law making it a
criminal offense to provide information to news media, stop
persecuting independent journalists, release jailed journalists and
restore freedom of expression on the Caribbean island.
---Congratulate The Associated Press on its 150th anniversary
and
salute the 23 AP men and women who have lost their lives while on
assignment. The news cooperative was founded in 1848 in New York
City. Today, its reports go to more than 15,000 newspaper, radio
and television outlets in 112 countries.
---Exhort Peru to stop persecuting Jose Arrieta, a journalist
forced into exile after reporting on human rights violations by the
armed forces. It also called on Peru to restore the citizenship of
Israeli-born Baruch Ivcher, who lost his majority stake in Channel
2 television after the station reported on abuses committed by the
military.
---Applaud passage of a law in Peru that rejected mandatory
licensing of journalists. IAPA also urged Chile's Congress to
reject licensing legislation and called for repeal of licensing
restrictions in Colombia, Panama and Venezuela.
---Urge governments throughout the region to eliminate statutes
of
limitations on crimes committed against journalists and strengthen
measures to try and convict those who mastermind journalists'
murders.
---Support during the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Chile
all
initiatives in favor of freedom of speech and press.
---Reject prosecutions of journalists for publishing results of
election opinion polls. Journalists faced prosecutions for doing so
in Mexico, Paraguay and Costa Rica.
---Pressure police to solve 12 other killings of Latin American
journalists since the group's last meeting in October: those of
Brazilians Ronaldo Santana de Araujo, Edgar Lopes de Faria, Manoel
Leal de Oliveira, Jose Carlo Mesquita; Colombian journalists
Alejandro Jaramillo, Francisco Castro Menco, Jairo Elias Marquez,
Oscar Garcia Calderon and Didier Aristizabal; Mexican journalists
Margarito Morales and Luis Mario Garcia; and Guatemalan newspaper
editor Ronald de Leon.
---Call on the governor of Puerto Rico to put an end to a
campaign
of harassment and coercion against the newspaper El Nuevo Dia and
other news media and urge the government to allocate official
advertising among media without regard to the news reports in those
media.
| © 1998Associated Press |