[Lasa] "Freedom of the Press in Ecuador: a chill descends" The Economist

Mon Jul 25 08:48:41 PDT 2011

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The Americas
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Freedom of the press in Ecuador
A chill descends
Jul 22nd 2011, 16:10 by S.K. | QUITO

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FOR a man who calls his country's legal system dysfunctional and corrupt, Rafael Correa, Ecuador's president, has fared remarkably well before the courts. In 2008 he won a $600,000 suit against Banco Pichincha, the country's biggest bank, because it had erroneously included him on a list of delinquent credit-card holders. On July 20th he was granted a far larger $40m judgment in a libel case against a columnist for the El Universo newspaper and three of the company's directors, in a ruling that free-speech advocates say will have a chilling effect on the press.

Mr Correa, Ecuador's most popular and powerful president in a generation, has long called independent television, radio and newspapers his worst enemies. Among his harshest critics was El Universo's Emilio Palacio. Last September the Ecuadorean police staged a mutiny<http://www.economist.com/node/17204908>, in which the president was escorted out of a hospital amid a firefight between the army and the police. Four months later, Mr Palacio wrote<http://www.eluniverso.com/2011/02/06/1/1363/mentiras.html> that the "dictator" might some day face prosecution "before a criminal court for giving orders to open fire at [his troops'] discretion and without warning against a hospital full of civilians and innocent people." The accusation was highly questionable, since the soldiers' commanders had told them not to shoot first. But Mr Palacio was not the first to make it, and many observers have criticised the president's decision to start the rescue operation before having the hospital where he was trapped evacuated.

Mr Correa has often used the courts to try to silence his critics. In March he sued the authors of "Big Brother", a book recounting his elder brother's wildly successful business deals<http://www.economist.com/node/14660471> during his presidential term, for $10m apiece (five times the previous record-high judgment in an Ecuadorean court). This time he went even further, filing suit against Mr Palacio and the paper's directors for $80m plus jail terms for the defendants.

Although Mr Correa is known for keeping a packed schedule, he took six hours off work to attend the hearing for the lawsuit in Guayaquil on July 19th. He was accompanied by a small crowd of supporters that pelted the defendants and their lawyers with eggs and bottles outside the courthouse. The media were barred from attending. It took Juan Paredes, replacing the intended judge who was on holiday, less than two days to read through the case's 5,000-page file and issue a 60-page ruling. He sentenced Mr Palacio and Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez-the newspaper's directors-to three years in jail each, as well as granting Mr Correa half the damages he sought ($30m from the three men and $10m from the company).

An El Universo executive said after the ruling that the newspaper, with a circulation of 70,000, is worth just $35m. It will have to borrow to pay the judgment-particularly if it plans to cover the liabilities of the individual defendants, who are not nearly rich enough to pay on their own. The president called the ruling a "historic landmark" ending the media's "reign of terror"-and then promptly had his lawyer announce that he would appeal it, in order to get the full $80m he had requested. Mr Correa says he is seeking justice, not money, and that he will donate the funds to a troubled environmental scheme<http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2010/09/ecuadors_environment> aimed at preventing the exploitation of an oil field. (He did, however, keep the $600,000 from Banco Pichincha, on which he has managed to avoid paying income taxes).

The defendants say they will appeal, and do not have to pay up or go to jail until those efforts are exhausted. If the ruling is allowed to stand, however, it is sure to put Mr Correa's critics on notice that expressing their objections too forcefully could put them out of business or send them to jail. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said the ruling was "contrary to regional freedom of expression standards" and would produce "self-censorship and a notable chilling effect that impacts not only the individuals convicted but Ecuadorean society as a whole."

The Miami Herald
Other Views
LATIN AMERICA

Silencing free speech in Ecuador
 BY JON PERDUE
jonperdue at gmail.com <mailto:jonperdue at gmail.com%20>
July 24, 2011

Last Wednesday, a judge in Ecuador sentenced editorial page editor Emilio Palacio to three years in jail for writing an editorial in the newspaper El Universo that called Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, a "dictator." Along with Palacio, three brothers that serve as directors of the newspaper, Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez, were also sentenced to three years each.

Correa, a far-left politician that follows the "21st Century Socialism" model of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, has called Ecuador's media "political actors who are trying to oppose the revolutionary government." Correa filed both a criminal complaint and an $80 million civil lawsuit against the newspaper and the four individuals. The judge cut the judgment in half to only $40 million, on top of the jail sentences.

To make sure that the newspaper and any other media outlets got the message, El Universo received a surprise visit the day before sentencing by a Correa agent from the Ministry of Labor Relations who asked to see all salary and payroll information.

Though Correa has been widely condemned for trying to legally stifle criticism against his autocratic tendencies, he has shown little concern for his detractors. Wednesday's verdict was just the first of many Correa lawsuits that are pending.

In May 2007, Correa filed a lawsuit against Francisco Vivanco Riofrío, a member of the board of directors of the daily La Hora, for an editorial that said that the president wished to rule Ecuador "with turmoil, rocks and sticks," and which called his actions as president "shameful."

President Correa has not limited his legal rampage to newspaper editorialists. In March of this year he also sued Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, two investigative journalists and authors of the book Gran Hermano (Big Brother), for its revelations about a scandal in which the president's brother, Fabricio Correa, had gotten large contracts with the government.

Correa's litigiousness is based upon Article 230 of Ecuador's penal code, which prescribes prison sentences for "disrespect" which comes from "threats or libel that would offend the president." These disrespect, or desacato, laws, exist in a number of countries in Latin America, though the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and a number of free speech organizations have long called for their repeal.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists has stated, "Ecuador's outdated criminal defamation provisions have been systematically used to punish critical journalists," and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) issued a statement on Wednesday condemning "the ongoing harassment of Ecuador's independent press through excessive and disproportionate legal suits by President Rafael Correa.

The IAPA stated that Ecuador's version of the desacato law was "an archaic concept in a modern democracy and outmoded in Latin America and which should be eliminated from penal codes," and the Ecuadorean Association of Newspaper Publishers (AEDEP) stated that "no other contemporary Ecuadorean politician has employed such a legal concept as an instrument to frighten the press."

The origin of these desacato laws dates all the way back to imperial Rome, when they were enacted to protect the honor of the emperor, and their use in the Americas dates back to the time of the Spanish Viceroyalty's implementation of the encomienda system that maintained the imperial hierarchy. Today, these anachronistic laws are being used by those who rail against the very imperialism that they now practice.

Just days before Wednesday's verdict, the directors of El Universo offered to issue a correction if Correa would drop the prosecution. He refused. Though Correa's actions indicate an extreme sensitivity to criticism, his decision to send journalists to prison for calling him dictatorial shows that he is impervious to irony.

Jon Perdue is director of Latin America Programs at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C.

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