To mark the 83rd birthday of Peru’s National Journalists Association (ANP), ANP and VJ Movement are staging a cartoon exhibition on Press Freedom in the historic center of Peru’s capital, Lima.
In a country where press freedom is hotly debated and often under pressure, the exhibition, featuring the critical work of international cartoonists from the Cartoon Movement Network, has gathered a lot of interest.
To find out how things are going VJM Blog caught up with Antonio Camborda, of the Jaime Bausate y Meza School of Journalism and curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition opened on July 8th and will run for another two weeks. How has it been received so far?
Lots of people are coming to see the exhibition, especially journalists and also many journalism students from different universities. Not only from Lima but also from Cuzco and Arequipa in the Andes and even from the Amazon region.
There’s a book at the entrance to the exhibition where people can write their name and leave a comment about their impressions, and already we have over 200 pages full of names and very positive comments.
Because the exhibition is located in the historic center of Lima, there are also many tourists who walk in to have a look.
Peru has just celebrated presidential elections and the president-elect Ollanta Humala is preparing to govern? Are you worried that Peru is about to undergo changes to its press freedom?
Well, the owners of various media are scared there are going to be changes to the licensing of radio and television bandwidth and that a number of them will lose their licenses.
The journalist using that information could be jailed for up to 10 years.
But our main concern is a bill being prepared that would punish journalists who use information that was obtained by others by phone tapping. At the moment, anyone who illegaly taps a phone can receive a jail sentence of up to 3 years. If the bill were approved, the journalist using that information could get sentenced to up to 10 years in jail.
This is especially serious if you take into account that in the past decade corruption scandals have come to light, thanks in many cases to information that originated from a phone tapping or from intercepted emails.
Much of the corruption committed during the government of the now jailed former president Alberto Fujimori came to light thanks to recordings, many of which featured Fujimori’s spymaster Vladimir Montesinos handing over large sums of cash to owners of newspapers and TV-stations.
How can an exhibition such as this one contribute to the cause for greater press freedom in Peru?
The exhibition helps enormously because it depicts all the ways in which governments and other power groups try to influence and pressure the media. For the public and especially the visiting students of journalism the exhibition shows them just how fragile the freedom of expression is when faced with the powers that be. It makes them conscious of what’s at stake and enthuses them with energy to defend the freedom of expression.”
In the past few days I’ve spoken to journalist from all over the country, from the Andes and from the isolated Amazon region as well as from the coast. Many of them have asked me if it would be possible for the exhibition to travel to the areas they live as well.
The exhibition can be seen at La Casa de las Trece Puertas in front of the San Francisco church on the corners of Ancash and Lampa street in central Lima. So if you’re in the neigbourhood…
