(29 Oct 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Guatemala City, Guatemala – 28 October 2024
1. Various of AP reporter interviewing journalist José Rubén Zamora
2. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José Rubén Zamora, Guatemalan Journalist:
"Not only are there important journalists in exile, professional journalists who had to leave, but in the unconscious of all journalists who are still in Guatemala, there is undoubtedly a ghost, however small, that they may end up in jail.”
3. Various of interview of journalist José Rubén Zamora
4. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José Rubén Zamora, Guatemalan Journalist:
"More than being significant for the press, it’s significant for democracy. There is no democracy without independent press, without independent journalists and independent press and I think it was a very severe blow."
5. Various of interview of journalist José Rubén Zamora
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José Rubén Zamora, Guatemalan Journalist:
"It’s like her corruption discovery policy was a zero discovery policy. Then what is left is the press, and in the end it becomes a moral punishment, because there is no prosecution or punishment for the corrupt, rather there are walls of impunity."
7. Various of interview of journalist José Rubén Zamora
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) José Rubén Zamora, Guatemalan Journalist:
"I feel closer to my family, we talk almost all day long on a constant basis. I am at home. My home is more than my home, it is my church. Ever since I was a child, everything good that has happened to me and everything bad that has happened to me has happened here."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Archive: Guatemala City, Guatemala – 19 October 2024
++NIGHT SHOTS++
9. Various of José Rubén Zamora leaving in a car after being released from jail into house arrest
STORYLINE:
When Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora returned to his home after more than two years in prison without a conviction, he found it empty.
His family fled the country fearing they would face the same fate.
Today, one week after his release, he discussed his own uncertain future in an interview Monday with The Associated Press under the shadow of efforts to keep him behind bars and his concern for other journalists that do the kind of investigative work he did.
Not only have Guatemalan journalists, including eight from the outlet El Periódico that he founded, been forced into exile under threat of prosecution, but those who remain wrestle with the fear that if they investigate “they can end up in jail,” Zamora said.
Thrust into the spotlight, the 68-year-old journalist is shy, not keen to be the target of news.
He said he can still feel the aftermath of imprisonment in his bones, and also in his day-to-day life after funding his legal defense forced him to sell his belongings, only skating by through support from his children.
The interview comes after a long journey for Zamora, who has spent the past three decades working as a journalist.
Twenty four of those years were as president of El Periódico, the news organization he founded to investigate corruption in Guatemala.
It’s a dangerous topic to investigate in a country like Guatemala, where the Attorney General’s Office raided electoral facilities, seized and opened ballot boxes and targeted the Seed Movement party of now President Bernardo Arévalo in an effort to keep him from taking office.
To this day, Zamora believes it was his paper’s investigative work that led him to be targeted by prosecutors.
He was initially convicted and sentenced to six years, a ruling that was annulled due to procedural failures.
"It was a very severe blow."
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Author: AP Archive
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