Renowned Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, president and founder of the investigative newspaper elPeriódico, has been detained for nearly a month. Security forces stormed Zamora’s home in Guatemala City on the afternoon of July 29, and occupied it for hours as several police cars and other vehicles without license plates surrounded the property. The law enforcement agents who entered Zamora’s home were heavily armed and had their faces covered, according to elPeriódico. The newspaper’s offices were also raided that same afternoon.
Zamora’s arrest is just one of many instances of the Guatemalan government persecuting journalists in response to their work exposing corruption.
“We had staff detained for 16 hours…practically kidnapped by the police,” said Juan Diego Godoy, a columnist and the digital director at elPeriódico, who was not in the office at the time. Despite the raid, elPeriódico successfully published the print edition of its July 30 paper under the headline “No Nos Callarán,” or “They Won’t Silence Us.”
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