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Alert

Journalists assaulted by police while covering demonstration

(IPYS/IFEX) - On 2 December 2011, journalist Pedro Reyes, of the Canal 39 TV station, his camera operator Romario Reyes, and Américo Huamán, of the TV Perú Canal 7 station, were beaten by police officers. The journalists were covering a protest against the building of an extension for a prison, which left one person dead and a number of wounded in the province of Cañete, Lima region, south of the Peruvian capital.

Images broadcast on television show how Reyes and Reyes were beaten by police officers for no apparent reason. After the officers realised that Huamán was taping their abusive treatment of his colleagues, they turned on him, assaulted him and took his camera.

According to some web pages, other journalists suffered similar attacks. A number of incidents have occurred since the beginning of the strike on 30 November. According to the blog actualidad cañetana ( http://actualidadcanetana.blogspot.com/ ), on that day a group of uniformed police officers attacked five journalists. One of them was a correspondent for a Lima-based TV station.

IPYS condemns the attacks on the journalists suffered at the hands of police officers while they were exercising their profession and calls on the interior minister to sanction the responsible parties.