The headline looked like a victory for press freedom: Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa announced he was dropping his cases against six journalists whose work had offended him, and he pardoned them from prison terms and crippling fines totaling $42 million. But after taking in the details, the champagne went flat. In truth, Correa was signaling that he was still waging his long battle to dominate the media of Ecuador — and that he still held the whip hand.
By the fines and sentences imposed, the case against the leading daily El Universo was the most outrageous. The newspaper was sentenced to a potentially bankruptingd $40 million in fines, and Emilio Palacio, a columnist, and the brothers Carlos, César, and Nicolás Pérez, the top executives of the paper, were each given prison sentences of three years. Correa had sued for criminal libel for a column Palacio wrote referring to the president as “the Dictator” and warning him that “there is no statute of limitation for crimes against humanity.” Palacio was referring to a potential coup d’etat in 2010 when Correa, trapped in a hospital by rebellious police, was rescued by the military — in Palacio’s account, after he ordered the soldiers to fire on the hospital.
After a local court imposed the sentences, defense lawyers charged that Correa had had his own lawyer write the judge’s decision. But the verdict was upheld on appeal by the nation’s highest court, and it was only after that ruling that Correa, under pressure from neighboring governments and press watchdog groups including the OPC, issued his pardons. The net result: The precedent in the case is firmly in place, and the journalists of Ecuador are on notice not to offend the president.
In the second case, the authors of the book El Gran Hermano (The Big Brother), Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, each faced $1 million in fines for exposing the favors Correa did for his brother, Fabricio Correa, including state contracts for Fabricio and his business associates worth more than $600 million. Ecuador’s government was also overcharged by $140 million for these contracts, according to Inmediato, a Quito-based newspaper. The Correa brothers have since fallen out, and Fabricio has publicly toyed with running against Rafael for the presidency. But Rafael sued Calderón and Zurita for criminal defamation, charging that his honor had been impugned. In such cases, truth is not a defense — a fact that by itself argues that criminal defamation laws should be abolished as an offense not only against press freedom, but against basic fair play.
Correa, a left-leaning ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez who has been feuding with conservative media since he took office in 2007, underscored his message with a blunt warning: “There is forgiveness, but it is not forgotten.” And in the aftermath, his followers — known as Correistas — have started an online campaign calling for “no more attacks against Ecuador” in the global press. This campaign targets organizations defending global freedom of expression, as well as the national and international media. Journalists in Ecuador can be glad that their colleagues have escaped draconian punishment. But the threat of more of the same still hangs over all their heads.