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World Report - Paraguay

• Area: 406,750 sq. km
• Population: 6,800,000
• Language: Spanish
• Head of state: Fernando Lugo, since August 2008

The expansion of the state-run press has been one of the new government's priorities. The year 2009 began with the murder of the director of a community radio after he had gone on air to expose the activities of regional drug cartels and their alleged backing from within the police and army.

Government news agency IPParaguay was founded on 19 January 2009 on the initiative of the new president Fernando Lugo. The expansion of the state-run press is among government priorities, particularly in the broadcast sector, which has been entirely privately owned until now. The head of state let it be known shortly before his inauguration, on 15 August 2008, that he would not promulgate any press law regulating the work of journalists, while hoping that the media would establish its own code of ethics. A legal vacuum persists however in the distribution of frequencies of 700 to 1,000 radios community radios, spread throughout the country.

These local media are among the most vulnerable to the insecurity that reigns in some regions, especially at the border area with Brazil which is plagued by drug-traffickers. The year 2009 began disastrously with the murder on 12 January of the director of community radio, Hugua Nandu FM, Martin Ocampos Paez, in Concepcion, central Paraguay. He had regularly gone on air to expose the activities of regional cartels and their alleged backing from within the police and army. However it is also in the name of the fight against the drug trade that the security forces sometimes carry out violent reprisals against the communities. The murder of Ocampos Paez, still unsolved, also coincided with attempted seizure, on the order of local courts, of equipment belonging to his radio station and of another community radio Joaju FM. Impunity has also prevailed nearly two years after the murder of Chilean journalist Tito Palma who was shot dead on 22 August 2007. He worked for two community radios, Radio Mayor Otano, in the city of the same name in the south of the country and for Radio Chaco Boreal based in the capital Asuncion. He had also spoken out about complicity between drug traffickers and some political figures. The new progressive government will have a fight on its hands, in a country long identified by international bodies as a hotbed of corruption, to restore confidence between citizens and the authorities.

Topics: Freedom of information, Freedom of expression,