Assailing opposition media, Ecuador’s Correa accused of imperiling free speech

<p>GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador – In the heat of a one-day police revolt over benefit cuts last September, President Rafael Correa’s government took the extraordinary step of ordering all TV channels to broadcast the signal of state-run television.</p> <p>Correa survived the revolt – rescued from a besieged hospital by army commandos – but the government’s action fueled accusations that the president was showing a pattern of intolerance and even disdain for a critical press.</p> <p>Now, free speech advocates say, Correa is taking his anti-media fight to a new level. He already has sought jail time and multimillion-dollar fines for journalists he accuses of defamation. The leftist president is also putting a ballot question before voters on May 7 that would restrict news media ownership and put the executive in charge of regulating media content.</p> <p>Such actions have angered Ecuadorean journalists and drawn condemnation from regional press freedom groups – who are drawing parallels with Venezuela and Bolivia, where a number of major news outlets are highly critical of leftist governments allied with Correa – and international watchdogs such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch.</p> <p>”We journalists are an annoyance for those in power,” said the president of Ecuador’s National Union of Journalists, Vicente Ordonez, “and these types of actions seek to frighten and bring about self-censorship.” They aim in particular to discourage investigative reporting, he said.</p> <p>Correa insists he’s fighting irresponsible journalism exercised by media owned and run by “oligarchs” bent on toppling him because his agenda threatens their economic interests.</p> <p>Since taking office in January 2007, Correa has regularly attacked reporters as corrupt, “mafiosos” and “opposition politicians in disguise.”</p> <p>”It’s very regrettable for us that our journalism isn’t waking up, isn’t maturing,” said Gutemberg Vera, an attorney for Correa.</p> <p>Vera added that the president has been “excessively tolerant” with a domestic news media that openly opposes him.</p> <p>One of 10 ballot questions Ecuadoreans will decide next month would create a government oversight panel that would regulate news media content for “excesses” such as violence, explicit sex and discrimination.</p> <p>The measure would also bar media company owners from having financial interests in other industries.</p> <p>The director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Joel Simon, wrote a letter to Correa on April 18 expressing “deep concern about Ecuador’s commitment to freedom of expression.” He said the oversight panel in particular “would open the door to government censorship.”</p> <p>Correa only recently began taking legal action against journalists.</p> <p>In February, he sued two journalists for defamation after railing against some in the profession as “true assassins with pens … those who kill the dignity, the honour, of people.”</p> <p>The two had disclosed in a book last year that companies owned by the president’s older brother, Fabricio Correa, had won $600 million in state contracts, primarily for road construction.</p> <p>Ecuadorean law bars presidents’ relatives from using their family relationships for financial gain, and Rafael Correa cancelled the contracts when their existence became public.</p> <p>Contrary to the book’s claims, Correa has said, he’d been unaware of the contracts.</p> <p>His lawyers say the false claim forms the basis of his lawsuit seeking $5 million from each author of “The Big Brother.”</p> <p>Last month, Correa took on the main opposition newspaper, El Universo, by asking the courts to order a criminal libel penalty – three years in prison each – for three members of the newspaper’s board of directors and an editorial writer.</p> <p>The suit also seeks a total of $50 million in fines from the individual defendants and $30 million from El Universo’s parent company.</p> <p>The alleged defamation was part of a column by editorial writer Emilio Palacio, titled “No to the Lies,” which refers repeatedly to Correa as “the Dictator” and says he “ordered discretionary fire – without prior notification – against a hospital full of civilians and innocent people” during the Sept. 30 police revolt over government plans to cut police benefits.</p> <p>Correa had taken refuge in the hospital after defiantly confronting demonstrators who roughed him up. Government officials called in the army to rescue the president from armed insurgents who they say had surrounded the building.</p> <p>Vera, the Correa attorney, told The Associated Press that El Universo’s directors were being prosecuted because it was their duty to prevent such an “injurious text” from being published.</p> <p>Vera said Palacio gave the president no other option but to seek to punish him.</p> <p>Journalism “has brought us to a degenerative situation and if it’s not halted in time we are going to have journalists who don’t respect ethics,” Vera said.</p> <p>None of the directors would comment about either the lawsuit or their opinion of Palacio’s column. For his part, Palacio said in an interview with the AP that Correa “wants to destroy me.”</p> <p>He said he would appeal if need be to the highest authorities, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous panel based in Washington, D.C.</p> <p>Human Rights Watch condemned the lawsuit and called on Ecuador to repeal its legal code so it no longer allows for criminal prosecutions for defamation.</p> <p>Watchdog groups are also increasingly concerned about media censorship in Venezuela and Bolivia. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has used the courts and pushed laws against news media he has accused of plotting to undermine his government. Critics say several laws aim to silence dissent and threaten free speech.</p> <p>The Venezuelan government has forced a prominent opposition-aligned TV station off the airwaves and cable. The owner of another anti-Chavez channel fled the country last year to avoid criminal charges against him. He dismissed the charges as politically motivated.</p> <p>An anti-racism law proposed by Bolivian President Evo Morales’ government, meanwhile, would allow authorities to shut down news media deemed in violation. Its critics say the proposed law could be used arbitrarily to silence government critics.</p> <p>But threats to press freedom are not restricted to leftist-run countries.</p> <p>Colombia’s Free Press Foundation notes that while killings of journalists have diminished there, death threats and other intimidation continue and a different weapon is being increasingly used against reporters: slander lawsuits.</p> <p>The foundation says it’s following 38 such cases of “judicial assault” filed against journalists by politicians and public officials ranging from former presidents to former judges.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera in Bogota, Colombia; Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela; and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report. Bajak contributed from Lima, Peru.</p>