Guatamala City - Guatemala's government posted an online response to a newspaper article about the country's vice president before it was published, provoking criticism the government was spying on the country's media.
Pictures of the article, which linked a luxury property owned by Vice-President Roxana Baldetti to businessmen who have benefited from government contracts, were put up on the government's website, along with a written response.
“This is espionage that violates the confidentiality of the press and generates uncertainty and intimidation,” Frank La Rue, an ex-UN special freedom of expression investigator, said in a telephone interview.
Baldetti said she had been sent the story in an anonymous envelope and that she published a response because the newspaper, El Periodico, had not sought her version of events.
She said the property in question was bought by her family before she became vice-president and that she had declared everything according to the law.
“The government...does not spy on the media,” she added in a tweet.
The article, which was published in El Periodico's Tuesday print edition, was co-written by the paper's founder, Jose Ruben Zamora, who said via the paper's Twitter account that what the government did was illegal and immoral. - Reuters