URUGUAY
The most disturbing issue during this period is still the attitude of some judges and prosecutors who issue rulings and sentences attacking press freedom.
On November 5 a judge in Salto ( 500 kilometers northeast of Montevideo) acquitted Alberto Rodríguez Díaz of the local daily El Pueblo after a prosecutor had accused him of defaming a municipal official and demanded a 10-month prison sentence. On August 6, a jaguar escaped from the Salto zoo and its director, Dardo Curbelo Etcheverrito ordered police to kill it.
On August 7, Rodríguez Díaz published the first of four articles in El Pueblo questioning Curbelo Etcheverrito's professional suitability as zoo director after the escape and killing of the jaguar. Curbelo Etcheverrito felt that his good name had been harmed and sued the journalist and the editor of El Pueblo, Walter Martinez Cerruti, in criminal court on September 7 alleging that his ?honor? and ?dignity? had been attacked. On October 28, prosecutor Carlos Rodríguez Caret demanded a 10-month prison sentence for the journalist for ?defamation.? The prosecutor referred to the most restrictive doctrine concerning press freedom, which says, ?freedom with responsibility is the greatest guarantee of press freedom.? He said just ?because they are public men they have not lost the right to have their honor protected.?
The prosecutor said the journalist has ?abused or misused press freedom,? which, he suggested ?creates responsibility.? But the acting judge, María del Carmen Roybal, did not agree with the prosecutor, and on November 5 she decided to acquit the journalist. She ruled that ?when public figures are insulted, the source and gravity of the expressions that harm their honor must have a greater degree of offense than for the common man, because anyone who participates in political activity, which involves constant confrontation, takes a position that necessarily exposes him to criticism and he must be more prepared than the common man to protect his feelings from these attacks.?
The Communications Professionals Association of Salto (APC) celebrated the judge's decision and recalled that the Press Law (No. 16.099) in effect in Uruguay since 1985 ?can discourage the free practice of journalism since it would cause self-censorship and failure to criticize politicians and public administrators.? The case seemed to be closed, but Curbelo Etcheverrito's lawyer filed an appeal that reiterated the charges against Rodríguez Díaz and requested conviction of ?someone who violated all the limits of press freedom, acting irresponsibly.? The case then went to an appeals court.
On February 22, 2005, prosecutor Mirtha Guianze asked again for the acquittal of Rodríguez Díaz, agreeing with the decision of Judge Maria del Carmen Roybal. The appeals court is to hand down a final decision in the case on March 16. If the final decision is favorable, Rodríguez Díaz will have spent six months and 11 days receiving court orders, going in and out of courthouses with the prospect of going to jail hanging over his head because a prosecutor accused him of criticizing an official over an issue of great public interest although his reports were true and without actual malice.
On November 12, the Supreme Court responded to a resolution approved by the 60 th General Assembly of the IAPA in Antigua, Guatemala, in October, 2004, expressing concern about a series of judicial decisions whose results and contents seemed at odds with respect for press freedom in Uruguay. The court did not respond to the substance of the concern expressed by IAPA but insisted that it did not see ?limits to freedom of expressions or suggestions of prior restraint? in its decision of March 3, 2004, which had been criticized by the IAPA.
In that ruling, the Supreme Court ratified in full the legality, legitimacy and constitutionally of the so-called right of reply. It said that journalists ?must reflect before publishing news or information, since they expose themselves to the eventual exercise of the right of reply by people they refer to who may feel insulted.? In its answer to the IAPA, the court said, ?the call for reflection in the decision is nothing more than a call to conduct journalistic work within the framework of professional ethics and legal norms that all workers are subject to, no matter what they do.?
The court's answer still causes concern. Its ?call to conduct journalistic work within the framework of professional ethics? assumes that, for the court, there are ?professional ethics? that all journalists and media outlets must obey to avoid legal consequences.
On December 14, a judge in Paysandú ( 380 kilometers northeast of Montevideo) sentenced a journalist to five months in prison for criticizing the local governor for allowing a local rancher to settle a huge debt with the municipality by paying just 10 percent of what he owed. The mayor of Paysandú, Álvaro Lamas, sued the journalist, Carlos Dogliani. A prosecutor and the judge agreed that the reporter deserved the five-month sentence for ?four offenses of defamation especially aggravated by repetition.?
On March 25, 2004, Dogliani published an article with the headline ?Fraud? in the weekly, El Regional of Paysandú. In it, he denounced an alleged ?abuse of power? by Lamas who allowed rancher Luis Rattin Siemens, who had paid no taxes since 1990, to deduct 90 percent of his debt to bring it ?up to date.? The journalist said Rattin, who according to judicial reports owed $322,000, settled his debt for $30,000. Dogliani expressed the opinion that the mayor's decision was a ?fraud against 'Sanduceros' (the residents of Paysandú)." El Regional continued to report and editorialize about the case in its April 1 and 2 editions. Mayor Lamas and Martin Echebarne Parietti, a city official, felt their good names had been harmed by the articles and sued Dogliani for ?defamation? and ?libel.? Under Uruguayan law, these offenses are punishable with sentences of up to three years in prison.
