Dec 17 (IPS) – CIVICUS speaks with Ramón Zamora, son of Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, about restrictions on press freedom and the challenges of defending human rights in Guatemala.
Rubén Zamora is a part of the CIVICUS Stand as My Witness marketing campaign, which seeks the discharge of unjustly imprisoned human rights defenders. The veteran journalist, founding father of Periódico Siglo 21 and famend for his investigations into corruption, has been preventing unfounded accusations of cash laundering for over two years. His authorized scenario took a flip for the more serious just lately when a courtroom ordered his return to jail after a quick interval of home arrest. As his household ready to enchantment, President Bernardo Arévalo denounced the courtroom’s resolution as an assault on freedom of expression.
What was your father’s function in Guatemalan journalism and what led him to antagonise highly effective forces?
My father comes from a household of journalists. His grandfather, Clemente Marroquín, was the founding father of La Hora, one of the crucial vital newspapers in Guatemalan historical past. In 1990, my father based the media outlet Siglo 21. A transition to democracy was underway and he had understood that democracy couldn’t perform with out actual freedom of expression, that’s, when individuals aren’t capable of categorical their concepts with out concern. That’s why it was vital to have a media outlet that, on prime of offering info, additionally included a plurality of voices.
Siglo 21 opened up areas for leftist thought, which earned it threats and assaults from sources linked to the military. As well as, from the outset it handled delicate points, which shortly put it within the crosshairs of many highly effective figures. Threats and assaults quickly adopted for his investigations into corruption. In 1993, following a coup by then President Jorge Serrano Elías, who suspended the structure and dissolved Congress, the presidential safety service got here on the lookout for my father and the household was compelled into hiding. Nonetheless, my father continued to struggle, publishing a banned version of Siglo 21, which had been censored, and sharing info with worldwide media.
After leaving Siglo 21, he based El Periódico in 1996 and Nuestro Diario in 1998, at all times with the intention of constant to analyze corruption. His investigations led to the jailing of a number of highly effective individuals. Through the years he suffered arbitrary remedy, assassination makes an attempt and kidnappings, however he continued his work, till 2022, when he was arbitrarily arrested and sentenced in retaliation for exposing corruption within the authorities of Alejandro Giammattei.
What have been the costs that despatched your father to jail?
He was accused of cash laundering, extortion and affect peddling. It was alleged that he used the newspaper and his entry to authorities sources to acquire privileged info to extort cash from businesspeople and public officers. In line with authorities officers, my father threatened to publish tales within the newspaper if they didn’t comply together with his calls for, and allegedly laundered the cash from these extortions by the newspaper.
To know the justification for his arrest, we have to take into account the broader context of assaults on the newspaper. Since 2013, the newspaper has suffered financial stress and threats from authorities officers, comparable to then Vice-president Roxana Baldetti, who known as our purchasers to threaten them with investigations in the event that they continued to help the newspaper with promoting. This decreased the paper’s revenue by greater than half. To get across the stress, my father lastly began accepting donations from individuals who needed to stay nameless. This was one of many causes he was accused of laundering undeclared cash. My father was criminalised for defending freedom of expression and denouncing corruption.
How did your father expertise these years of arbitrary detention?
At first it was very laborious as a result of he was held in a army jail, in a really small cell, fully remoted from different prisoners. In the identical jail have been individuals convicted of corruption due to the reporting he had revealed, which put him in nice hazard. He quickly began receiving fixed threats.
Within the first few days, his cell was searched a number of instances, and bedbugs discovered their approach into his mattress, inflicting extreme bites throughout his physique. He was unable to sleep due to the fixed noise, as there was building happening subsequent to his cell. It was all very annoying, each bodily and emotionally. There have been instances when he thought he would by no means get out alive. To make issues worse, we have been usually denied authorisation to enter the jail or given ridiculous excuses, which saved him in a continuing state of uncertainty.
He additionally suffered vastly throughout courtroom hearings. There was one decide who went out of his technique to forestall him getting access to a correct defence. We needed to change attorneys a number of instances and lots of of them have been persecuted for defending my father.
My brother and I labored to maintain the newspaper afloat, regardless that a number of journalists have been compelled into exile. Just a few months in the past we managed to get my father launched to deal with arrest, however his case continued to be stuffed with irregularities and a month later the advantage of home arrest was lifted. We’re nonetheless ready for the appeals courtroom to overview the choice, however it’s doubtless he must return to jail this week or subsequent. My father remains to be preventing for his freedom and a good trial to show his innocence.
How can the worldwide neighborhood assist?
The worldwide neighborhood has performed an important function in the entire course of. We have been capable of get my father out of jail largely due to stress from organisations comparable to Amnesty Worldwide, CIVICUS, the Committee to Shield Journalists, Freedom Home, Reporters With out Borders and others who spoke out and mobilised.
As a household, we have now at all times felt supported. We are actually awaiting the decision of the amparo enchantment – a petition to guard constitutional rights, which might enable my father to proceed his battle from house. This is able to be perfect, though we’re nonetheless awaiting a last resolution.
The worldwide neighborhood should proceed to defend human rights and freedom of expression and help the media, notably in international locations the place corruption and impunity prevail.
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Guatemala: ‘Corrupt elites see defenders of justice as a risk to their pursuits and attempt to silence them’ Interview with Virginia Laparra 30.Aug.2024
Guatemala: ‘Disregard for the need of the individuals expressed on the poll field is the best doable insult to democracy’ Interview with Jorge Santos 13.Jan.2023
Guatemala: ‘Our democracy is in danger within the palms of political-criminal networks’ Interview with Evelyn Recinos Contreras 04.Jul.2023
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