Killings of journalists in drugplagued nations in IAPA spotlight

GUADALAJARA, Mexico (AP) Colombia and Mexico led Latin American nations
in the number of journalists slain in 1997, as the press confronted drug
cartels and rampant corruption, media defenders said.

The Inter American Press Association, the leading press group for the
Americas, said crimes against journalists remain a scourge despite the end
of regional wars and intolerant military regimes.

"The exercise of journalism remains an exceedingly dangerous profession in
Latin America," said Luis Gabriel Cano, outgoing president of the
Miaibased IAPA and head of Colombia's newspaper El Espectador.

Eleven years since his brother Guillermo paid with his life for publishing
against the drug cartels, Cano said violence by organized gangs and corrupt
officials poses a greater threat than ever to a free press.

A 12year civil war in El Salvador claimed 20 journalists before its bloody
1992 finish, and conflicts in Guatemala and Nicaragua added to the body
count during Central America's warring epoch.

But IAPA investigators of journalist killings told 500 member publishers at
their gathering Monday that heightened public awareness and bringing the
killers to justice is a strong deterrent against such crimes.

For Mexico, the host of the IAPA's 53rd annual assembly, 1997 has been a
grim year despite a flourishing free press and moves toward greater democracy,

Mexican cartels have made this country the single largest conduit of
U.S.bound cocaine, their ability to corrupt local authorities and security
forces now rivaling their Colombian peers.

Motives for the slayings across Colombia and Mexico have yet to be
clarified and the killers found but IAPA leaders said those deaths show
the difficulty of protecting a media bent on exposing poerful interests.

Planning to address the IAPA today, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo was
expected to renew promises to bring the killers of Mexican journalists to
justice pledges his critics say must be met with action.

"No crime can be carried out with impunity," Zedillo had said during a
meeting last September with visiting IAPA investigators.

Nonetheless, the record shows a litany of unresolved crimes.

"Freedom of the press has undergone one of its most difficult times this
past year in Mexico," said Jose Santiago Healy of El Imparcial, the
Hermosillo daily, as he delivered that country's report to the IAPA.

He said three journalists slain in six months this year alone, four
abductions and 20 attacks were documented.

The dead included a journalist in Sonora state on Mexico's druginfested
border with the United States, a crusading reporter in the southwestern
state of Guerrero and a Mexico City journalist who was beaten to death.

At least five of the beating attacks involved journalists probing the Sept.
8 deaths and disappearances of six youths from a Mexico City slum, last
seen in police custody after a shootout.

While Colombia and Mexico had the bulk of the 10 murders recorded since
March across the region, the most infamous occurred Jan. 25 in Argentina.

Jose Luis Cabezas, a photojournalist probing official corruption, was found
dead, his body riddled with bullets and burned. Since then, the media has
reported at least 30 other attacks or threats on Argentine journalists. But
there has been progress.

"Two years ago I said our biggest challenge would be to fight unpunished
crimes against journalists," said Oliver F. Clarke, president of The
Gleaner of Jamaica, who is to become IAPA president before the meeting ends
Wednesday.

"Two years later, I can say we have made a real difference through
investigations and missions" in the countries where those killings
occurred, Clarke told the IAPA on Monday.

The project, titled "Unpunished Crimes Against Journalists," began in 1995
as an IAPA investigation into the murky killings of journalists in the
Americas by focusing on six cases in Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia.

The test cases represented only a fraction of the cases, but Clarke said
they have reawakened public awareness to attacks that have claimed 174
journalists' lives across Latin America this past decade. Most of the cases
are unsolved.