Last Updated: August 28, 2002
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By
Paul Tash
Today
is World Press Freedom Day, when attention turns typically to the grim accounting
of danger facing journalists who work in distant corners of the globe. And once
again this year, the list of people who were thrown into jail, beaten -- or
even killed -- for trying to tell the truth runs far too long.
But
for once, the casualties in the struggle for freedom of speech include one notable
entry among the bullies who rely on violence and intimidation. And the story
behind that entry offers a parable about the connection between freedom and
justice.
This
story starts sadly, like so many others, with a journalist who was killed for
doing his job. Jose Luis Cabezas was a 35-year-old photographer for Noticias
magazine in Argentina. One day at a beach resort, Cabezas snapped a picture
of a famous but reclusive business tycoon named Alfredo Yabran.
With
ties both to top government officials and organized crime in Argentina, Yabran
was someone who jealously guarded his privacy. When Noticias ran the photo of
Yabran on its cover, showing Yabran in his swimsuit, walking with his wife on
the beach, it was said to be the first picture of the tycoon to appear in the
press.
Several
months later, on Jan. 25, 1997, the photographer was kidnapped as he was leaving
a party. When a fisherman found his car in a ditch, the photographer was dead
inside. Cabezas had been handcuffed, shot in the head and set on fire. His car
was still smoldering.
Had
the story ended there, it would have been fairly typical of one category of
violence against journalists, when crimes go unsolved and unpunished, especially
in Latin America. The Committee to Protect Journalists, based in New York, counted
24 journalists killed in reprisal for their reporting during 1998. A third of
those murders were in Latin America; four were in Colombia alone. Journalists
who focus public attention on the cocaine barons are at particular risk. Another
press freedom group, the Inter-American Press Association, is pressing government
officials to solve the cases of journalists who have been murdered without consequences.
The results have been mixed.
So
in Argentina, there was little to reason to think that much would come of the
murder of a magazine photographer who took a picture of a private but powerful
man. With suspicion still surrounding him, Yabran was even received at Argentina’s
presidential palace and was quoted as saying, “Power is synonymous with impunity.”
But
something remarkable happened next. Democracy may be fragile in all its forms,
but especially in Argentina, where a military dictatorship seized control in
1976. The military government waged a “dirty war” against thousands of its own
citizens, who were murdered or simply “disappeared.” Some were pushed, still
alive, from airplanes over the South Atlantic.
The
murder of Cabezas stirred the memories of those dark times among thousands of
Argentine citizens who were determined not to slide back into them. Posters
and banners bearing Cabezas’ face went up around the country; some were on display
at rock concerts and soccer matches.
There
were church services, rallies and protests to demand justice, including one
demonstration in the central plaza of Buenos Aires. Protestors carried placards
that read, “The Worst Attitude is Indifference.”
That
public outcry put pressure on the authorities to step up their investigation,
and one thing led to another. A policeman identified by informants as the killer
was arrested, then the security chief for the business tycoon. The country’s
minister of justice, who said he had never met Yabran, resigned after telephone
traces revealed at least 100 calls between him and the billionaire.
Finally,
the policeman’s ex-wife, herself a suspect, revealed that her husband had confided
that Yabran was behind the killing, and a judge ordered his arrest. On May 20,
1998, as police were surrounding his estate, the most powerful businessman in
Argentina put a shotgun into his own mouth and pulled the trigger. It was 16
months after the murder of the photographer.
The
grisly outcome represents a kind of rough justice, but what makes this case
a small victory for press freedom is the important role of the protestors, who
refused to let the matter drop. Veterans of bitter history, they recognized
that as long as it went unpunished, the murder of a journalist was also an attack
on their own freedom to live without fear of the danger their words or beliefs
might bring. Carbezas was the canary in the mineshaft, and for his countrymen,
his death was an ominous warning.
Because
we live someplace where that freedom is more established, there is not such
an urgent connection between the rights of a journalist and liberty for the
rest of us. It seems quaint to imagine a public protest on behalf of a reporter
who had been tossed out of a local school board meeting.
But
as the protestors in Argentina remind us, this World Press Freedom Day is a
time to honor that connection, and to cherish the freedom for which other journalists
in more dangerous places are ready to risk everything. They are heroes, and
we should be humbled and inspired by their courage.
Paul
Tash is the executive editor of the St. Petersburg Times and chairman of the
Freedom of Information Committee for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
He also serves on the boards of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the
Inter-American Press Association.
Photos
of Jose Luis Cabezas and Alfredo Yabran are also available at
this link.
