Miami (October 11, 2013)—The decision of the Venezuelan government to create a new state agency with the explicit objective of censoring any kind of information, claiming reasons of national security or political destabilization, was condemned today by the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).
The new entity, Strategic Center for Security and Homeland Protection (CESPPA) went into effect after being published in the Official Gazette on October 7. Under rules governing the Center, attached to the Venezuelan Presidential Office, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro will be able to call for all information concerning “internal and external enemy activity coming from all the Venezuelan security and intelligence agencies and other public and private bodies” (Article 3), “as well as foresee and neutralize potential threats to their vital interests” (Article 7) and in addition “it will be able to declare any information as being of a reserved, classified or limited dissemination nature.” (Article 9).
The Center replaces the Situational Study Center of the Nation (CESNA), decreed by the late president Hugo Chávez in 2010 and which had been challenged in the Supreme Court by various institutions claiming that it violated several articles of the Constitution.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, declared, “We have before us a case of unending arrogance in which the government of Venezuela decides what may be reported, criticized or thought, and can control, censor and punish at will; something like being president, legislator and judge all at the same time.”
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, said that a recent announcement by President Maduro and Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz, over the threat of sanctioning the newspaper Diario 2001 for the report on the shortage of high-octane gasoline, “shows that the government could censor any kind of economic, political, educational or even sports information if it believes that it could go against the interests of Venezuela.”
“Maduro is following with great enthusiasm the path begun by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, to definitively configure a totalitarian system regarding information, just as it has been done by dictatorships of all kinds throughout time,” Paolillo added.
The IAPA recalled its decade long insistence on the need – totally contrary to the functions of this new body – of enacting a law on transparency and access to public information that holds the government accountable to render information, just as is demanded under Venezuela’s Constitution and is established in international treaties on freedom of expression.
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.
