MEDIA : Threats, Assaults Complicate Argentine Journalists’ Jobs

Journalists exploring the frontiers of press freedom in Argentina are coming up against a long tradition of political thuggery in this South American country.

Several reporters have been assaulted in recent months; scores of others have received anonymous threats of violence and death. The numerous attacks and threats appear to be aimed at stanching the free flow of information in Argentina’s decade-old democracy.

Some analysts have depicted the wave of aggression as a throwback to repressive practices under authoritarian governments of the past, including the military regime of 1976-83.

And some evidence has implicated supporters of the governing Peronist party in the attacks. The party, founded by the late President Juan Domingo Peron, has “a long history of violence, xenophobia and gangsterism,” the daily Buenos Aires Herald observed in an editorial.

Peronist President Carlos Saul Menem has blamed the attacks on unidentified “beasts who don’t deserve to live in a civilized society.” But he also has said that the attacks “go with the job” of journalism.

The president, who took office in 1989, has not hidden his irritation over persistent press reports of official corruption under his administration. “What’s going on with the media, which have turned into the main opposition to the government?” he asked recently.

In mid-September, journalists organized a protest rally in front of the presidential palace. Juan Carlos Camano, head of the press workers union, demanded that the government break up and punish the “gangs of thugs” responsible for the aggression.

“Journalists are being followed, threatened and attacked as a result of their investigations that continue to expose government corruption,” Camano said at the rally.

The threats and violence have intensified amid campaigning for elections Sunday to renew half of Argentina’s lower house of Congress. The elections are crucial to Menem, who needs to increase his party’s congressional majority to pass a proposed package of constitutional amendments--including one that would allow his reelection in 1995.

In May, someone set fire to the car of Hugo Rodriguez of FM Radio La Red. In July, assailants beat Marcelo Bonelli as he arrived for work at Radio Mitre. Thugs roughed up seven reporters and several political opponents of Menem as he made a speech at an agricultural exposition in August. The same month, a fire bomb exploded outside FM Radio La Tribu. In September, intruders ransacked a radio station in the city of Lujan.

Hernan Lopez Echague has been beaten twice by thugs since late August. Lopez Echague, 37, is an investigative reporter for Pagina/12, a 6-year-old daily that has set the pace in Argentina for aggressive investigative reporting on corruption and other abuses.

Outside his Buenos Aires apartment Aug. 25, two men hit Lopez Echague on the head and slashed a cheek, warning him against publishing “those things.” Pagina/12 had published his report two days earlier on the alleged recruitment of political thugs by Peronist officials.

On Sept. 9, assailants forced Lopez Echague into a car and beat him again. He was hospitalized with “multiple traumas.”

Jorge Lanata, editor of Pagina/12, said the attacks apparently are meant as warnings “to make others shut up.”

Led by Pagina/12, the press has sparked a series of scandals during the past two years over alleged corruption involving Peronists, including some of Menem’s associates and relatives.

“There are people in the government who are bothered by the power of the press,” said Lanata, 32.

Government officials have suggested that the aggression against journalists is an offshoot of the current political campaign, but Lanata said he doubts that the attacks will stop after Sunday’s elections--especially if Menem’s party does well in the voting.

“If he wins big he will have a lot more power, and it is possible that these things will be more frequent,” the editor said.