International issues

Message from Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard

After more of 1200 Km walking, the popular marches will arrive to Paris.

The September 17 the indignant marches will come to Paris where they will join to the global protest day opposite the economic and financial system. Their road will continue to Bruselas where they will claim a participative, real, and direct democracy.

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about apparent foot-dragging in the investigation into the radio journalist Vanderlei “Wanderley” Canuto Leandro’s murder on 1 September in Tabatinga, a border town in the northwestern state of Amazonas. Canuto had accused mayor Samuel Beneguy in May of threatening him in connection with his work.

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Peruvian authorities to give clear evidence of a determination to combat impunity after the second murder of a journalist in Peru this year. Shot by masked gunmen near his home in the northwestern city of Casma on 7 September, TV journalist Pedro Alfonso Flores Silva died of injuries to the liver and colon yesterday.

The world lives in the era of knowledge and information sharing. With satellite TV, mobile phones and the internet, the word “distance” has lost its meaning as there is hardly a place today that is too’ remote’ for information access. The uprisings in the Arab World are a striking example of the rapid dissemination of information.

Syrian opposition figures and groups claiming that they represent most opposition movements to Bashar Al Assad dictatorial regime, have formed in Turkey a National Transition Council, chaired by Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian-French academic teaching at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly created an annual International Day of Peace to take place on the opening day of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. The purpose of the day is for “commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace both within and among all nations and peoples.”

Considered one of the biggest slums in the world, Kibera is Nairobi’s–and East Africa’s–largest urban settlement. Over one million people struggle daily to meet basic needs such as access to water, nutrition and sanitation. In this community lacking education and opportunities, women and girls are most affected by poverty.

Reporters Without Borders is shocked by the murders of reporter Ana María Yarce Viveros, the founder of the weekly magazine Contralínea, and Rocio González Trápaga, a freelance journalist who used to work for Televisa. The bodies of two women were found in a Mexico City park yesterday.

There is so much spin surrounding the Transitional National Council victory in Libya that it is difficult to interpret the outcome, and perhaps premature to do so at this point considering that the fighting continues and the African Union has withheld diplomatic recognition on principled grounds.