Santiago Button. Correspondent for TeleSUR and other media
The current Guatemalan government of Jimmy Morales, a member of the so-called Lima Group, is one of the governments loyal to the perverse interests of US geopolitics. He expelled the Venezuelan Ambassador, and is promoting the US military coup in that South American country.
The loyalty of the Guatemalan government to the immoral American interests is also expressed in the indifference /complicity of this government to the persistent unpunished aggressions suffered by TeleSUR correspondents in Guatemala, a Venezuelan television media with worldwide reach.
In August 2018, in the municipality of Cahabón, Alta Verapaz, journalist Rolanda de Jesús García, TeleSUR correspondent, was attacked and detained against her will by workers of the company that is building the Oxec hydroelectric plant on the Cahabón River, while Ella and her companions documented the felling of local trees.
This aggression was publicly denounced, nationally and internationally, identifying the criminals, but the results of the investigation are unknown.
Rolanda García. TeleSUR Correspondent
In April of this year, journalist Santiago Botón, correspondent for TeleSUR, a few meters from the Presidential House in Guatemala City, suffered an aggravated theft of his equipment and communications material in a public parking lot administered and guarded by the municipal government. Like the previous incident, this case also went unpunished.
In previous months, Santiago Botón was summoned by a judge of the Municipality of Ixcán, Quiché, following a complaint by the municipal mayor, for having publicized the social revolt of residents against this authority.
On May 6 of this year, always in the Municipality of Ixcán, Quiché, a group of criminals physically beat Santiago Botón, and tried to take away his video camera, while covering the protest actions of residents in favour of the free sale of alcoholic beverages in the area.
The TeleSUR correspondent broadcast this physical aggression live, published a list with the names and surnames of the aggressors, but the public authorities did not arrest any of them. Much less did they protect the international correspondent.
In 2017, according to the Guatemalan Association of Journalists (APG), 11 journalists were murdered in the country. In 2018, six murders of journalists were reported, according to Agencia EFE. But, despite these tragic immediate circumstances, the state of Guatemala gives no guarantee to those who risk their lives in the dangerous mission of providing impartial information.
On the contrary, the State of Guatemala, in complicity with the US government, and with impunity for crimes against journalists, promotes and foments aggression and selective assassinations of journalists who investigate and report on the truths that inconvenience or reveal the actual groups holding economic, political and military power in the country.
Guatemala, like its neighbours in the Triangle of Death region, must reconsider and recognize that its persistent condition as an “impoverished and humiliated country” is the result of the systematic physical silencing of its communications prophets. Voices that could have prevented the current national disaster if they had been allowed to live.
Translation by Internationalist 360°
