IAPA - 1983/10/26

Document Type: 
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
05545493
Release Decision: 
RIPPUB
Original Classification: 
U
Document Page Count: 
1
Document Creation Date: 
April 3, 2019
Document Release Date: 
April 12, 2019
Sequence Number: 
Case Number: 
Publication Date: 
October 26, 1983
File: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon IAPA[15500303].pdf46.24 KB
Body: 
Approved for Release: 2018/09/17 C05545493 ���k�i UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL 26 October 1983 LIMA, PERU IAPA BY TRACY WILKINSON EO U.S. and Latin American newspaper publishers and editors said Wednesday journalists were arrested, harassed, muzzled or subjected to other violations of press liberties in 23 Western Hemisphere nations in the past year. "Attacks against freedom of the press are coming with more frequency and with greater rage," Andres Garcia Lavin, Inter American Press Association president, told the opening of the group's 39th annual general assembly. � The group said journalists have been kidnapped, jailed, wounded or killed in Argentina, Grenada, Chile, Haiti, Guatemala and El Salvador. Garcia Lavin said the IAPA sent protests to 23 nations during the last 12 months objecting to abuses of press freedom. Among the governments cited were those of Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and El Salvador. In preliminary meetings earlier in the week, the IAPA warned of encroachment of the freedom of the press in the United States, citing a "continued campaign" by the Reagan administration to censor government information. The IAPA, a generally conservative organization, charged Reagan was abusing his power by changing FBI and CIA guidelines to allow those agencies to infiltrate the news media. Some 375 members of the IAPA, principal press organization in the hemisphere, are meeting to study the gains and losses in press freedom throughout the Americas. The IAPA was most critical of the leftist Nicaraguan government, accusing. it of imposingdrastic censorship and invoking death threats against the La Prensa newspaper, which it described as the only independent publication in the Centel American nation. An IAPA report said the Sandinista government forbids La Prensa from publishing a significant amount of news -- sometimes as much as 90 percent of its material. Arbitrary "national security" laws muzzle the press in many countries, the press group said. In Uruguay, six magazines were shutdown by the military government this year -- one because it published a photograph of Spanish King Juan Carlos with a Uruguayan opposition leader. The IAPA criticized the emergence of journalism profession societies in many Latin American. nations. Membership often is mandatory or a reporter is not allowed to work in the country. The association warned the regional economic crisis could put an end to dozens of newspapers. CONTINUED Approved for Release: 2018/09/17 C05545493 13526 3.5(c)