30 May 2000
MEDIA FACES ATTACKS IN MARRED ELECTORAL PROCESS
The media in Peru were under attack during the recent run-off elections in Peru, which were widely condemned as unfair. On 24 May, journalist Fabián Salazar Olivares of "La República" was held and tortured by alleged agents of the National Intelligence Service (Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional, SIN) for possessing a number of documents and videotapes which implicate and jeopardise a number of high-ranking government and electoral officials, report the Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and Reporters sans frontières (RSF). Salazar was tortured when he refused to disclose from whom he had obtained the information, says IPYS.
This attack comes in the midst of a highly controversial electoral process which has been strongly denounced by election observer groups such as the Organisation of American States (OAS), the European Community, Human Rights Watch, the Carter Center, and the IFJ, as well as a number of national groups. The OAS has stated that the process leading up to the presidential elections scheduled for 28 May, is "far from being considered free and just," says IFJ. Throughout the electoral process, media workers have been subject to physical and psychological attacks, reports IPYS. In the last few weeks alone, one journalist received death threats in relation to his work by the mayor of the district of Putumayo, and several journalists were attacked while covering Fujimori's campaign by a group of government officials in the province of Carhuaz, reports IFJ.
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