Miami (July 21, 2011)—The president of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), Gonzalo Marroquín, qualified as a “serious blow to the most essential principles of freedom of information” yesterday’s court decision sentencing executives and a former journalist from Ecuador’s newspaper El Universo to imprisonment and payment of a multi-million-dollar fine on a charge of libel filed in March by the country’s President Rafael Correa.
Less than 24 hours after the hearing began Judge Juan Paredes of the 15th Criminal Court handed down the sentence against the newspaper’s former op-ed page editor, Emilio Palacio, and its executives Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez to three years in prison and ordered them to pay $30 million – plus a further $10 million fine to be paid by the paper – on a charge of “the criminal offense of libelous defamation,” as stated in the court ruling.
Marroquín, president of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Siglo 21, added, “This confirms to us once again that the federal government continues with its systematic and hostile campaign to do away with the independent press and establish, by law or through the courts, ownership of the truth that all the Ecuadorean people must swallow.”
Robert Rivard, chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information and editor of the San Antonio Express-News, Texas, said, “This is a dark day in the history of the press in Ecuador and the Americas,” in his comment on the court case which had been cited in the conclusions presented by an IAPA international delegation that visited the capital, Quito, July 17-19. The organization’s mission left Ecuador the same day as the dramatic hearing that lasted 12 hours and during which provisional Judge Paredes issued a 150-page conviction, based on a case file more than 5,000 pages in length.
“In addition to our resistance to this outrage against the independent press,” Marroquín said, “we are solidly behind the journalists and the entire staff of El Universal and hold the hope that higher courts will know how to uphold the right to freedom of the press and of expression of all citizens, above and beyond the personal interests of those in power.”
On March 21 this year Correa filed the libel suit against El Universo and its executives over an opinion piece by Palacio on February 6, in which he accused the president of having ordered a hospital to be attacked during a September 30, 2010 police rebellion. Although Palacio resigned from the newspaper last week the president decided to move forward with his lawsuit which, in addition to three years’ imprisonment for the accused, he calls for $80 million in indemnity.
The IAPA delegation in Ecuador, which was not received by the president’s office or the National Assembly, did meet with Constitutional Court Chief Justice Patricio Pazmiño Freire, Ombudsman Fernando Gutiérrez Vera and other officials of that entity, with opposition members of Congress, reporters, editors and publishers, and representatives of non-governmental organizations, news groups, chambers of commerce and academia.
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.