A day after the Ecuadorian government renewed its push for reforms that some say would weaken the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and its Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, representatives from the country's media made a presentation to the IACHR about the challenges to the free exchange of information there.
According to the non-governmental organization Fundamedios, the presentation took place in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, March 12, where the media's representatives highlighted examples of closures, the use of mandatory public broadcasts, known as cadenas in Spanish, to attack journalists and outlets, and the prosecution of opinions that make up 172 threats and aggressions against freedom of expression in Ecuador. These occurrences "affect the possibility of Ecuadorians to share information and opinions with veracity, context and plurality," presenters argued.
Click here to read the full petition (in Spanish).
The IACHR's rapporteur Catalina Botero expressed her concern over plurality in the Ecuadorian media and the government's descriptions of the press as "trash" and "assassins," among other insults, reported the newspaper Hoy. IACHR President José de Jesús Orozco reminded the government that it cannot take actions against those who requested the meeting, added the newspaper.
The day before, the Ecuadorian government proposed "substantial" reforms to the IACHR during a meeting of signatories to the American Convention on Human Rights in the city of Guayaquil, reported the news agency Prensa Latina.
One of the most important reforms would weaken the Organization of American States' Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, an entity that has singled out Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina for press freedom violations, according to the newspaper El Comercio. The proposed reform would equalize all rapporteurships. Currently, only the Freedom of Expression rapporteurship has the "special" distinction, which means that is has a full-time official and can solicit donations to finance its operations. The newspaper said that making all rapporteurships "special" would cut funding to the free expression entity.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
