2024-02-02 11:39:26
Gloria Silvia Orellana
@DiarioCoLatino
Angélica Cárcamo, president of the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), presented the 2023 report on the “Situation of Press Freedom in El Salvador”, which closed with the record of 311 attacks on journalists from various media outlets and , to the same union of journalists.
“As you know, these reports have been compiled annually since 2018, and it is unfortunate to say that the trend of attacks that we have registered as APES is increasing rapidly. If we compare the year 2018 when data of 65 cases were recorded for the first time to the 311 that we have documented last year,” Cárcamo compared.
The Report on the “Situation of Press Freedom in El Salvador” compiled 168 cases and each of these records involved one or several attacks against one or several journalists. In that sense, between January and December 2023, the Aggression Monitoring Center for Journalists documented 311 attacks in total.
In this context, Cárcamo stated that in 2018, the 65 cases of violations that they documented mostly came from Organized Crime. Meanwhile, for the year 2023, the entity that attacked the press the most was the Salvadoran State, which “far from generating protection mechanisms, is promoting attitudes to attack journalistic work,” when comparing the figures for both years.
“The criminalization that we have in 2023 is worrying, with the case of community journalist Víctor Barahona, who spent 11 months in prison arbitrarily detained within the framework of the emergency regime, who upon leaving prison and making his case public by the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic tried to revoke his freedom. We reiterate that there is an intention to silence critical voices,” he explained.
“We also had the case with collateral damage of the environmental journalist Carolina Amaya, that her father was detained between February and December 2023, and that despite a court order for his release, the authorities did so in an arbitrary and complex manner to give him their freedom,” said Cárcamo.
The president of the APES mentioned the uncertainty that exists with the work of many community journalists, who have constantly received threats from authorities such as the National Civil Police (PNC) and the Armed Forces (FAES) in their coverage, especially for the issue of the regime that they use to threaten and demand that images or audios be deleted illegally.
“I must take advantage of mentioning that for the year 2023, we continue with impunity in a series of cases such as that of -Pegasus-, which in January 2024, marks 2 years, that as APES we filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic , on the issue of espionage on more than twenty journalists, but there is no progress on these effects on the press,” Cárcamo alleged.
Gabriel Labrador, APES Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, presented the report on the “Situation of Press Freedom in El Salvador.” Labrador considered it serious that the violations and attacks on the journalistic union are multiplying, and that they are escalating to levels of physical attacks against women and men journalists.
Labrador cited the case of a journalist from La Prensa Gráfica, who at the beginning of 2024 was exposed on social networks by a mayor, when she was doing her job interviewing a source at the public event.
“She was watched (by the mayor), that could be an attack, that mayor also took the photograph that was later posted on social networks by himself and with denigrating and stigmatizing comments from anonymous network users, and others with names.” and last name, which the mayor himself later deleted,” he commented.
Regarding the categories of victims and violations, he reported that male journalists registered 109 complaints, but considered the accelerated number of female journalists attacked alarming, with 96 complaints out of the total of 311 documented attacks.
“In the case of female journalists, it is important to recognize that not only because of their profession they are also attacked for being women and in the majority of these attacks there is a high offensive sexual content, a high content of gender violence and criticism not because his journalistic work, but for issues of his private life” he revealed.
“The record of cases regarding attacks on the media has a count of 67 violations. The Association of Journalists of El Salvador has been attacked on 27 occasions: journalists who were in a group were attacked 9 times, and as for the LGBTIQ+ population we have a record of 3 cases,” said Labrador.
Likewise, they identified that the majority of journalists attacked are from digital media, the second was journalists from print media, and in third place were freelance journalists. In fourth place, according to the APES, are television journalists, followed by community media, and radio journalists are in seventh place. And then come communicators, teachers, according to the categories. Which creates a climate of tension against the journalistic union.
“The most recent case is that of a photojournalist who was threatened by a group of employees who distribute government food boxes and illegally detained her for a time, threatening her, when she was working on documenting the delivery of packages -which-, “It is totally of public interest, the boxes were on a public street and with public employees, there was nothing illegal there,” he said.
“The media also suffers from this when they mention newspaper El Faro, Diario El Mundo, Prensa Gráfica or Radio YSUCA, there they are occupying that great umbrella of criticism and occupy the second group with the highest number of complaints of attacks that we have” Labrador reiterated.
Regarding attacks in the “digital space”, according to their records, it is the most common place for this type of cases (133 attacks), when journalists are covering their coverage, and if an official from the ruling party publishes it, it could not be have a greater impact, Labrador stated, but it changes when related media such as “La Britanny or the Blog, or on YouTube channels such as Walter Araujo’s, or other allies” take it up, which generated an impact due to their attacks.
“The majority of attacks that the union is suffering remain in the virtual space, the internet is a space of considerable violence, network
“Here Facebook, You Tube is consumed more, and Tik Tok is on the rise, and there the patterns of violence are different and we want to emphasize that there is a strong component of violence in the digital sphere. As well as, physical restrictions, which are in third place in complaints. Where a police officer, soldier or public employee orders you to delete material, to leave the place of coverage or to submit to what the public employee says at that moment,” he stressed.
As for the aggressors who commit these violations to the press, they have documented former journalist Christian Guevara, deputy and current head of the bench of the official Nuevas Ideas party, with 35 reports of attacks, which they have identified as hindering journalistic practice or expressing insults. to journalists on their social networks.
Other aggressors, documented by the Aggression Monitoring Center for Journalists, are identified by the pro-government bench of Nuevas Ideas, and other deputies in general. Followed by the PNC and the FAES.
“The president of the republic and current candidate is on the list of aggressors, in the Top Ten, along with CAM agents from various mayors and a whole series of aggressors who are in the -Others- category,” he noted.
“Sometimes, we in the media become victimizers of our employees when they are unfairly dismissed without due process, by not paying them severance pay, or when there is internal harassment, sexual harassment among colleagues, that we are also recording,” he concluded. Labrador.
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