From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: Press Freedom -- Washington Style
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 08:44:05 GMT

Press Freedom -- Washington Style

According to Americas Watch:
[From Sklar (see below)]

    "Any discussion of press freedom in El Salvador must begin by
    pointing out the elimination of the country's two main opposition
    newspapers. _La Cronica del Pueblo_ was closed in 1980 when
    members of the security forces raided a San Salvador coffee shop
    where the paper's editor and one of its photographers were
    meeting.

    Editor Jaime Suarez, a 31-year old prize-winning poet, and Cesar
    Najarro, 28, were disembowelled by machetes and then shot. In 1981
    _El Independiente_ was closed when Army tanks surrounded its
    offices. This was the culmination of a long series of attacks,
    which included the machinegunning of a 14-year-old newsboy,
    bombing attempts, and assassination attempts against editor Jorge
    Pinto..." [62]

[With this backdrop, Washington's "sentiments against government
censorship" need not be offended in the case of El Salvador and other
"fledgling democracies" now enjoying the support of our tax-dollars. 

Lord Chitnis of Britain notes, "what of the anti-government journalist
in El Salvador? [..] Not long ago, the mutilated, decapitated bodies of
journalists were found on the roadside. Indeed, there is now no
opposition paper to censor. They have been forced into silence."
[Lord Chitnis, _The Election in Nicaragua: 4 November 1984,pp. 20-21]
--Harel]

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 65 reporters have
been murdered in El Salvador and Guatemala. In short, the press in El
Salvador and Guatemala have been "censored by death squads."  [63]

More journalists have been killed in El Salvador in the past 10 years
than anywhere else in the world [***]

        [The above only begins to convey the human rights situation  ]
        [in El Salvador. Use GET (as at top of this file) with       ]
   -->  [AI_REPT ELSALV ; see also DEATHSQD ES_US among other files  ]
   -->  [on El Salvador and, e.g., FSLN H-RIGHTS or LAT-AMER HMNRTS90]
        [for documented comparisons of human rights. Two examples:   ]

    "Efforts by El Salvador's independent and church-run human rights
    organizations to investigate these killing have been hampered by
    the harassment, intimidation, imprisonment, torture, mutilation,
    extrajudicial execution and "disappearance" of their members..."

    "Amnesty International has concluded that the Salvadoran `death
    squads' are simply used to shield the government from
    accountability for the torture, `disappearance' and extrajudicial
    executions committed in their name. The squads are made up of
    *regular army and police agents*, acting in uniform or plain
    clothes, *under the orders of superior officers*."  (emphasis
    added) [Who Runs the ``Death Squads''", pp. 8-9]

        --Amnesty International report, _El Salvador: ``Death
          Squads'' -- A Government Strategy_, late 1988.
        (See AI_REPT ELSALV)

[62] Americas Watch, _The Continuing Terror: Seventh Supplement to the
Report on Human Rights in El Salvador_ (New York, September 1985),
pp. 151-52.

[63] Cited in FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), _Extra!_,
October/November 1987

[***] _Gulf war obscures the burning issues of El Salvador_, Alexander
Cockburn and Richard McKerrow, In These Times, Feb 20-26, 1991

[Numbered footnotes cited in Sklar, _Washington's War on Nicaragua_
--HB]