The press corps in Guatemala denounced new acts of agression against reporters in the country. The daily newspaper Siglo 21 claimed that indigenous reporter Lucrecia Mateo was assaulted on Sunday, Aug. 25, when she tried to cover a meeting about the installation of a hydroelectric dam in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetango. A group of opposition protesters beat the reporter and robbed her camera equipment, according to the news agency AFP.
That same day, the Guatemala Center for Informative Reports (Cerigua in Spanish) claimed that the police in the city of San Marcos threatened to kill journalist Aroldo Marroquín, from Prensa Libre, and erased photographs taken by his colleague Esner Gómez Navarrio, a correspondent for Nuestro Diario, who had taken images of a police operation. The police handcuffed and arrested both reporters for a brief period, according to the center.
Frank La Rue, the United Nations' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, condemned Guatemala's security forces for taking aggressive actions against reporters. So far this year, four journalists have been assassinated in Guatemala and the government has yet to put in place its Program to Protect Journalists, according to Cerigua.
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.
