Reply #27: Scrambled Priorities of "Reporters Without Borders" Precede Shooting

[Judi Lynn]

Scrambled Priorities of "Reporters
Without Borders" Precede Shooting

With a Statement By
Paul Emile-Dupret
Advisor to the European Parliament

Three weeks ago, on July 29, Narco News informed three millionaire "press freedom" organizations of the escalating attacks against Community Media journalists by rogue pro-coup police forces in Venezuela.

Only one of the three organizations - the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York - responded to our open letter. CPJ did so within 12 days, by filing an amended report on the state of press freedom in Venezuela. This report marked the first time that CPJ denounced the attacks on Community Media by the US-backed Carmona dictatorship that briefly took power last April. It also, even more significantly, contained the first statements from CPJ in its history acknowledging that the behavior of the commercial media owners - through censorship and orders to reporters to simulate, rather than report, the news - is itself a serious threat to press freedom.
(snip)



The Penalty for Carrying a Community TV Camera
in front of Alfredo Peña's Metropolitan Police
The man in the photo above is not just any cameraman, though. He is not, in fact, Venezuelan. And he was merely holding the camera for the journalists from Catia TV while he was observing municipal police behavior during protests outside of the Supreme Court (judges heard arguments over the prosecution of generals who participated in the violent attempted military coup of April 11, 12 and 13).

This man's name is Paul Emile-Dupret, and he was cameraman-for-a-day. He is - and this should have consequences for the European Commission-funded "Reporters Without Borders" - a citizen of Belgium and is a staff member of the European Parliament.



Paul Emile-Dupret, advisor to the European Parliament,
and the War Wounds of Being Community Journalist-for-a-Day
I, Paul-Emile Dupret, Belgian citizen, staff member of the European Parliament as a political advisor, make the following complaint:

Finding myself in Venezuela to understand the political situation in greater detail, for personal and political interest, I was victim of an aggression by the Caracas police while I accompanied a news team of the Community Television station Catia-TV that covered the demonstrations by Venezuelan citizens both in favor of the military generals implicated in the April 11 coup d'etat, and others opposed to the impunity of that action, in front of the Supreme Court. Suddenly, the metropolitan police of Caracas, in an act of evident provocation, made very rapid maneuvers in which they gratuitously attacked the sector of the demonstrations that was in favor of the (national) government, whom they violently beat and attacked with rubber bullet gunshots. At this moment, I was shot by rubber bullets that caused me some 40 wounds in the head, back, shoulder and left arm. Fortunately, these are wounds without worse consequences, but for a while I lost vision in one eye, because the bullets shot from some five meters way hit only two centimeters from the eye.

I protest this aggression and file a judicial complaint to the Venezuelan prosecutor, and inform my Embassy to file protest over this action by the Metropolitan Police.

I am aware of the fact that the Metropolitan Police of Caracas have a black history for many years in violations of human rights. It is worth stressing that for almost two years the Metropolitan Police agents have been trained by United States agents belonging to the Bratton Group (headed by former New York and Boston police commissioner William Bratton). This "security" corps acts under the command of Mayor Alfredo Peña, who is a bitter opponent of the Chávez government and the social reforms that this government has implemented.
(snip/...)

http://narconews.com/Issue23/communitymedia2.html