Formosa: a journalist is arrested and another is injured by rubber bullets

The Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities (Adepa) alerted today to the arrest of a journalist and the shooting of rubber bullets at another professional during a neighbors march in the capital of Formosa due to the new restrictions of the The government of Gildo Insfrán in the context of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

By a statement, Adepa told about the current situation and all the violations to freedom of expression in the province which has been ruled for a quarter of a century by the same person and has called for these situations to be reversed.

“For a year, health measures have been put in place in Argentina to try to reduce the impact of Covid-19, little by little and with setbacks, activities have been restored in a large part of the country”, begins the text and adds: “Without embargo, In Formosa, restrictions on the movement and entry of people into the provincial territory as well as their exit continue, to which is added an isolation regime questioned by national and international organizations. All this has led to complaints about alleged violations of human rights of those detained in the isolation centers and a deterioration of the situation of freedom of expression in this province ”.

According to the document, “today, during a demonstration by residents and traders of the provincial capital against the restrictive traffic measures in this city, local police injured journalist Maxi Galarza of Radio Fantasía with rubber bullets. Another journalist, Julieta González of Radio Parque, was also arrested.. So far, there was no information on the reasons for his arrest.

“Before what was happening today, at the Association of Argentine Journalistic Entities (Adepa), we received with increasingly alarming complaints about the restrictions, abuses and serious limitations of journalism in Formosa, both by local journalists and professionals sent by the national media “, they recalled then enumerated:”Last January, journalist Leonardo Fernández Acosta, editor-in-chief of El Comercial, received repeated verbal attacks by provincial government officials, despite being the victim of harassment and anonymous attacks on social media, in which he is intended to discredit his work. The attacks were linked to their coverage of the local situation resulting from the pandemic measures ”.

“On January 25, the Council for the global attention of the Covid-19 emergency in Formosa changed the modality of the press conferences that it organizes daily on the health situation in the province. From that day on, journalists are required to submit a limited number of questions in writing., which will be read later by a government spokesperson. This implies an act of control or an audit of the State on the journalistic task and, consequently, on the freedom of information “, they declared since Adepa and added: the province to the LA NACION journalistic team, from Buenos Aires, who had traveled to cover the health situation. To access the territory of Formosa, journalists Inés Beato Vassolo and Tomás Cuesta were to present a habeas corpus before the court “.

They also recalled: “Since the border crossing between the Chaco and Formosa, the journalists tried to contact the Minister of the Government, Jorge González; Governor Gildo Insfrán’s Under-Secretary for Media, Sergio Recalde; to the advisory epidemiologist of the Covid-19 emergency committee Julián Bibolini, and to the National Secretariat of Human Rights, to obtain authorization to enter without quarantine and with all the required protocols, with a view to the free exercise of press activity “.

“On March 3, the competent federal justice in Formosa rejected the habeas corpus and ordered an unpublished “protocol of action before the entry of essential personnel”, which she said dates from January 14, although it was never mentioned in front of any journalists, “Adepa explained and added : “The protocol – whose digital broadcast is from the 2 of this month and was signed by the Ministry of Human Development of Formosa – it provides that during their stay in the province, essential personnel” must not leave their place of work or home, in order to maintain social distance throughout its permanence “, a fact that limits journalistic coverage”.

Adepa recordsó: “Preventing access to journalism in posts bordering a province is a flagrant violation of the freedom to inform, and does not know either the scope of the DNU 297/2020, which provided for social, preventive and compulsory isolation, and in which it is mentioned among the persons exempted from the ban on circulating “personnel working in audiovisual, radial and graphic communication services ”.

The Association then recalled the attacks suffered by the team of the Todo Noticias channel which was able to enter Formosa and closed: “The list of these events reflects, in itself, the characteristics of a serious institutional weakening which seriously limits the role of free journalism and which ends up affecting the citizens of Formosa, and therefore the quality of democracy in this province ”.

THE NATION

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