Miami, February 16, 2012. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) denounced the ratification handed down by the National Court of Justice of Ecuador of the sentence against the directors and journalists of the El Universo newspaper, considering it to be “a new blow against independent media and press freedom” in the country.
In less than two hours of deliberations early this morning, the judges of the National Court of Justice (CNJ in Spanish), Wilson Merino, Paúl Íñiguez and Jorge Blum ratified the conviction and three year prison sentence of Carlos, César and Nicolás Pérez, directors of El Universo of Guayaquil, and Emilio Palacio, former opinion editor of the paper, as well as payment of compensation of 40 million dollars in a suit brought by President Rafael Correa for moral damages.
The president of the IAPA, Milton Coleman, senior editor of The Washington Post, called the decision a serious attack on freedom of the press and gagging of independent journalism: “This sentence and the entire irregular judicial process violate inter American legal principles, human rights, and freedom of expression.”
Coleman further said that the position taken by the court demonstrates “once again, as we have been repeating in the IAPA, that in recent years there exists in Ecuador a judicial and legal structure that is used to make reprisals against those who dissent from official policy.”
The decision was issued at 12:22 a.m. this Thursday, after a fifteen-hour hearing that began at 9:00 Wednesday morning, in a hall that was notably attended by high government officials, congressmen, and politicians. Outside the Court, pro-government demonstrators carried out vehement protests.
The President of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, announced this morning on his Twitter account that his government had given asylum to Carlos Pérez, publisher of El Universo, after he appeared at the Panamanian embassy in Quito. Last week, journalist Emilio Palacio asked for political asylum in the United States at a federal court in Miami, while César and Nicolás Pérez held a press conference yesterday at IAPA headquarters in that city. http://bit.ly/wl64SU.
The President of Ecuador declared in a news conference that “it has been demonstrated that it is possible to bring to justice not only the little clowns, but also the owners of the circus” and that “the country is changing; now they will understand that freedom of expression applies to everybody.” The President also thanked attorneys Gutemberg and Alembert Vera, his family, his ministers, and congressmen, and the citizens who had gone to the Court and who supported him on social media.
Gustavo Mohme, head of the IAPA Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, publisher of the Peruvian newspaper La República, said that “without doubt this decision brings the risk of inhibiting journalism from doing its work for fear of reprisal.” He added that the irregularities revealed in the whole judicial process and the denial of justice to the victims “invite us to think that international judicial remedies must be sought to repair this grave harm to freedom of the press.”
One of the legal representatives of El Universo, Joffre Campaña, added that the case will be submitted for consideration by the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), just as the leaders of El Universo, César and Nicolás Pérez stated yesterday in their news conference at IAPA headquarters. The Pérez brothers had already requested preliminary measures of the IACHR two months ago.
The decision does not go into effect immediately. The plaintiffs may follow up their case as it returns to the lower court and also appeal to the Constitutional Court to continue denouncing the procedural irregularities of which they consider themselves victims.
Among these irregularities, it became known recently that judge Monica Encalada, who led the case against El Universo in the lower court, revealed that the magistrate charged with pronouncing sentence against El Universo in July last year, Juan Paredes, had confided to her that the sentenced had been composed by President Correa’s attorneys. Encalada also announced that she would leave the country “because there is great danger.”
The President of Ecuador sued El Universo and its leaders for “slanderous libel” for an opinion column written by Palacio on February 6, 2011, in which he blamed the head of state for having ordered an attack on a hospital during a police uprising on September 30, 2010. Palacio quit the newspaper and is living in Miami.
The IAPA is a non-profit institution dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 publications in the western hemisphere and has its headquarters in Miami, United States. For more information, please visit http://www.sipiapa.org.
