OAS » IACHR » Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression » Paraguay

Freedom of Expression

Paraguay

            260.     The Paraguayan State, in its report to the IACHR presented in the hearing on the general human rights situation in Paraguay before the Commission, held in October 2003, undertook to take all necessary legislative, administrative, and judicial actions to implement the Rapporteurship’s recommendations.  The Rapporteurship considers this express statement to be auspicious.  Even so, some events are noted that had a detrimental impact on freedom of expression in 2003.

 

            Attacks and threats

 

            261.     In the early morning of April 7, 2003, two persons who were traveling on a motorcycle fired more than 14 shots from a firearm at the regional offices of ABC Color in Pedro Juan Caballero.  The newspaper considered the attack to be related to articles on drug trafficking in the Bado area published days earlier.  Its correspondent in the area had been threatened previously, leading the authorities to assign him a permanent bodyguard.  In addition, according to the information received, there had already been threats to journalists in the area for publishing information related to drug trafficking.[1]

 

            262.     On May 2, 2003, journalists Osvaldo Benítez, Fernando Romero, Agustín Acosta, and Celso Figueredo of the daily Noticias, and Leoncio Ferreira, Mario Váldez, Claudio Prieto, and Bernardo Agusti, of the daily Última Hora, were taken hostage by and received death threats from squatters from an illegal settlement called “Marquetalia” in San Lorenzo, 20 km east of Asunción, while covering an invasion by landless and homeless persons on neighboring properties.[2]

 

            263.     Nelson Esquivel Medina, a journalist from the radio station La Voz, in Ciudad del Este, began to receive threats after reporting on the activities of the Chinese mafia on the television program El Ojo.  Esquivel received phone calls at least ten times warning him that he would pay dearly for having denounced powerful groups in Ciudad del Este.[3]

 

            264.     On June 6, 2003, the ABC Color correspondent in San Pedro, north of Asunción, Cristina Peralta, received death threats from members of the police while covering a demonstration by peasant farmers in the area.[4]

 

            265.     The correspondent for the newspaper Última Hora in the border city of Salto del Guairá, Rosendo Duarte, reported death threats against him on October 22.  He said that someone overheard persons planning his death “to shut him up” (“para taparle la boca”).  He said that these threats would be in retaliation for his reports on the problems of corruption in the border area.  The first inquiries, reported by the local press, indicate that the threats could come from relatives of a leading criminal figure in the area who died in September in a confrontation with the police.[5]

 

            Censorship

 

            266.     The electoral judge of the second rotation Teresita Escobar Vázquez prohibited the movement Patria Querida from continuing to publish advertising that consisted of lining up, side-by-side, the candidates for senator of that movement and the Partido Colorado, under the heading “We have two options, change or more of the same!”  The motion was brought by the Partido Colorado.[6]

            267.     In April, one of the episodes of the program El Informante, on Canal 2, was suspended after a favorable ruling on an amparo motion brought by officials of the Superintendence of Insurance, who requested, as an urgent measure, that the broadcast of the program be halted.  The prohibition was later lifted.  The program that was suspended included recordings of alleged officials of the institution who apparently were charging US$20,000, and alleged phone conversations between Nicanor Duarte Frutos and other authorities who were collecting public monies to finance the electoral campaign.  According to the program’s host, Luis Bareiro, Duarte Frutos had called the directors of the TV station the day before to convince them to edit out the part of the program concerning him.  In addition, officials from the Superintendence of Insurance filed an amparo motion in which they requested, as an urgent measure, that the program not be aired, but that measure was not adopted.  On the day the program was to be broadcast, unidentified persons approached Bareiro to inform him that the program would not be aired.  That night, there was a short in the fiber-optic circuit by which the program is broadcast.[7]

 

            Judicial actions

 

            268.     On October 31, the Court of Appeals, First Chamber, sentenced journalist Luis Verón to 10 months in prison, commutable to community service, as it considered that his reports regarding the apparent harm caused by architect Luis Fernando Pereira Javaloyes to the altarpiece of the church of Piribebuyconstituted defamation.[8]  On March 21, Verón had been found guilty at trial for the crime of defamation and injuria, and was ordered to pay a fine of just over 50 million guaranis (about US$8,000).  The trial resulted from the publication in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper ABC Color, on September 19, 1999, entitled “Attack on heritage in Piribebuy. What a barbarity! consumatum est,” in which Verón called into question the work done by Pereira on the altarpiece of the Ñandejara Guasu church of Piribebuy, which dates from 1759.[9]

 

            269.     Aldo Zuccolillo, director of ABC Color, was found guilty of the crime of defamation by Judge Dionisio Nicolás Frutos, in a trial brought by former minister Juan Ernesto Villamayor.  He was sentenced to pay the State the sum of US$15,322 and another US$12,290 to the complainant.  The trial arose from publications that appeared on March 4 and 5, 1999, that implicated Villamayor in a financial scandal related to the Banco Nacional de Trabajadores.  According to information received by the Rapporteurship, Zuccolillo has had to face about 20 judicial proceedings since 1998, most brought by public officials and political leaders on defamation or calumnia charges.[10]

            270.     In July 2003, former senator Francisco José De Vargas filed a suit against the director of ABC Color after an April 8 article related to the removal of prosecutor Alejandro Nissen by the Judicial Trial Jury (Jurado de Enjuiciamento de Magistrados) (of which De Vargas was a member).[11]

 

            271.     In April 2003, the Fourth Chamber of the Court of Appeals ordered the trial of the director of Diario Noticias, Eduardo Nicolás Bo.  Bo was accused in November 2002 of calumnia and defamation by businessman Julio Osvaldo Domínguez Dibb, pre-candidate for the presidency of the republic for the Coordinadora Colorada Campesina, for attributing statements to him regarding alleged ties between the Club Deportivo Libertad soccer club and drug-trafficking.[12]

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