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Throughout 2002, scores of journalists in Cuba were harassed, detained, threatened with prosecution or jail, or had their freedom of movement restricted. Some had their reporting materials confiscated or their phone communications disrupted. Often, the government prevented journalists from covering opposition activities, turning reporters back or even forcing them to stay at their homes under…
Relations between the government and much of the press remained hostile during 2002. Human rights groups continued to criticize President Alfonso Portillo Cabrera’s administration for ignoring and postponing obligations that the Guatemalan state had agreed to under peace accords that ended the country’s 36-year civil war in 1996.
Two years after the historic election of Vicente Fox, which ended 75 years of one-party rule in Mexico, the country is being governed somewhat more democratically. But in 2002, the president still faced urgent demands to break with the government’s corrupt and secretive past in favor of transparency and public accountability.
Dear Mr. Martínez: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly protests the detention of Mexican journalist Isabel Arvide, who was charged with criminal defamation on December 23, 2002, by Chihuahua State attorney general, Jesús Solís Silva. Arvide, a Mexico Citybased journalist and author who has written many exposés about drug traffickers, corruption, and violence, as…
New York, August 19, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is alarmed that Mexican journalist and author Isabel Arvide has been charged with criminal defamation. Judge Armando Rodrígues Gaytán of the Second Penal Court in the district of Morales, Chihuahua, in north central Mexico, confirmed to CPJ that Arvide has been charged with criminal defamation.…
New York, May 31, 2002—A three-judge appeals panel yesterday sentenced two men to a 13-year prison term for the 1998 murder of Philip True, a Mexico City correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News. The unanimous ruling overturned an August 2001 verdict that had acquitted the two men. The men were found guilty of “intentional homicide,”…
New York, May 10, 2002—A Mexican newspaper publisher appeared on Wednesday, May 8, before a public prosecutor in Mexico City to respond to criminal defamation charges brought against him by a local politician. Alejandro Junco de la Vega, president and publisher of the Mexico City daily REFORMA, was charged over an article alleging that Carlos…
Amid harassment and violence against journalists, human rights activists, and judges involved in high-profile cases, Guatemala’s political stability deteriorated considerably in 2001, and press freedom along with it. The administration of President Alfonso Portillo Cabrera, a member of the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), showed little tolerance for criticism of any kind.
President Vicente Fox’s historic election in 2000 marked the end of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party’s (PRI) domination of the country and its media. But the honeymoon between the president and the media ended in 2001 with increasingly critical coverage that reflected the public’s frustration with the slow pace of reforms under the new government.
New York, February 28, 2002—Police and state security agents yesterday attacked Reuters journalists Alfredo Tedeschi and Andrew Cawthorne with batons while they covered an incident in front of the Mexican embassy in Havana. A group of Cuban citizens used a bus to crash into the gates of the embassy in hopes of seeking asylum, according…