Stabroek News yesterday announced that it would be staging a peaceful picketing exercise on Monday outside the meeting of the Common-wealth Finance Ministers at the Guyana International Conference Centre, Turkeyen in relation to the withdrawal of advertisements by the Guyana Government.
The newspaper in a press release yesterday said that the withdrawal of the advertisements started on the 1st November, 2006 and is still in force. “This newspaper does not receive advertisements from some twenty-nine government ministries, agencies and state corporations.”
The newspaper said that as a mark of protest against this continuing abuse of press freedom by the Guyana Government it would be staging the picketing exercise between 8:30 am and 9:30 am on Monday.
The government cut-off of advertising has been widely condemned in the Caribbean and further afield. Stabroek News has also reported this attack on press freedom to the Commonwealth Press Union which has written to the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon on the matter.
Stabroek News has also lodged a protest with the Freedom of Expression rapporteur of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Ignacio J. Alvarez. He wrote to the Guyana Government in July of this year seeking an explanation for the cut-off of advertising. To date the government has not responded. The rapporteur subsequently issued a statement calling on the government to review its withdrawal of ads from Stabroek News and to ensure transparency in the allocation of official advertising.