Opinion> Miguel Perez> Say Adios To Free Speech In Ecuador

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Say Adios to Free Speech in Ecuador

Imagine a legal system that would reward President Barack Obama $40 million every time a pundit questions his sincerity, honesty or place of birth or cites any of the many outrageous allegations and disrespectful statements that constantly are made against the president. Imagine a court that would send these pundits to jail if they said the president is turning into a dictator or lying about an important issue.

You would think that we'd lost one of the pillars of our democracy, right? We would be mourning the death of our freedom of expression. Even the extremists who vilify Obama have the right to shout in our public square.

It's even distasteful and embarrassing sometimes, but it's what makes us free. Remember Rep. Joe Wilson's barbaric "You lie!" outburst during Obama's 2009 State of the Union address? And what about the many times Donald Trump suggested the president was lying about his place of birth? They were not fined or sent to jail for offending the president, because that's what makes us free.

This is the lesson apparently missed by Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa when he lived and studied in the United States. Following the model of his leftist comrade Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Correa is manipulating the courts and declaring war against Ecuador's democratic institutions, especially its free press.

Last week, under immense pressure from the Correa government, a puppet judge sentenced three newspaper executives and a columnist to three years in prison and ordered them and their newspaper to pay $40 million to the president for "defamatory libel."

For publishing a column critical of the president, these four men were convicted and sentenced as if they were criminals.

Their crime? Emilio Palacio, the opinion page editor at El Universo, Ecuador's largest newspaper, had written a column referring to Correa as "the dictator" and accusing the president of ordering security forces to open fire at a hospital where police protested against cuts to their benefits.

Several people were killed in that September police riot, where Correa was held hostage and where he still claims — seeking unearned martyrdom — that he survived an attempted coup against his government.

But instead of just denying Palacio's allegations, which Correa did, the thin-skinned and extremely arrogant president also filed a lawsuit that was clearly intended to put El Universo out of business. He was asking for $80 million, which he claimed he might donate to the conservation of the Amazon rain forest. Amazingly, his lawyers are claiming they will appeal the $40 million ruling because they still want $80 million.

The ruling has evoked widespread condemnation from free speech advocates all over the world, especially after El Universo had the courage to publish a mostly blank front page as a form of protest. The page featured only a quote by author Ayn Rand: "When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed."

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the ruling "sets an alarming precedent for suppressing free expression." Reporters Without Borders said the ruling amounted to "judicial persecution ... aimed at silencing the country's media."

Even El Universo's rival, the Ecuadorean daily El Comercio, reportedly joined the protest by printing its front page in faint text.

Journalists and opposition leaders are asking Ecuadoreans to dress in black — to symbolically mourn the death of their press freedom.

"There is no question that free speech is under siege in Ecuador," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The only guarantor of free speech in a democracy is the judiciary. And if the judiciary acts as a puppet of the central government ... then obviously the biggest casualty here is the quality of democracy in Ecuador."

Obviously, Correa doesn't like to be called a dictator. Yet when he tries to prolong his stay in office, censors the media and suppresses the opposition, he sure acts like one. He is clearly following the path toward dictatorship led by Chavez and emulated by President Evo Morales in Bolivia and President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.

"In each country, anti-democratic presidents seeking to extend their rule beyond their elected terms use whatever means are necessary," wrote Robert Rivard, chairman of the committee on freedom of the press of the Inter American Press Association, perhaps the hemisphere's leading free press advocacy group. "The other branches of government are co-opted. Constitutions are re-engineered. Political opposition is marginalized. The independently owned media are muzzled, while the state funds the creation of pro-government media."

Rivard, who also is editor of the San Antonio Express-News, wrote a column from Ecuador last week after Correa refused to meet with a group of IAPA members. "We had come to defend the right of Ecuadorean journalists to do what American journalists, and their readers, take for granted in the United States: report the news freely without government threat or interference," he said.

But what he found was that the Chavez strategy for turning democracies into dictatorships, "sad to say, is working all too well, especially where the region's impoverished masses have been plied and brainwashed into believing that the state is their protector, and the private sector and educated urban class are the enemy," Rivard wrote.

Like Chavez in Venezuela, Correa gets those brainwashed, impoverished masses to keep voting for his pro-dictatorship agenda. In May, he won a 10-question referendum that, among other things, gave the government more power to restructure the judicial system and regulate media ownership and content.

Following the playbook of Chavez, who has shut down many radio and television stations in Venezuela, Correa has been persecuting the Ecuadorean media since taking office in early 2007, repeatedly clashing with reporters and even challenging them and ridiculing them publicly on the radio, on television and in the courts. When another newspaper, La Hora, described Correa's actions as president as "shameful," the president sued the editor. When two investigative reporters revealed that the president's brother was getting large government contracts, he started legal procedures against them, too. And when the Correa government is criticized on prime-time television, the stations are forced to broadcast government rebuttals.

Let's face it; if our judicial system were as co-opted by the executive branch as Ecuador's, if President Obama could sue his opposition into jail and bankruptcy, obviously there would be no Fox News Channel, and many of our most famous pundits and opposition leaders would be political prisoners. Surely, Rep. Wilson still would be serving prison time — instead of raising millions from Obama haters as a reward for calling the president a liar.

If Obama controlled puppet judges like Correa, imagine the dungeons where our courts would send people like Trump, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.

I know. It sounds tempting, right?

But nah, no way! We are willing to pay the price of having to listen to them, because that's what makes us free.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.