On December 10, 2004, in a Paysandú court, prosecutor Graciela Perazza asked for a five-month prison sentence for the journalist. She admitted that Dogliani's articles were based on ?public information,? but indicated in her charging document that the journalist's ?presentation? of the information ?was not objective? because he ?colored it with strong descriptive adjectives.? And in an even more serious statement, the prosecutor said how far press freedom can go in Uruguay: ?The limits of freedom of expression are set by the public interest, understood as the objective interest or social usefulness of the information and the truth, demanding in this case that the information be truthful and that it respond to a serious investigation that can achieve reasonable certainty of its content.?
Four days later, on December 14, criminal court judge Dolores Sánchez accepted the prosecutor's request and sentenced the journalist to five months in prison. As the basis of her decision, Judge Sanchez affirmed in her ruling, ?the thesis that public figures should tolerate certain criticism for their actions has no basis.? She added that ?the offense of defamation is one of the limits on freedom of expression.? The judge wrote in her decision that ?the right of expression cannot include the right to offend.?
The judge recognized in her ruling a series of ?proven facts? that, basically coincided with the journalist's reports but she also condemned him, basing her analysis on the effect on the mayor's good name. The judge suspended the sentence ?conditionally,? but placed the journalist under police surveillance. Dogliani's defense appealed the decision, stressing that his articles ?were based on true facts? of ?public interest? since they alluded to an ?unusual transaction? that ?diminished municipal resources and the principle of equality of taxpayers with respect to pubic charges.? The journalist appealed the sentence and recalled that Mayor Lamas is a public official who ?doubtlessly damaged the administration to benefit an outsider.?
The Journalists Circle of Paysandú expressed regret about the decision and rejected ?energetically the validity of a law that allows those who use the media to express their ideas to be sent to prison.? The Uruguayan Press Association (APU) declared that it was ?on high alert? over a sentence that ?damages constitutional protection? and announced that if the ruling is confirmed by higher courts it will take the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The APU expressed ?alarm at the number of convictions of journalists for the crime of defamation as defined by courts with criminal jurisdiction in the interior of the country.?
The Uruguayan Press Association said in its annual report on press freedom and the right to information that 2004 was ?one of the worst years? in the country since the end of the military dictatorship in 1985.
On February 7 a judge in the town José Enrique Rodó (Soriano, 180 kilometers northeast of Montevideo) ordered police to search the house of a journalist to obtain a copy of the tape of a radio show in which reports were made about child prostitution and alleged judicial corruption in the region. Judge Ulíses García authorized two police officers to conduct ?an inspection of the farm? where journalist Dostin Armand Pilón lives. He is the producer of the program whose tape the judge wanted to obtain to ?clarify situations? and avoid ?bad interpretations.?
On February 5, Armand Pilón, who also works at the local newspaper Centernario , referred to problems of child prostitution, alcoholism and drugs on his radio program ?Doble Via? which is broadcast on Radio Centro of Cardona. He said these problems had been verified in the town. The journalist opened the microphone to listeners and one of them cast doubt on the honesty of local officials. ?I'll tell you about the drugs, about the prostitution, I agree about that. It is terrible.? And he asked if ?they had greased the hands of the authority,? referring to the judge and police. Armand Pilón has been writing in Centenario since 2004 about these problems in his town.
Under the judge's order, the police could enter the journalist's residence and search his possessions to confiscate the tape the judge asked for. This did not happen because the journalist handed the tape to the two policemen who went to his door. Two days after authorizing the search warrant, and after widespread repercussions in Uruguay and abroad, the judge called the journalist to apologize for the procedure and admitted that it was ?incorrect.? But the judge did not rescind the order.
On February' 24, the IAPA expressed its concern about the appointment of Roberto Rivero to a high position in the Interior Ministry in the government of Tabaré Vázquez. In 2000, Rivero was dismissed as national police director during the government of President Jorge Batlle for making telephone threats to Danilo Arbilla, former president of IAPA and then editor of the weekly Búsqueda , for practicing ?state terrorism? and for inventing a crime against Arbilla to link him with drug traffickers and starting a campaign through media outlets that the IAPA had criticized for being favored with government advertising.
In the month he was dismissed, Rivero presented in court telephone logs that had been obtained clandestinely and illegally of calls made from Búsqueda by its journalists. He told the Interior Ministry and the courts that these calls were given to him by agencies from abroad and refused to identify the sources. There were no further consequences for this attitude toward his superiors and the courts.
When ?agencies? from abroad denied that they had given him this kind of information, Rivero said that he knew they would deny it because that is the way they work. Journalists of Búsqueda and the Uruguayan Press Association immediately presented a complaint because of the telephone espionage against them, but at the end of February, after more than four years, the court dismissed the case because of the ?statute of limitations.? Since the courts did not consider the matter in depth, the journalists decided to make a report to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
On March 4, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner launched an attack from Buenos Aires against Uruguayan media outlets that are members of IAPA during an onslaught against the organization and especially against the mission that had gone to Argentina to evaluate the state of press freedom in that county. Most of the Uruguayan members of IAPA repudiated the Argentine president's attack.
