A Chilean reporter was suspended after satirizing a tribute to the former dictator Augusto Pinochet during the news program “Ultima Mirada” on the channel Chilevisión. Despite much criticism, the Chilean TV station denied taking the reporter off the air, reported the digital newspaper El Mostrador.
To mark World Refugee Day on Wednesday, June 20, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its latest report showing 57 journalists were forced into exile between June 1, 2011, and May 31, 2012. Most of the exiled journalists (seven) came from Somalia, and most (15) fled to the United States. More than half (58 percent) went into exile because of the threat of violence, and 46 percent were exiled because of the threat of imprisonment.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where since December 2010 Assange has been under house arrest because Sweden requested his extradition after he was accused of sexually assaulting two women in Stockholm in August 2010, reported the Guardian and the Wall Street Journal. As the Guardian noted, Assange, facing potential espionage charges that could be brought by the United States, feels it would be harder to be extradited to the United States from Ecuador than from Sweden.
In a speech before the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Cuban delegate discredited reports about freedom of expression on the island, reported the newspaper Diario de Cuba.
The Ecuadorian government confirmed that members of the presidential cabinet will no longer give interviews to private news media outlets, reported the Ecuadorian NGO Fundamedios. Aside from this attack on freedom of the press, Fundamedios also reported the closure of the ninth news media outlet in less than one month in the country.
After Brazil initially objected to the United Nations' Action Plan to improve journalists' safety and fight impunity, Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazilian representative at the United Nations, sent a letter to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) saying that the country supports the program, CPJ said on Wednesday, June 13.
The city of San Fernando, in the Venezuelan state of Apure, removed the Friday, June 8, edition of the weekly magazine Notisemana from circulation for not having a filed registration with the city's Autonomous Tax Service, reported Globovisión. The National Association of Journalists (CNP in Spanish) of Apure-Amazonas criticized the city's actions, which it considered arbitrary.
A judge in a Peruvian court issued an order to intercept the phone calls of eight journalists and a congressperson, reported the Press and Society Institute (IPYS in Spanish).
On Wednesday, June 6, the National Association of Journalists of Peru reported that on May 24, a judge from the department of Ancash emitted a sentence against a journalist for alleged defamation of a public official of the province. The sentence was suspended as long as the journalist follows certain rules, including "rectifying" damages within 15 days.
The 42nd General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) ended on Tuesday, June 5, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, by welcoming the polemic recommendation to reform the Inter American System of Human Rights, presented by Venezuela and Ecuador, that amounts to nothing more than an attack on freedom of expression, said the Los Angeles Times. The OAS decided to put off application of the reforms for six to nine months to discuss the decision with parties involved, reported the news agency EFE.
On Wednesday, June 6, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) condemned the threats and attacks against Venezuelan journalists and news media, reported the newspaper El Universal.
Political columnist Katia D’Artigues of the Mexican newspaper El Universal said that she and her son received many death threats via Twitter warning her to stop criticizing presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in Spanish), reported the Program for Freedom of Expression of the Center for Journalism and Public Ethics (CEPET in Spanish).