FOLLOWING complaints by the National Communications Network (NCN) after two of its videographers were attacked and impeded from exercising their professional duties on the job, the Guyana Press Association (GPA) has strongly condemned the actions by a sitting opposition parliamentarian, APNU+AFC supporters, and police officers.
In a statement issued Monday, the GPA “condemns” what it called “this most reprehensible act of harassment and intimidation of media workers”.
The national media association also urged Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton “to first and foremost set the tone of relations with the media by being forthcoming, with proper and detailed answers rather than being abrasive and evasive when asked for details and supporting evidence.”
The GPA insisted that “media workers are to be respected by all…,” and called on “politicians as well as other members of the public to respect the need for media workers to operate in an environment free of intimidation.”
It warned, “As we approach another election cycle, the GPA expects that the media would be allowed to operate without intimidation, resentment and free from abuse, especially from those who hold political offices.”
Recalling earlier instances of similar actions, the GPA added: “Gone should be the era when a TV news camera is snatched and taken to Congress Place, media workers are labeled vultures or identified in an unflattering manner by political figures at public meetings.”
It’s significant that all of the cases of abuse over the decades have been associated with or attributed to one major political party before and since 1992, the People’s National Congress (PNC), which has established an unblemished record of violations, with a list of cases always too long for prosecution.
The allegations against the PNC over the decades have ranged from the prosecution of a journalist from the People’s Progressive Party (PPP)’s Mirror newspaper for reporting that a poor farmer’s cow had been electrocuted after straying onto then President Burnham’s fence, to being accused of knowing more than it would like to acknowledge about the murder of Catholic Standard Editor, Catholic priest, Father Bernard Darke.
More recent violations are also well recorded, but most are buried in national and newspaper archives, and the memories of those who lived through similar experiences for decades.
As the GPA has stated, Opposition Leader Norton must set the stage by stopping his “abrasive and evasive” approach to being questioned by the media on matters in the public domain, and therefore of public interest.
The PPP and the current PPP/C Administration have never been accused of such gross and blatant violations of press and media freedoms, instead ensuring events and activities for local media and journalists and press entities to annually observe World Press Freedom Day and other UN-observed days, and the themes they put on the global agenda.
Sunday’s actions were flagrant violations of enshrined and established rights of journalists, and it’s significant that the November 6 attack took place only four days after Guyana and other member-states of the United Nations observed International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (November 2), and 13 days before the observance of International Journalists Remembrance Day (November 19).
It’s rather unfortunate that such fossilised ideas still exist in Guyana, encouraging hostility to innocent media workers just for doing their jobs, as if they should now have to choose what media houses to work for, if to stay safe on the job anywhere.
All that tells reams of colourful stories, and offer endless bytes to convince Doubting Thomases that no matter how many prayers, leopards still don’t change their spots, including how they see others not looking like them.
