Miami (December 9, 2009)–The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) expressed its concern and criticism of the bill for a new Communication Law sponsored by the government in Ecuador, warning that its articles "will affect press freedom and free speech by breaching inter-American principles on the public’s right to information.” The bill comes up for debate in the National Assembly in the next few days.
The IAPA maintains that the new law would increase restrictions on freedom of the press and the pluralism it is meant to encourage, as well as interfere in news media content. At the same time, the organization acknowledged that some progress was made in the controversy by the public discussion on the bill, which goes to debate in the legislature shortly.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre described as “positive and worrisome” criticism of the bill made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' (IACHR) Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression published by the Ecuadorean press.
“Consulting the Office of the Rapporteur was timely and positive since we have always held that this bill violates the inter-American standards set out in Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights as well as the Organization of American States’ Principles of Freedom of Expression which are preserved in the Declaration of Chapultepec", Aguirre stated, adding “the rights and guarantees inherent to human beings cannot be granted by any authority, rather they must be recognized as innate.”
Aguirre, managing editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, went on to say that it would “certainly be a concern” if the National Assembly does not take into account “these criticisms by the Rapporteur, which, in general, concur with the positions we expressed through the international delegation that we sent to Quito a month ago and the review we released during our recent General Assembly in Buenos Aires.”
Aguirre recalled that the IAPA has protested several items contrary to freedom of the press and expression with the bill's probable passage: the creation of a super-governmental control agency; comparable rules and penalties that would be applied to different news media, such as print and broadcast outlets; mandatory annual registration of print media; the equal distribution of privately-owned, public and community media, and, among other things, interference in editorial policies which could result by the press being required to observe certain obligatory ethical standards.
In her letter to the speaker of the National Assembly, Fernando Cordero – who some days ago declared that if the law were to restrict freedoms it should be “thrown in the trash” – IACHR Special Rapporteur Catalina Botero specified criticism on the following points of the bill: imposition of mandatory union membership by journalists; a system of registration and penalties for all media; interference in content; prior censorship; violation of professional secrecy, and a legal requirement to observe ethical conduct.
Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, declared “We believe the legislators should kill this bill since under the pretext of media administrative organization what is in fact being created is a system of censorship which attacks the most elemental principle of democracy – the public’s right to know, to dissent, to express opinions, to criticize.”
During the IAPA mission to Ecuador in late October, headed by Gonzalo Marroquín, the organization’s vice president and editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, members maintained that the bills under study at the time violated constitutional principles, and that existing laws and legal proceedings “already fully protect people from any abuse that a news media outlet might commit,” and therefore “it is not necessary to continue creating regulations or a new press law.”
The IAPA delegation concluded that the bill represents “a restrictive law that would generate government censorship, encourage self-censorship and limit investigative reporting and exposure of corruption, undermining the role of the press in a democracy.”
Following a lengthy discussion of the law in Buenos Aires in early November, the IAPA General Assembly adopted a resolution insisting to “the members of Ecuador's National Assembly that in any new laws they approve, unrestricted respect for freedom of expression, freedom of press and freedom of access to information must prevail in compliance with the Political Constitution and consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations and the American Convention on Human Rights (Pact of San José), to which Ecuador is a signatory.”
