Miami (July 23, 2010)—With political agendas and international public opinion focused on President Hugo Chávez’ order severing Venezuela’s relations with neighboring Colombia, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) sent out a call for multilateral agencies and human rights and free press organizations to keep their attention focused on the imminent danger to press freedom threatened by the announced intention of the Venezuelan government to take over privately-owned TV Globovisión.
IAPA President Alejandro Aguirre described as “beyond belief, inept and malicious” Chávez’ move to control the only opposition TV network through the imposition and replacement of shareholders. He said the government’s strategy “is nothing less than the occupation -- with legal and judicial impunity – of a media outlet that he could not bend to his will as he did with others that he shut down,” recalling the closure of RCTV in 2007 and dozens of television and radio stations earlier this year.
Aguirre added, “No one, not supranational institutions such as the Organization of American States, Union of South American Nations or the United Nations, nor press freedom organizations, should be distracted by all the other Chavez-generated news which he uses to cover-up his actions that could have irreversible and catastrophic consequences for democracy – like the possible takeover of Globovisión.”
The IAPA cited the upcoming September elections in Venezuela and the Chávez government’s campaign-period curtailment of freedom of expression by jailing dissidents, filing lawsuits against opponents, threatening to shut down media outlets such as the Catholic television channel Vale TV, financially strangling newspapers, and persecuting journalists, as is the case of Guillermo Zuloaga, Globovisión’s president, forced to appeal before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights the justice that he has been denied in his country.
Aguirre, after discussing with other IAPA officers the outrages that Chávez has committed during a “black decade” for press freedom in his country, said, “All of us in the international community should accept responsibility if Globovisión’s right to exist as an independent news company is infringed, since we will be allowing democracy to continue fading away.”
In addition to past and current assaults on individual journalists and news media in Venezuela, the IAPA has been consistent in criticizing the assembly of a dense legal framework – including a constitutional amendment that specifies information must be true and responsible, the “gag” and Social Responsibility laws, decrees permitting presidential propaganda, orders prohibiting officials from providing official information to the media – that has enabled Chávez to disguise his attacks and sarcastically justify them on the grounds that he is simply following laws that have, in fact, been instigated by him to gag the press.
Aguirre, editor of the Miami, Florida, Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas, noted that in such a globalized world no government can claim to be truly democratic when it expels or refuses to allow human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch or the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, to visit its country.
Addressing Chávez’s announcement of how the shareholder makeup of Globovisión would be changed and how he would name a TV host who makes fun of journalists and people who hold different views than the government’s, the IAPA called this “treating as a joke” an issue vital to Venezuelan democracy.
Chávez announced that his government was going to control 45.8% of Globovisión shares, composed of stocks belonging to shareholder Nelson Mezerhane, president of the Banco Federal bank that was seized last month, another 5.8% belonging to another company and 20% owned by Luis Teófilo Núñez who died in 2007.
The IAPA points out, however, that according to information obtained from Globovisión:
—Globovisión shares belong to Corpomedios GV Inversiones S.A., the holder of the television broadcast license or concession and whose shares are owned: 20% by Sandicato Avila C.A., belonging to Nelson Merzehane Gosen; 20% by DNS Inversiones S.A., owned by Daniela Núñez Scanonne who received them from her father, Luis Teófilo Núñez, before his death and which are managed by Carlos Zuloaga Siso; and 60% by Unitel de Venezuela C.A., whose shares are held by Guillermo Zuloaga Núñez (74.5%), Alberto Federico Ravel (17%) and the legal entity Sindicato Avila (8.5%).
The majority stock in Corpomedios GV Inversiones is held by Guillermo Zuloaga Núñez; for deliberations and decisions during shareholders’ meetings, 65% of stock ownership must be present and in favor, meaning that in this case it would be impossible for the government to place a representative on the channel’s Board of Directors or interfere in its editorial policies.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org
