The Committee to Protect Journalists demanded that the Guatemalan authorities release the owner of an opposition newspaper arrested last July and stop investigations against journalists from that medium.
Last Tuesday, a Guatemalan judge opened a second criminal proceeding against José Rubén Zamora, president and owner of the opposition newspaper The newspaper who has been in pretrial detention since last July. According to the indictment, the journalist allegedly tried to stop an investigation against him for alleged money laundering in 2021.
In addition, the magistrate accepted the request of the Public Ministry to investigate several journalists and columnists of that newspaper, which has published reports on state corruption in Guatemala.
“Prevent Criticism”
The Committee for the Protection of Journalists demanded that the authorities release Zamora and stop the investigations against the communicators of that medium. The Guatemalan Association of Journalists also rejected the investigations, calling them “a new attempt to criminalize freedom of expression.”
“Journalists right now feel that there is harassment, an attempt by the public power to prevent the free exercise of the profession, to impede criticism. In the case of the newspaper directed by the journalist José Rubén Zamora, who has been imprisoned for more than a year ago, supposedly the accusation is of money laundering, but criminal proceedings were immediately initiated against the newspaper’s staff, the administration, the financiers and, lately, the journalists,” Byron Barrera, the president of the Association of Journalists of Guatemala (APG).
“This violates the legal system, violates the democratic system, because there is a procedure for the Printing Courts, established by a Law for the Emission of Thought that is constitutional in nature, and the judges and the Public Prosecutor’s Office know that the established procedure is for the Courts of Special printing to judge situations of injury, slander or defamation that journalists may be involved in. However, these offenses are now being penalized and that is the serious thing, because it is causing a sensation in the media, among journalists, that there is a de facto persecution,” Barrera stresses.
“It looks like a punishment“
According to the president of the APG, if the newspaper The newspaper is particularly in the crosshairs, it is because “there is a before and after of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, which functioned under the patronage of the United Nations, the CICIG: when the previous government of Jimmy Morales expelled the CICIG, a kind of revenge against all the people who were supporting the fight against corruption began, and one of them was precisely The newspaper, which has always generated a space for investigation and denunciation. Well, the perception that exists is that it is indeed a case of persecution.”
In addition, although “there have been many cases with more serious accusations where a substitute measure has been given, house arrest to political figures, on the other hand, in the case of José Rubén Zamora, he is held prisoner, incommunicado, in subhuman conditions , and then this is seen as a punishment for the work he did in favor of the fight against corruption,” he stresses.
Zamora will be subjected to a controversial trial on May 2 for a first accusation of alleged money laundering. According to the Prosecutor’s Office, he participated in a scheme of blackmail and money laundering for around 37,500 dollars against businessmen in exchange for not publishing information that would harm them.
The 66-year-old journalist describes himself as “politically persecuted” and estimates that the accusations were mounted by the Guatemalan President, Alejandro Giammattei, and the Attorney General, Consuelo Porras, to silence their publications on corruption.
The US government said Thursday that it was “concerned” by the investigations against journalists in Guatemala and estimated that “criminalizing” the work of the press “undermines democratic norms,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said Thursday.
And with the AFP
