The Other Americans: Guatemala's Attacks on Press Have Reached New Heights
The country has persecuted the founder of one of its major daily newspapers—again. But that’s just the beginning.
BY JEFF ABBOTT AUGUST 15, 2022 2:54 PM
n the late afternoon of July 29, Guatemalan National Police raided the home and office of the founder of one of Guatemala’s daily newspapers under orders from the country’s public prosecutor's office. In the raids, El Periódico’s founder, internationally renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora, was arrested.
At least eight members of the staff of El Periódico were also detained for more than sixteen hours by police and investigators from the Public Prosecutor’s office as they searched the facilities just outside of Guatemala City. Staff were denied the ability to use the bathroom, eat, sleep, or take medication during their detention.
The paper did not publish its Saturday edition the following day. But Zamora’s arrest, along with the search of El Periódico’s offices, had already generated concern among press and human rights organizations.
“This is a strong blow,” Claudia Samoyoa, founder of the Guatemalan human rights organization UDEFEGUA, tells The Progressive. “This [case is meant] to tell all independent journalists and independent media that they cannot really speak.”
The United States Department of State also decried Zamora’s detention.
More:
https://progressive.org/latest/other-americans-guatemala-press-abbott-081522/
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Monday, August 29, 2022
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
Julie López
The president and director of Guatemalan newspaper elPeriódico, José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, and assistant attorney Samari Carolina Gómez Díaz will spend at least three months in pre-trial detention on the basis of a single testimony and supposed evidence that Rafael Curruchiche, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office against Impunity (FECI), told El Faro were collected in just 72 hours between July 26 and 29.
The FECI chief told El Faro that he met key witness Ronald Giovanni García Navarijo, a former executive of the Workers’ Bank (Bantrab), in person on the first day of evidence collection. Authorities claim that in the three ensuing days they verified the former banker’s word and audio and text messages that he submitted to prepare, in the afternoon on Friday, July 29, to execute a raid of Zamora’s home and the offices of elPeriódico, where they detained eight employees for 16 hours and prevented them from contacting anyone.
At the time of the raids the Public Prosecutor’s Office froze the newspaper’s bank accounts, only to release them days later after discovering that they contained the equivalent of just $500. Despite the raid of the workplace and the frozen accounts, Curruchiche has insisted in public statements that Zamora’s detention has to do with "his activity as a businessman, and not with his journalistic work."
On Tuesday, Aug. 9, Judge Freddy Orellana remanded Zamora in custody on charges of money laundering, blackmail, and influence peddling, and for Gómez on accusations of leaking confidential information. The audio recordings, text messages, and cash presented in court in hearings that Monday and Tuesday were all provided by García Navarijo. Defense attorneys Christian Ulate and Armando Mendoza argue that the evidence is based solely on the testimony of a man accused since 2016 of money laundering and embezzlement. They also assert that the Public Prosecutor’s Office tampered with evidence.
More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202208/centroamerica/26331/The-Case-against-Journalist-Jos%C3%A9-Rub%C3%A9n-Zamora-Was-Built-in-72-Hours.htm
Frida Ghitis
Aug 18, 2022August 18, 2022
Guatemalan journalist Jose Ruben Zamora, president of newspaper El Periodico, arrives at court in Guatemala City, July 29, 2022 (AP photo by Moises Castillo).
A few years ago, Guatemala became an unlikely beacon of hope in what had seemed an impossible battle: uprooting deeply entrenched corruption from a struggling, impoverished country. With the help of a United Nations-backed, mostly-U.S.-funded body called the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, local prosecutors had successfully investigated and prosecuted countless powerful figures. Incredibly, after popular protests were able to push a sitting president and vice president out of office, prosecutors were able to secure their conviction for outrageous acts of theft that essentially amounted to stealing from the poor.
Fast forward half a decade, and Guatemala has retreated back into impunity—and worse. Corruption doesn’t stay in its own lane. To defend high-level misdeeds, institutions must be co-opted; rule of law must be leveraged; and critics must be silenced. Inevitably, corruption kicks off processes that assault individual freedoms, especially freedom of speech, and particularly among those raising the alarm.
On July 29, Guatemalan police arrested Jose Ruben Zamora, one of the country’s most prominent journalists and publisher of El Periodico, a newspaper that has made it its mission to shine a beam on corruption. The arrest was a landmark moment in Guatemala’s repressive efforts to protect its newly invigorated culture of graft, and an ominous lurch toward authoritarianism in a region where democracy, with its shallow roots, is getting trampled. As he was being led into the building where he would be charged, Zamora told supporters, “We live in a narco-klepto-dictatorship.” The journalist, who has won multiple international journalism and human rights honors, including the World Press Freedom Hero award, was ultimately charged with money laundering, blackmail and influence peddling. He denies the charges, and there’s every reason to believe they are bogus.
The government of President Alejandro Giammattei is making a name for itself in human rights circles as a leading persecutor of journalists and anyone who dares expose the endemic corruption that is keeping Guatemala’s poor from finding a way out of their misery. The country has the world’s fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition with nearly half of all children suffering from malnutrition and stunting. Corruption keeps the government from making any progress on easing that tragedy or on boosting economic prospects for the more than 52 percent of the population living in poverty.
. . .
It’s a situation that only serves to create more criminality, more corruption and more violence. And these are the main reasons Guatemalans flee their country in search of better prospects in the United States. That makes it all the more remarkable that a U.S. senator who frequently rails against illegal immigration—Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida—played a key role in the unraveling of Guatemala’s once-successful fight against corruption.
More:
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/el-periodico-guatemala-corruption-cicig/