Ecuador II

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WHEREAS the President of the Republic of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado has submitted for vote of the people on Saturday, May 7, 2011, a Popular Referendum that contains legal and constitutional reforms; WHEREAS the third question that would amend the Constitution says “For the purpose of avoiding conflicts of interest, are you in agreement with prohibiting institutions in the private financial system, as well as private communications companies with national scope, their managers and primary shareholders, from being owners or shareholders of companies outside of the financial or communications areas, respectively, amending the Constitution as established in Attachment 3?” ; WHEREAS this attempt to amend the Constitution violates fundamental human rights in an unacceptable way, such as the right to equality before the law, to work, to free enterprise, and to private property of the managers and owners of communications media, and is also contrary to inter American standards in regard to freedom of expression and the jurisprudence of the Inter American Court in this regard, all of obligatory observance by the Ecuadorian state; WHEREAS in the context in which this referendum is being carried out, of permanent aggression by the President and his primary aides toward independent media and journalists critical of the regime, this amendment constitutes a frontal economic attack on them and, therefore, it puts at risk the economic independence that is so necessary for editorial independence; WHEREAS the fourth question on legal reforms says “For the purpose of avoiding excesses in the communications media, are you in favor of a communications law that would create a Council of Regulation to establish standards for the dissemination of content on television, radio, and print publications that contains messages of violence, explicit sex, or discrimination; and that would establish the criteria for the ultimate liability of communicators or broadcast media?”; WHEREAS the question described above is also contrary to inter American standards in regard to freedom of expression and jurisprudence of the Inter American Court in this regard, all of obligatory observance by the Ecuadorian state; WHEREAS this question is being asked at a time in which the government, in spite of its majority representation in the National Assembly, has failed for more than a year in its attempt to pass a Communications Law designed to confine the independent press, and which contains precisely the creation of the Council on Communications in the same terms presented now in a popular referendum; WHEREAS in respect to this would-be law, in an express manner, concern has already been manifested in the report of freedom of expression of the OAS, the freedom committee of the UN, and important international organizations that defend freedom of expression, such as Human Rights Watch; WHEREAS Principle 10 of the Declaration of Chapultepec states that: “No news medium nor journalist may be punished for publishing the truth or criticizing or denouncing the government”; THE MID-YEAR MEETING OF THE IAPA RESOLVES: to repudiate the contents of the two questions on the Popular Referendum called by the President of the Republic of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado, related to freedom of expression: one a constitutional amendment that violates the human rights of the managers and owners of the communications media and threatens their economic independence; and the other that would approve a Communications Law that would create a Council on Communication to control contents and which per se constitutes prior censorship, both measures contrary to world standards for freedom of expression; to warn the Ecuadorian state that it is obliged to submit its internal legislation to the Inter American Convention on Human Rights and that the two questions mentioned above, upon becoming legal or constitutional texts, would violate the Convention with corresponding negative consequences for Ecuador.

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