- The ARGIA team on Tuesday offered an extraordinary press conference, together with members of the NGO Mugarik Gabe. Members of the Association of Migrated and Racialized Women of the Basque Country have also been present. We have publicly denounced that multinational Solway has asked ARGIA to delete the interview with Guatemalan journalist Paolina Albani and to pay EUR 15,000. We will not eliminate it, we will not pay and we will keep reporting. Read the full manifesto here.
Solway, leaves LIGHT in peace: journalism is not a crime
The multinational Solway Investment Group has asked a Guatemalan journalist to remove an ARGIA interview and pay EUR 15,000. ARGIA will not do so and we will use the attack to demand independent journalism.
ARGIA interviewed the journalist Paolina Albani of Guatemala in late April. Albani collaborates in Community Press and is invited by NGO Mugarik Gabe to Euskal Herria. He talked to ARGIA, among other things, about a study they have at hand: Mining Secrets. There are 65 international journalists, including Swiss public television RTS, as well as The Guardian, Le Monde and El País.
After receiving a leak of eight million documents, the journalists concluded that the Swiss-based mining multinational Solway has concealed the pollution reports of two subsidiaries in Guatemala, including the largest lake in the country. In addition, they have concluded that Solway had plans to incentivize the survival crops of the communities living in the area, that it had funds to buy local leaders, that it sent money to the Guatemalan National Police... In other words, the Solway Group has used its financial and political resources to make decisions in Guatemala in favour of its interests.
Journalist Paolina Albani highlighted this case in the ARGIA interview and emphasized Solway's behavior with the media: He said that he had bought the main media in Guatemala and that he was harassing the journalists leaving the official speech. Daring people denounce prison sentences and death threats. They're criminalized for reporting.
Now LIGHT is also on trend
From the law office of the multinational Solway in the Spanish state, ARGIA has asked us what it considers a threat: To remove the interview with journalist Paolina Albani and pay 15,000 euros. If they do not, they threaten to bring the case to court.
We want to respond publicly to this multinational that earns millions a year: we are not going to eliminate the dialogue. They won't tell us who we can interview and who we can't. We will not pay you money and we will keep reporting on the subject. They have achieved the opposite.
If you punish LIGHT, you will lose all the media and environmental advocates around the world. So we ask the members of the ARGIA community, our readers, the news sector and anyone who is against all injustice, to defend the independence of journalism. We call for this denunciation to be echoed and for it to serve to respond jointly and aloud to individual and secret threats, because only then will we succeed in stopping.
Finally, we want to show ARGIA’s solidarity with the Community Press media in Guatemala and the journalist Paolina Albani. And also send the greatest hug and support of his colleagues to the peoples who defend the land in Guatemala and all the journalists persecuted. The fact that Solway is able to reach and threaten gives us credibility to the complaints of local journalists.
So let's say aloud: journalism is not a crime.
They will not silence us.
Leave the LIGHT alone.
See the full ARGIA press conference at: