61ª Asamblea General The Westin Hotel Indianápolis, Indiana 7 al 11 de octubre de 2005

ENRIQUE SANTOS CALDERÓN
Impunity Comittee Report
Indianapolis, Indiana
October 7 - 11, 2005


Since the last meeting in Panama, the work of the impunity committee has been especially fruitful and intense. The committee has participated in 18 activities since March, including missions, international conferences, seminars and training.

We have had eight missions. We went to Mexico six times to review the case files of Víctor Manuel Oropeza and Héctor Félix Miranda; to a meeting of news executives in the northern frontier region; and to meetings with President Vicente Fox, judicial and legislative officials and others.

We also visited two cities in Peru, Lima and Pucallpa, to follow the cases of several journalists’ murders.
We participated in four international conferences about crimes against journalists in the Dominican Republic, United States, England and Puerto Rico. We conducted five seminars in Haiti, Honduras and Mexico and a training session for Brazilian journalists in Argentina.

I want to stress the mission to Hermosillo, Mexico, on August 31. More than 40 Mexican executives and journalists participated in the meeting, which resulted in the Declaration of Hermosillo, a document that unifies positions on combating impunity and violence against journalists as well as promoting constitutional amendments to prohibit the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists. The media in Colombia achieved a similar commitment in 1991 to confront the Medellin Cartel.

We stress the importance of the Declaration of Hermosillo because of the solidarity it shows against impunity in that country which today is experiencing an alarming rate of crimes against the press. I also want to report that the meetings in Mexico with President Fox, judicial officials and federal legislators led to a government commitment to establish legal mechanisms to combat the crimes by “federalizing” them. Fox’s commitment was demonstrated in recent months when he allowed several cases to be taken over by the national prosecutor’s office, such as the cases of Guadalupe García Escamilla, Raúl Giba Guerrero, Francisco Ortíz Franco and Alfredo Jiménez Mota.

The government commitment also covered the establishment of special prosecutor’s offices to investigate the crimes and a legal analysis of the possibility of increasing the sentences of those responsible for such crimes.

In Peru, the Declaration of Hermosillo inspired the drafting a week later of the Declaration of Pucallpa, which, like the Mexican one, expresses a commitment to condemn the murders, to bring them to the attention of the Executive Branch, and to request improvement of legislation to prosecute and convict the masterminds.

Most important, days after a mission we made to Pucallpa in Peru along with the Peruvian Press Council, two of the murderers of journalist Alberto Rivero who were fugitives were captured, and on October 7 the alleged mastermind, Luis Valdez Villacorta, the mayor of Pucallpa, was arrested.

The Rapid Response Unit has continued its investigative work at a good pace. It has investigated or is following five cases in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. The unit has also played an important role in applying pressure in countries where crimes have occurred. For example, in Colombia, it persuaded the new national prosecutor to review, update and speed up cases. In one case the unit investigated in that country, that of Nelson Carvajal Carvajal, who was murdered in 1998, we will participate in a working meeting with the Colombian government October 19 at the headquarters of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington to reach an agreement.

At this time we will also present a new case to the commission. It is the IAPA investigation of the murder of journalist Mário Coelho Jr. in 2001 in Brazil. In that country the Rapid Response Unit obtained an answer from authorities about some crimes that no one has yet investigated.

However, we mourn the murders in the past six months of Ricardo Gonzalves Rocha in Brazil, Julio Augusto García in Ecuador, Robenson Laraque in Haiti and Jesús Reyes Brambila, Guadalupe García Escamilla, Raúl Gibb Guerrero in Mexico as well as the disappearance of Alfredo Jiménez Mota. We express solidarity with their relatives, friends and colleagues and want to tell them that our committee and the IAPA will not rest until the cases are solved and the guilty partis are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Let us observe a minute of silence in their memory.

The work of pressuring authorities and following up on cases is essential. That is how we have established that impunity poses insurmountable obstacles, and we have come up against one of them: the statute of limitations. Some states hide behind this legal provision to avoid responsibility, and this often happens when we are dealing with the people responsible for the murders of journalists.

Exposing the masterminds has been our goal since we began this project in 1995. In the 290 murders that we have recorded in the last 18 years, only a couple of the people who ordered the crimes have been identified, but not jailed.

The recommendations of our meeting in Guatemala in 1997 and the declarations we promoted in UNESCO and the OAS in 1997 and 1998 respectively, clearly cited the responsibility of the masterminds and the importance of revoking the statute of limitations in these crimes to win the fight against impunity.

During our missions of Mexico and Peru we asked the authorities for legal changes that would prohibit the statute of limitations for these crimes. For this reason the declarations of Hermosillo and Pucallpa have more validity in this stage by rescuing, intensifying and promoting laws to revoke the statute of limitations for crimes against journalists.

Why do we ask for this? The case of Héctor Félix Miranda, who was murdered in Tijuana in 1988, is an example. The local authorities we are working with under the arrangements we made with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights tell us that the statute of limitations has run out. This means the work of a decade to prosecute those who ordered the journalist’s murder had come to naught.

The same thing happens in Peru with the case of journalist Alberto Rivera, who was killed in Pucallpa. The authorities found the killers, but there are numerous irregularities concerning the mastermind. The firm stand of the media, publishers and journalists of both countries should be imitated because the only way to make a difference is to be united.

The struggle is difficult, but I want to say that we can do it. Something concrete that the IAPA is achieving despite everything, and I will end here, is that in 23 of 57 cases investigated by the Rapid Response Unit, 56 people have been sentenced to jail terms. Currently 31 people are in jail and this is in large part because of the work of the IAPA.

Thank you.