|
Former IAPA President Rafael Molina, editor of the newspaper El Día, was consulted as an expert witness by the Inter-American Human Rights Court concerning public hearings to begin next week on the forced disappearance in May 1994 of journalist, professor and opposition leader Narciso González Medina, a critic of the then Dominican Republic president, Joaquín Balaguer.
The Inter-American Court judges on June 28 and 29 will be hearing pubic testimony at its headquarters in San José, Costa Rica, from alleged victims, eye-witnesses and experts in the González Medina and family members versus Dominican Republic case. The Court is an agency of the Organization of American States. Its rulings are not subject to appeal and are binding.
González Medina, known as Narcisazo, was arrested on May 26, 1994 and was made to disappear by members of the Dominican Armed Forces as he was leaving a movie theater in Santo Domingo. His whereabouts have remained unknown ever since.
He worked as a journalist, lawyer and a professor at the Liberal Arts School of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD) and in addition was active in creation of socio-cultural and human rights populist groups. According to his family and colleagues his arrest was believed to have been because of his activities and his public questioning of elections held on May 16, 1994.
The case gained new notoriety in the Dominican Republic in recent days following a controversy unleashed by the book “Historia del Periodismo” (History of the Press) by Oscar López Reyes, a journalist and dean of the Communication School of Eugenio Maria de Hostos University, in which he raised the theory that González Medina might have committed suicide.
|