Bolivian journalist Marianela Montenegro denounced before the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) earlier this month that she has become the target of threats and intimidation coming from members of President Evo Morales’ administration and political party.
At the end of October, Marianela Montenegro, an opinion columnist, also lodged a complaint before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington regarding the violent police search of her TV station Channel 33 and home in the city of Cochabamba on Nov. 20, 2012.
Bolivian newspaper La Razón said that the government conducted the police search allegedly because the TV station operated from an unregistered legal address. The government also accused the station of interfering with other radio frequencies.
Montenegro denied the government’s charges that she had violated communication regulations.
The opposition journalist gave IAPA several documents supporting her complaints against Bolivian authorities since the beginning of the harassment. The government, among other tactics, has taken away public advertising from her, opened four court cases against her --one of them involving charges of racism -- confiscated her broadcasting equipment and threatened to revoke her license, Montenegro said.
Claudio Paolillo, director of IAPA’s press freedom commission, condemned this week the “campaign of intimidation against journalists that seems to be part of a systematic plan to silence critics”. He asked that Montenegro’s complaints be investigated.
In a report on Bolivia presented during IAPA’s General Assembly in October of this year, Paolillo said that the government of Evo Morales “has implemented a strategy of economic strangling by attacking media and journalists through uneven use of public advertising, inspections, special taxes, and with the purchase of independent media through close relatives.”
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
