MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Family of murdered journalist urges Paraguay to comply with Inter-American Court ruling

The family also said it had proposed holding the official act of acknowledgment of responsibility at the site of the killing, a proposal that was not accepted

The widow and children of Paraguayan journalist Santiago Leguizamón, murdered in 1991, have called on the state to fully comply with the ruling in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found Paraguay responsible for failing to properly investigate the crime. The demand was voiced on Monday at a ceremony beside the monument honoring the broadcaster in Pedro Juan Caballero, on the border with Brazil, convened by the family, the Paraguayan Journalists' Union, and the Human Rights Coordinating Body, with backing from the International Federation of Journalists.

Leguizamón, director of the Mburucuyá radio station, was shot on April 26, 1991, as he left the studio, after receiving threats over his investigations into organized crime along the border. In November 2022, the Inter-American Court declared Paraguay internationally responsible for violating his rights to life and to freedom of expression, as well as his relatives' judicial guarantees.

Among the reparation measures, the court ordered the reopening of the criminal investigation, the advancement of a law protecting journalists and human rights defenders, the strengthening and funding of the Journalists' Safety Roundtable, the creation of a fund for prevention and assistance programs, and the reinstatement for five years of the national journalism prize bearing the broadcaster's name.

“The most important part, the structural one, which concerns public policies to protect journalists, still has not advanced,” said Dante Leguizamón, the journalist's son and executive secretary of the Human Rights Coordinating Body. The family also said it had proposed holding the official act of acknowledgment of responsibility at the site of the killing, a proposal that was not accepted.

For its part, the vice-presidency has convened for July 27 the Public Act of Acknowledgment of International Responsibility in the journalist's memory, and maintains that compliance with the ruling is advancing through the interinstitutional commission that coordinates the implementation of international judgments, in whose meetings the family's representation has taken part.

The bill recommended by the court was submitted to Congress in 2023 by opposition lawmakers. An alternative proposal pushed in 2025 by governing-party legislators, which excludes human rights defenders and concentrates its implementation in the Interior Ministry, was rejected by journalists' unions and remains stalled in committee.

Since the end of Alfredo Stroessner's dictatorship in 1989, 22 journalists have been murdered in Paraguay, nine of them in the border department of Amambay. Only three of those cases have reached a final judicial resolution.