Peru's parliamentarians launched various attacks to restrict press freedom, and journalist associations are resisting as best they can. A controversial bill may fail in Congress, but other threatening initiatives remain under discussion, reflecting deteriorating democratic conditions in the country.
Two important cases for freedom of expression on the continent were heard during the most recent Period of Sessions of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (I/A Court HR) that ended on June 25: one about community radios in Guatemala, and the other about of case of the newspaper El Universo in Ecuador.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (I/A Court HR) decided to admit the case of newspaper El Universo against the State of Ecuador.
A Paraguayan journalist for the newspaper ABC Color was sued for calumnia and defamation by a lawmaker who the reporter said participated in an attempt to bribe him so that he’d stop investigating a story.
A senior representative of the Peruvian Catholic Church who accused an investigative journalist of defamation withdrew his lawsuit against her.
After an independent Peruvian journalist was sentenced for defamation, the Archbishop who accused him before the court has presented a request for his complaint to be withdrawn.
Peruvian journalist Paola Ugaz was criminally denounced for aggravated defamation by the Archbishop of Piura and Tumbes, José Antonio Eguren Anselmi.
Chilean journalist Javier Rebolledo Escobar was acquitted of the crime of defamation (injurias graves con publicidad) after being accused by a former Army official sentenced for crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), news agency EFE reported.
El Nacional, one of the leading independent newspapers in Venezuela that continues to cover the entire country in its print and digital formats, will have to pay a fine of reparation of one billion bolivars (around US $12,000) for "moral damage."
Using Poland’s controversial new Holocaust law, the Polish League Against Defamation sued Argentine newspaper Página 12 and a collaborator of the publication for an article about a massacre of Jews in the town of Jedwabne in 1941.