Paraguay

This period has been overshadowed by lawsuits, court rulings, campaigns to discredit and assaults and attacks on news media and individual journalists, in nearly all cases in reprisal for exposures of corruption in the public administration. The most significant developments in these last six months have been: In March Judge Mirtha Ozuna de Cazal ordered ABC Color publisher Aldo Zuccolillo to pay $50,000 plus 2% per month interest dating from the filing of the lawsuit against him to Carmelo Castiglioni, a member of the judicial branch of government’s Appeals Court, who had voiced an opinion over a court hearing in which former Paraguayan president Luis González Macchi was acquitted. González Macchi had been convicted by a lower court to eight years in prison on a charge of inciting lack of confidence in a case concerning misappropriation of the funds of two banks that gone bankrupt – the Unión and Oriental banks. On learning of his acquittal by the Appeals Court in September 2006 ABC Color criticized the fact that there had been a great deal of political involvement and expressed surprise that Castiglioni had been able to study 87 law books in less than two months and asked the Justices Rules Jury – a body that looks into alleged malfeasance by judges – to take up the matter. Castiglioni sued the newspaper in March 2007 and sought $250,000 in damages. Judge Cazal declared in her decision that the information was not false, but she said it was inappropriate and incorrect to say that an opinion is presented as an affirmation. She held that journalistic criticism should not contain any adjectives. “Freedom of the press is to report on the matter without adjectives,” she said. ABC Color lodged an appeal but the matter has not yet been resolved. On April 7 Judge Mesalina Fernández Franco threw out a libel suit brought by Antonio Odair Melgarejo Gómez against ABC Color publisher Zuccolillo. Melgarejo Gómez, who is facing a number of charges of extortion, fraud and illegal appropriation, said he was offended because in what in his suit he called the “reckless publication that he was a “false lawyer.” In mid-April ABC Color reporters obtained a dossier containing a plan against the newspaper, believed to have been presented to Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo, who was being asked for funds to purchase “10,000 T-shirts for free distribution to fellow citizens who defend the democratic change in our country.” The dossier was leaked by members of the government itself. The T-shirts, bearing the words “ABC lies” in Spanish and “ABC ijapu” in Guaraní were used earlier this year in public campaigns against the newspaper. The government denied any involvement. Communications Minister Augusto dos Santos declared, “It does not form any part of our conduct of government “ to buy or order T-shirts to attack the newspaper. Lugo stressed that his government does not go after the press or journalists “either openly or covertly.” Several other media and press organizations came out in support of ABC Color. The Chamber of Deputies unanimously passed a declaration introduced by Rep. Oscar Tuma of the UNACE party repudiating the campaign orchestrated by sectors supporting the government. The political secretary of the ruling leftist Partido Popular Tekojhoja party, Anibal Carrillo, declared that his party “absolutely supports the ‘ABC lies’ campaign, we in fact think that it is a very weak campaign because this media outlet not only ijapu (lies) but it poisons. I think that the campaign’s slogan would have to be ‘ABC poisons,’ ‘Zuccolillo is a liar.’ This is not a personal opinion, but the official stance of the Tekojoja,” he said. During a breakfast meeting held at the presidential residence with accredited reporters and news photographers on the occasion of Journalists Day, President Lugo reiterated that his government “does not have as a priority a law to regulate the media and has pledged that it will never promote actions that restrict the right to communication, freedom of expression, the exercise of freedom of the press or making communication democratic.” He also said that the press is “a reassurlance for society against corruption.” On May 26 a crowd of civil servants violently attacked the building of the newspaper Ultima Hora. They besieged the building, hurled eggs and fireworks at it and shouted insults to the employees and the editor there for having questioned the reduction of the workday from eight hours to six. A member of the board of directors of the Paraguayan Journalists Union took part in the attack and went so far as to justify the violence, saying that the newspaper had not published the civil servants’ points of view. Documents sent to the Chamber of Deputies by the Itaipú and Yacyretá bi-national hydroelectric companies in late May confirmed that the Information and Communication Ministry (SICOM) was the one that had asked them to pay for the propaganda and even identified the media outlets where it should be paraded. Those radio stations have mostly been declared illegal as being community stations. Under this system the SICOM was said to have granted the community radios some $15 million through the hydroelectric companies, although the Communication Minister denied that there had been such a large sum and that the SICOM had been an intermediary. In a lengthy interview published in June 30 in the Argentina newspaper Página 12 Communications Minister Augusto dos Santos said that the Fernando Lugo government “is in the process” of setting up 10 publicly-owned radio stations, one television channel and 17 relay stations throughout the country. He did not say what funds were intended to be used to implement this “communication plan.” In addition, he reaffirmed an intention of the executive branch “to regulate the news media,” although he admitted the government had difficulty in raising debate on the matter. For their part, leaders of the Paraguay Broadcasters Union told Vice President Federico Franco of their disagreement with community radios receiving advertising, on the grounds that they do not pay taxes, unlike the commercial stations. Alberto Riveros, the union’s vice president, at a meeting with the Paraguayan Advertisers Chamber estimated that there were between 800 and 1,000 totally illegal radio stations in the country operating in non-compliance with legal requirements. The wife of Adrián Alex Mauricio Lima, an alleged member of the self-styled First Capital Commando, a powerful Brazilian drug cartel, warned the correspondent of ABC Color in Salto de Guiará, a town located on the Brazilian border, Rosendo Duarte, to keep his, his daughter’s and his family’s mouths shut. She made the remark on August 26 in a call-in radio program hosted by the correspondent and aired on the local FM radio station. The Paraguay Journalists Union in a public announcement called on the government to conduct an investigation and take all legal action to prevent Duarte and his family from “suffering any regrettable consequences.” The governor of Alto Paraná province, located in eastern Paraguay on the border with Brazil, Nelson Aguinagalde Gallinar, belonging to the Colorado party, has been waging a campaign of coercion and harassment against the correspondent of ABC Color and reporter with the local newspaper Vanguardia, Fermín Jara. The governor was understood to have been annoyed by denunciations of corruption in his administration. This is what Jara reported to the local chapter of the Paraguay Journalists Union. On August 27 four officials of the Interior Ministry traveling in a ministry vehicle approached the journalist’s home and began taking photographs and filming. Antonia Delvalle, ABC Color correspondent in the town of Fernando de la Mora, near Asunción, was verbally abused on September 28 by local municipal officials and supporters of former mayor Anibal Franco, who was seeking re-election. The head of the National Emergency Ministry, Camilo Soares, filed lawsuit on October 1 against ABC Color reporter Jorge Torres for his reports implicating Soares in cases of alleged corruption by engaging in overpriced purchases of food items and unlawful collection of expenses. Communications Minister Augusto dos Santos confirmed that the Paraguayan Public Information agency has joined the new network of Latin American state-owned agencies Latin American News Union (ULAN), which seeks to reinforce official information with an emphasis on the achievements of the governments belonging to it – Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala, Brazil, Mexico and now Paraguay.