Once again, we are witnessing a growing frustration with “tiny”
Ecuador. The United States government is clearly not happy with what
would be the latest diplomatic slap in the face coming from the South
American country, i.e. the pending arrival of NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden in the coming days. Beyond the United States’ government though,
the US press corps are also seemingly up in arms. Why are they so
angry? Well, it appears that they are indignant over the perceived
hypocrisy of President Rafael Correa.
Claims of Hypocrisy
According to
an article from
The Atlantic (and another similar one from NPR
here),
the Ecuadorian leader “has created a safe space for foreigners like
Assange — and now possibly Snowden –[but] he doesn’t do the same for
dissenters within his own country.” News agencies like
NBC News and
The Atlantic think this is “interesting” and
want to know ‘Why Ecuador?’ Such inquiries naturally turn to the NGOs, who are
also less
than pleased with this unruly little country. Freedom House, the
Committee to Protect Journalists and others are upset that this very
week, the one-year anniversary of Assange being holed up in the
Ecuadorian Embassy in London (and the same week that the Snowden asylum
request is being reviewed), the Ecuadorian National Assembly has passed
a
Communications Bill that detractors claim is a major blow to a free press.
For several of the opposition figures and US-based observers,
Ecuador’s new media legislation has sealed the deal on the stasi-like
state that they imply or openly charge Correa has been dreaming about
for years. In other words, transparency advocates like Assange and
Snowden are compromising their credibility by associating with the
Correa government. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the
right-wing terrorist supporter/US Congresswoman representing Miami, has been busy
tweeting as
much. The Ecuadorian government, however, asserts that the bill is
meant to place more media power in the hands of public groups and move
away from privately owned media monopolies.
Meanwhile, the Council of Hemispheric Relations, Center for Strategic
and International Studies, and the Heritage Foundation all say that
Ecuador must be punished for this latest insult to the US government.
James Roberts of Heritage
lashed out at the South American leader on June 24, writing in the
National Review Online:
“Rafael Correa has demonstrated a blatant disregard for
international standards of justice. That kind of conduct may not be
surprising from a man who seeks to don the mantle of Chávez, but it
should not be rewarded with trade preferences.”
It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a figure like
Correa would have been dealt with a few decades back, but it appears
that the more heavy-handed approach is not really possible at the
moment, much to the dismay of the powerful and connected.
Returning to the issue of freedom, has the defiant president of Ecuador used the National Assembly to pass a law that
NPR, The Atlantic and others tell
us will be used to make the country less transparent and more hostile
to journalists who only wish to be free to monitor the government and
act as a check on state power? Well, let’s hold off on the most absurd
elements of irony here for a moment and address the issue at hand.
About a Coup
It should certainly not be regarded as a good thing if the case was
simply a cut-and-dry example of authoritarian overreach. Freedom of the
press, as we are learning with the Snowden case, has seemingly never
before been so important, or so contentious for that matter. However,
the Ecuadorian issue is not so simple and it was certainly complicated
after a day of crisis nearly three years earlier when factions of the
National Police and armed forces attacked the president of Ecuador on
September 30, 2010. The event was
widely regarded as a coup attempt. What exactly went down is still somewhat unclear. There was a
dramatic showdown between
Correa himself and police officers that were angered by a supposed
attempt to cut their pay. What is for certain, though, is that it was a
countrywide, well-coordinated attempt to shut down the National
Assembly, the two major airports in Guayaquil and Quito and eventually a
hospital where the president was being treated for wounds. Furthermore,
the plotters were
also attacking journalists throughout the country, and most of these were pro-government reporters working for public media outlets.
The opposition press has taken an active role in attempts to
discredit Correa since he first ran for president. He has elaborated on
his views of the press and they are certainly not very congenial. In
2012, during a public TV interview in Spain, Correa said, “one of the
main problems around the world is that there are private networks in the
communication business, for-profit businesses providing public
information, which is very important for society. It is a fundamental
contradiction.”
One of the issues that NGOs and journalists have cited in their
litany of complaints about Ecuador’s endangered freedom of the press
actually stems from the 2010 police and military uprising. During the
chaos that ensued during the alleged coup attempt, one reporter from the
paper of record in Guayaquil took the opportunity
to claim that
Correa had ordered police to fire on a crowd of innocent onlookers
caught up in the melee, presumably aiming to provoke anti-government
sentiments. The claim turned out to be completely unsubstantiated. The
government fined the journalist and his paper
El Universo some $40 million for defamation but
later withdrew the charges. Consider what might have happened in the US if the
Los Angeles Times or
Washington Post would
have falsely claimed that Barack Obama had personally ordered military
or police forces to fire on a crowd of protesters and innocent people
were injured as a result somewhere in Washington, D.C It would be
difficult to imagine a reporter and his editors ever committing such a
stupid move, but if they had, there would have been some serious
consequences. Alas, this is not really too shocking in the context of a
sensationalist Latin American press.
