Venezuela's Press Faces Harsher Future After Ch?vez Win

By: Mark Fitzgerald Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez?s big victory in the recall referendum is unlikely to make him more magnanimous towards the nation?s media, according to free press advocates.

In fact, some warn that the mercurial Ch?vez is likely to step up his long-time campaign of harassment, intimidation and occasional violence against the privately owned newspapers and television stations he regularly denounces as ?coup plotters? and ?Fascists.?

Writing in The Miami Herald, Andres Oppenheimer notes that Ch?vez already controls the national Congress, the Supreme Court, the armed forces, the state oil monopoly and the election commission that certified his referendum victory. (Opposition leaders have denounced the election as a ?fraud,? but the election was pronounced clean by the two principal teams of international observers led by former President Jimmy Carter and C?sar Gaviria, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States.) There?s little to restrain Ch?vez in applying the hammer to the press -- certainly not his own inclination, Oppenheimer suggests: ?People who know Ch?vez well say that he will behave like an altar boy for a few days and will radicalize his revolution shortly afterward."

Marco Vicenzino, the Latin American specialist with the International Institute for Strategic Studies-US (IISS-US), made much the same point in a Financial Times article three days after the Aug. 15 referendum. After rhetoric about national reconciliation,? he wrote, Ch?vez will ?accelerate the radicalization and implementation of his revolutionary agenda,? which will ?inevitably? include ?greater limitations on press freedom.?

In a phone conversation from his Washington office, Vicenzino predicted Ch?vez will move against the press, especially television, with even more draconian legislation. ?Even before the referendum, they had legislation in the pipeline that will be more strict on the press ... (with) greater penalties for things like ?slander? of the government, however they decide to define ?slander,?? he said.

Vicenzino also believes the press will face continuing violence from the so-called Bolivarian Circles, the neighborhood vigilante groups modeled on Cuba?s Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. The groups act as he wants them to, he said: ?A lot of times he has quote-unquote ?indirect? control of them. There are ambiguous links, and he puts enough middle men between him and the Circles so that he cannot be held directly responsible.?

The press got its latest taste of that mob violence just before the referendum, according to the Lima-based Institute for Press and Society (IPYS for its initials in Spanish). On Aug. 5, reporter Laura Olaizola and photographer Dorian Gonz?z of the daily Notitarde were swarmed by Ch?vez supporters as they returned from covering a story in a central Venezuelan state. ?When the group saw our vehicle with the name 'Notitarde' on it, they attacked it, shouting, 'Get away from here, liars, sell-outs.' They struck the vehicle, denting its hood. They told us they weren't going to let us pass because they were protesting for a just cause," Olaizola told IPYS.

Four days before the referendum, IPYS said, a Spanish photographer, Eduardo Gim?nez, was photographing an opposition rally in downtown Caracas when a number of people wearing red shirts appeared and began shouting pro-Ch?vez slogans. When Gim?nez tried to photograph the incident, he was hit by a woman and a masked man wearing a red shirt. He was dragged to a motorcycle and driven away. National Guard officers pursued, and the chase ended a few blocks away when Gim?nez fell off the motorcycle.

Authorities also flexed their regulatory muscle against the press just two days before the referendum, the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA) noted. Officials from Conatel, the government telecommunications commission, suddenly appeared at four privately owned television stations for what they called ?routine technical inspections.? In the past, IAPA said, these inspections ?have been used to confiscate station equipment and hamper program broadcasting.?

Rafael Molina, the chairman of IAPA's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, questioned the timing of the inspections. "It is suspicious that this inspection occurred on the eve of the recall referendum, and on the same day that representatives of media outlets, including those run by the government, came to an agreement with the National Electoral Council to respect communications rules and maintain balanced reporting," said Molina of the Dominican Republic newspaper El Nacional.

