:quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/2OIKM4DQBVH7RGB5545HYJD2XA.png "The Peruvian Press Council has asked to archive the provisions allowing the PNP to supervise journalistic work during the demonstrations 1")
The Peruvian Press Council (PRC) asked to archive the security protocol for journalists that the government of To Boluarte published last Wednesday, March 1, in the newspaper El Peruano. The document “Protocol of inter-institutional action for the coordination and attention to journalists and social communicators in the context of disturbances to public order”, which aims to provide that the National Police of Peru (PNP) overseeing journalistic work in the protests was prepared by the General Staff of the National Police and the Ministries of the Interior, Health, Justice and the College of Journalists of Peru.
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“He Peruvian Press Council (PRC) considers that the safety protocol for journalists promoted by the Ministry of the Interior does not guarantee the journalistic work carried out during citizen demonstrations. Rather, it is an interference that jeopardizes the necessary independence that a journalist must have in exercising their rights of expression,” he said in a statement.
The civil association argued that the project aims to regulate the work of journalists during protests, as the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) warned, “it does not include the proposals of the majority of organizations that participated in consultation meetings.
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The Prime Minister has guaranteed that the National Police will maintain order in the capital. Additionally, he revealed that President Dina Boluarte will soon testify for the dead in the protests.
“For this reason, and because of the lack of willingness to include technical guidelines of international standards – a goal of this organization for the protocol -, the PRC He decided to step down from the task force in early February,” he added.
He Peruvian Press Council He detailed the reasons for the request for the archiving of the project because the PNP, the Ministry of the Interior and other public institutions “are listed as the governing bodies of journalists in a situation of dispute”.
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The Prime Minister said the government “took the appropriate decisions” despite the death toll of 60 in clashes with the armed forces. He avoided answering whether President Dina Boluarte would stay on until 2026 in case Congress did not approve a snap election.
“The protocol establishes a top-down relationship between the state and the press, which is unacceptable,” he said.
He PRC reported that, despite the fact that the most recent statistics identify police against journalists as the main aggressors, the document does not take into account some PNP agents.
“It does not include a public and transparent procedure to investigate police officers responsible for attacks on journalists,” he said.
The guidelines also state that PNP is going to be responsible for where journalists should be, however, the board has decided that they “must have absolute freedom to report as they see fit”.
Neither is it “mentioned the prohibition on confiscating, keeping, destroying or altering journalistic material, nor on the arbitrary detention of journalists, by the forces of order” and, above all, it does not reference only to college journalists as beneficiaries of the protocol, “leaving out hundreds across the country”. Similarly, there is no indication of investigations into harassment and threats against journalists on social media or any legal basis for the protection of journalists and human rights.
Something that caught the eye of PRC is that the standard does not include a precise definition of the “Freedom of expression or freedom of the press.”
Finally, the non-profit civil association argues that “the principles and duties of state institutions are not established (principle of protest, protection of journalists, guarantees of freedom of expression, right of the press of ‘recording police operations, accountability, police identification)’.
The National Association of Journalists of Peru (NAP) and the Press and Society Institute (IPYS) also questioned new state regulations that were approved by the College of Journalists of Peru.
There NAP stated “this text, drawn up in a ‘express’, presents serious problems of substance and form that are difficult to rectify (…) In the particular case of law enforcement, almost 50% of the cases of aggression against our colleagues during the last month of January were emerges from a policeman. Similar situations have occurred over the past decade in various regions of the country, in contexts of high social conflict, without even opening internal police disciplinary proceedings against those responsible for the attacks.
During this time he IPYS disagrees with the regulation in any way of journalistic coverage of social protests, expressing that any regulation of procedures with journalists at protests must aim to respect the actions of the press in them (… ) IPYS recalls that members of the armed forces or the police must be prohibited from any act of intimidation or violence against journalists, imposing sanctions to the contrary”.