April 12, 2026 – 19:45
The Senate could discuss in a session on Wednesday the bill “On Prevention, Protection and Assistance to Journalists and Press Workers Victims of Violence”, an initiative promoted by Chartism after excluding from the text the protection of activists for human rights defenders.
The Chartist regulations seek to create a response system to threats, attacks and risk situations that journalists face in the exercise of their profession. The initiative arose as a result of a condemnation of the Paraguayan State for the Santiago Leguizamón case with the demand to protect journalists and human rights activists.
Read more: Senate postpones until March Chartist project to “protect journalists”
However, the Paraguayan Journalists Union (SPP) questioned that the project lacks effective protection mechanisms, eliminates spaces for representation of the workers themselves and concentrates the decision to grant security measures in the Ministry of the Interior.
The journalists’ union had insisted that a protection law must include clear protocols, inter-institutional mechanisms and collegiate bodies to assess the risk and activate urgent measures, elements that – as they noted – do not appear in the Chartist version.
Press workers also question that the decision to grant security is concentrated in the Ministry of the Interior. They point out that this opens the possibility that protection measures could be left depending on the mood or will of the minister on duty, which they consider a democratic risk.
The project should have been discussed last year, but at the request of opposition senator Esperanza Martínez (FG) it was postponed until the end of the parliamentary recess.
Excludes human rights organizations.
At that time, the leader of the Chartist caucus, Senator Natalicio Chase (ANR, HC), confirmed that his bloc decided to support the new text presented by Honor Colorado, which excludes human rights organizations from the central scope of the project.
“The decision is to accompany this text, excluding human rights activists and treating it separately. Let’s see what the journalists’ union says and there we will move forward.”