That?s just a warm-up, says Vicenzio of the IISS-US. ?He?s a revolutionary kind of guy now,? Vicenzio said. ?Not a classic 1970s kind of revolutionary nationalizing industries. This is a different mindset. This is a constitutional dictatorship in the making. He will not touch foreign investment because he knows he needs it ? But locally, things are going to get bad.?

PAN-AM HIGHWAY

An occasional diary on the working conditions of Latin American journalists.

CHILE

Alberto Luengo, the director of the government-owned daily La Naci?n was fired Aug. 10, apparently because of the paper?s coverage of a pedophile scandal that has implicated figures in the nation?s ruling Democracia Cristiana (DC) party and the opposition Uni?n Democr?tica Independiente (UDI), according to the Argentina-based Association for the Defense of Independent Journalism known as Periodistas. The so-called ?Caso Spiniak? scandal involves allegations of a child pornography ring and sexual abuse of minors. The DC mayor of Valparaiso and a senator from the UDI have been implicated in the scandal, Periodistas said. It quoted the Journalists? Association as saying one worrying aspect of the firing was "the pressure allegedly applied
by the two political parties, the UDI and the DC, to influence the coverage of the case." But a government official, Minister of the Secretary General's Office Francisco Vidal, called Luengo's firing a "reasonable and civilized" action that expressed "the voice of the owner," Periodistas said. Vidal was further quoted as saying, ?The editorial stance of a government-owned newspaper has to coincide with the views of the government."

COSTA RICA

The Inter-American Human Rights Court on Aug. 10 ordered Costa Rica to overturn the 1999 ?criminal libel? conviction of Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, a journalist with the daily La Naci?n, the IAPA reported. The court declared the conviction violated Herrera?s freedom of expression and information. Herrera was convicted for a 1995 series of articles that quoted European publications alleging corrupt acts by a former Costa Rican diplomat. He was fined 120 days wages, and the newspaper was ordered to pay damages, remove the articles from its Web site and publish the findings of the court. The Inter-American court ruled Herrera should receive $20,000 in indemnity and another $10,000 for legal costs, and that his criminal record must be expunged.

GUATEMALA

Guatemala City transit police physically assaulted reporters covering an Aug. 14 confrontation between the officers and sidewalk vendors who were trying to set up their stands, the Guatemala City-based Center for News Reports About Guatemala (Cerigua) reported. Among those assaulted were Prensa Libre reporter Sonia Perez and elPeriodico photographer Jos? Luis Pos.

HAITI

Two of the men accused of the April 2000 murder of journalists Jean L?opold Dominique have been captured, eight months after their escape from prison, the New York City-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) reported. Dymsley Millien was arrested Aug. 1 in Port-au-Prince, and Jeudi-Jean
Daniel was caught Aug. 8 in the southern city of Jacmel, CPJ said, citing Haitian press reports. A third man charged in the murder of the radio station director, Philippe Markington, is still at large.

?The long-stalled Dominique murder case has been revived somewhat in recent months, after the Feb. 29 departure of Jean Bertrand Aristide and the establishment of a transition government,? CPJ said. ?Many had accused the Aristide government of failing to pursue the true killers.?

PERU

Authorities seized the photo archives of the daily El Tiempo in Anadahuaylas in southeastern Peru and accused its director Julio Molero of distributing child pornography, the IPYS reported Aug. 3. IPYS noted that the search of the newspaper was requested by two provincial prosecutors, Waldo Frisch Ponce de Le?n and Vega Mamani, who is the wife of Captain Eduardo Valle Toro. Valle Toro, IPYS reported, was ?jailed for his links to drug trafficking which came to light as a result of El Tiempo reports.? Molero told IPYS the child pornography charge is based on one image of about 10,000 stored in the archives. ?IPYS notes that the supposedly pornographic photographs, which have been shown to the press, do not demonstrate that a crime has been committed,? the Lima-based free press group said. ?As a result, IPYS is calling on the authorities to conduct an extensive and impartial investigation and ensure that the complaint against Molero is not a pressure tactic aimed at ensuring that the newspaper refrains from publishing the results of some of its investigations.?