MIAMI (September 22, 2005)—A joint mission of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) and the Peruvian Press Council (CPP) has called on Peruvian authorities to fully solve the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández, killed in Pucallpa on April 21, 2004, so as to bring both those behind the murder and those who carried it out to justice.

In winding up their mission in the Peruvian capital, Lima, and in Pucallpa, the two organizations on Tuesday signed the Declaration of Pucallpa (see full text attached), to which also were signatories the Press and Society Institute and dozens of journalists and other news media representatives attending the ceremony held at the CPP’s offices in Lima.

The Declaration includes a call for the creation of a multimedia group to look into the exposures reported by the slain journalist. It also calls on the Peruvian government to introduce legal reforms to ensure that crimes against journalists are not subject to any statute of limitation and to combat the impunity surrounding such offenses. The media pledged to take joint action, initiate public awareness campaigns, engage in the training of journalists and simultaneously publish the findings of the investigations.

Regarding the Rivera case, the delegation was able to determine the current status of the legal proceedings underway against certain people alleged to be intermediaries or to have actually carried out the murder who are presently under arrest. Special emphasis, however, was being urged on also bringing the masterminds of the crime to justice.

IAPA President Alejandro Miró Quesada said, “We have come here to demand due process and that not only those who committed the murder be punished, but also those behind it. This is a priority in order to combat the climate of impunity and thus contribute to ensuring that no other journalist in Pucallpa or anywhere else in Peru is murdered.”

Miró Quesada, editor of the Lima daily newspaper El Comercio, also called on Peruvian political and judicial officials to determine guilt in the 1989 murder of American reporter Todd Smith, correspondent of The Tampa Tribune, Florida. The case took on a new turn recently with indications of who might have been behind this crime.

Referring to the undertaking of the Peruvian press to work together, CPP President Gustavo Mohme Seminario, editor of La República, declared that “the murder of a journalist shall not silence exposures by the press; on the contrary, it will cause them to multiply.”

The delegation held meetings in Lima with Interior Minister Rómulo Pizarro Tomasio; Judge César San Martín of the Permanent Criminal Court, and journalists belonging to the CPP who are following the Rivera case. En Pucallpa it met with the judges involved in the case,  Edgar Padilla Vásquez, Carmen Rosa Cucalón and José Ríos Olsson; public prosecutors Hernán Herrera Robles and Ricardo Hennings Otoya; 6th Territorial Division police chief Ariosto Obregón; journalist Paul Garay, and the provincial mayor of Coronel Portillo, Luis Váldez Villacorta. The group also went to the Pucallpa Jail, where they talked to Tercero Samuel Gonzalez and Martín Flores, being held there on charges of arranging the murder.

In addition to Miró Quesada and Mohme, the delegation was made up of CPP Executive Director Kela León and IAPA Press Freedom Director Ricardo Trotti.

The Declaration of Pucallpa is based on the Declaration of Hermosillo, a similar document signed during the Meeting of Editors and Publishers in the Northern Border Region of Mexico in Hermsollio, Sonora state, on August 30.  

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Declaration of Pucallpa

Pucallpa, Peru

September 20, 2005

The Peruvian Press Council, Inter American Press Association, and Press and Society Institute, signatories to this Declaration, express our concern at the murders of journalists in the exercise of their professional duties, in particular the murder of journalist Alberto Rivera Fernández, which has yet to be fully solved.

The executives, editors, reporters and professionals of the Peruvian news media who have come together in this initiative wish call the public’s attention to the harm this criminal violence inflicts the state of freedoms in the country, especially freedom of expression. This affects not only the right to free expression of ideas but also the people’s fundamental right to know.

Faced with this situation, we agree to take action that seeks to defend our professional mission and to establish before those communities we serve that each time a journalist’s voice is silenced society is deprived of essential information needed to consolidate a fairer, freer and more democratic nation.

This is the first step toward a collaboration born of the confidence that society has placed in us. It sends a clear message that by uniting we shall combat crimes against the press and the impunity surrounding them.

For the above reasons and in accordance with UNESCO’s Resolution 29, we agree:

1.To repudiate murder and declare any physical violence against journalists a crime against humanity.

2.To call on the Executive Branch, the Legislative Branch, the Judicial Branch and the Attorney General’s Office to provide the guarantees necessary to the practice of journalism, and especially, to solve unpunished crimes against journalists.

3.To ask the Peruvian Congress to improve legislation ensuring that those responsible for these murders are brought to trial and convicted and to adopt the principle that there be no statute of limitation for crimes against those who are exercising the right to freedom of expression.

In accordance with the foregoing, the signatories to this Declaration undertake:

1.To appoint a specialist team of investigative reporters from the various news media to continue investigations initiated by journalist victims, with the findings to be published simultaneously in the participating media.

2.To hold regional training seminars for reporters and editors on high-risk situations, ethics and professional development.

3.To continue conducting public awareness campaigns in our news media calling attention to crimes against journalists, impunity and the value of freedom of expression.

4.To invite all journalists, press organizations and news media to embrace this Declaration.