Miami (July 22, 2011)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today asked the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to carry out its task of monitoring the serious press freedom and free speech situation in Ecuador, urging it to insist that those in power in the South American country amend laws that make criticism and expression of opinions criminal offenses, and to cease enacting legislation that seeks to restrict the work of the news media.
In a note sent to IACHR Executive Secretary Santiago Cantón and to that agency’s Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Catalina Botero, IAPA President Gonzalo Marroquín expressed the organization’s concern following a July 20 court ruling that sentenced the former op-ed page editor of the Quito newspaper El Universo, Emilio Palacio, and executives of the paper Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez to three years in prison and payment of $40 million in indemnity to Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa Delgado.
Marroquín, president of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Siglo 21, said this was not an isolated incident but rather one that “forms part of a systematic campaign by those in power against the right to express opinions and the public’s right to information,” which was noted by an IAPA international delegation that traveled to Quito earlier this week.
He explained that in meetings held with members of Congress and other representatives of Ecuadorean society “it was clear that freedom of the press and independence of the public institutions, access to independent and equitable justice, individual and collective rights enshrined in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Human Rights Convention, are principles that are undergoing great deterioration in the country, due to attitudes and direct actions adopted by the nation’s president.”
He went on to say that despite the framework of pessimism “there does exist a large degree of confidence in the attention that can be given by international organizations to these cases, especially the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Office of Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, in the quest for mechanisms and remedies that can halt this situation and make a government think again about the need to guarantee democratic ways and institutions.”
Marroquín also referred to the bill for a Communication Law under debate in the National Assembly, on which the IAPA agreed with the views of the Special Rapporteur in a letter sent in August last year to the head of the Ecuadoran Judiciary. However, the IAPA president made it clear that “this legislation should not exist, it being a regulation that would restrict freedom of the press and of expression, contrary to the IACHR’s Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression and the Declaration of Chapultepec.”
On a final note, Marroquín asked the IACHR officials to “carry out your task of monitoring the situation in Ecuador, insist to those in power that laws that make criticism and expression of opinions criminal offenses be amended, that they be brought in line with inter-American juridical standards, and an end be put to enacting other laws that would restrict the freedom not only of the news media but that of all Ecuadoreans.”
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.
