La carta de l'IPI a Maragall i Benach diu, entre altres coses, això:
Cope Radio is strongly critical of the policies of Spain's Socialist government and has criticised initiatives to give the Autonomous Community of Catalonia a new, quasi-independent status. Nationalist parties in the ruling Catalan coalition have spearheaded efforts to ban the radio network in Catalonia. The Broadcast Council, a political body controlled by the ruling majority in Catalonia's parliament, has apparently now been given punitive powers aimed at silencing critical voices.
In addition, we are informed that the new law gives the Council ample latitude to determine what is truthful and what is not. As the law's preamble states, there is "a right of the citizens of Catalonia to have an audio-visual system that reflects its immediate reality from the standpoint of expressive forms that are tied to its array of traditions, to its symbolic environment."
We understand a petition signed by more than 700,000 Spanish citizens, demanding an investigation into "the political operation … aimed at taking away from the second most listened-to radio network in Spain all its stations in Catalonia," has been sent to the European Parliament, which will take the matter up in January 2006.
IPI believes that the Broadcast Council's new, far-reaching censorship powers have no equivalent in Western Europe and that the creation of a political organ such as this one, bestowed with the ability to muzzle critical voices, represents a serious threat to everyone's right to "seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers," as contained in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
