The OPC’s intern, Rixey Browning, has also contributed notably to the committee’s work. Rixey wrote a letter to Ecuador, telling its president, Rafael Correa, that we applauded his pardon for journalists convicted of criminal libel for offending his honor. But she pointed out that the cases only underscored the fact that Correa could go after any journalist any time he liked for writing something that displeased him. After writing the letter, Rixey also wrote the article about it that you can read on our website and in the May issue of the Bulletin. While both the letter and the article got some editing, she is a talented and promising young journalist.
Rixey also wrote to Brazil, protesting the murders of two journalists in a single month, and then a letter to Mexico, applauding the Senate passage of a constitutional amendment making it a federal crime to attack or intimidate journalists. She has also written a website article, not yet posted, about the amendment, which must be endorsed by 17 of Mexico’s 32 state governments before it goes to President Felipe Calderon for his signature.
Our other two letters, both written by Jeremy Main, went to the government of the State of Israel. One protested what seems to be the deliberate targeting of journalists covering confrontations in Gaza and the West Bank settlements. That has drawn a reply from a government spokesman, who thanks us for our concern and assures us that it is impossible for any such targeting to have taken place.
Before that response arrived, Jeremy had also written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to endorse the unanimous vote of the board of the International Press Institute in support of Uri Blau, an Israeli reporter who is accused of violating the country’s espionage act. Writing in the daily, Haaretz, Blau used documents leaked by a soldier alleging that the military had ignored a Supreme Court order that Palestinian jihadists should not be killed if they could safely be arrested instead. Jeremy said that while we were not in a position to know whether the charges were accurate, Blau had every right to report the contents of leaked documents. He also said that the charge of espionage, which carries a possible seven-year prison term, was the classic reaction of a government trying to keep a secret not because it threatened national security, but because it embarrassed the government when exposed.
We have not yet had a reply to that one.
Respectfully submitted by:
Larry Martz, Chairman