Joint appeal for end to persecution of community and opposition media

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reporters Without Borders

Joint appeal for end to persecution of community and opposition media
Published on Friday 1 April 2011.

The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters for Latin America and Caribbean (AMARC-ALC) and Reporters Without Borders appeal again for an end to the hostility toward community and opposition media (or what are regarded as opposition media) amid the continuing social unrest in Honduras.

They issued their joint appeal as a Reporters Without Borders representative travelled on 31 March to the southern island of Zacate Grande, where the community radio station La Voz de Zacate Grande has been the target of constant harassment ever since it began broadcasting on 14 April 2010. The president of the board that oversees the station, was shot in the leg on last 13 March by two critics of its editorial policies. The radio station defends the cause of the Association for the Development of Police and soldiers have repeatedly used violence against peaceful demonstrations by teachers and others during the second half of March. Their repressive behaviour has been all the more outrageous for being accompanied by a clear desire to prevent any coverage of these events by media that criticised the June 2009 coup d’état.

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The special rapporteurs on freedom of expression of the United Nations and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have voiced concern about the mounting violence against community media in Honduras and have called on the government to comply with its international obligations regarding human rights and freedom of expression, including the duty to protect the practice of journalism by community media, which are currently fulfilling a key role in social debate and reporting news that other media deliberately omit.

Read more: http://en.rsf.org/honduras-joint-appeal-for-end-to-01-04-2011,39931.html