Venezuela: Freedom of speech, fantasies and double standards Federico Fuentes, Caracas http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/806/41449 8 August 2009
Those “free speech” crusaders at the Inter American Press Association are at it again, leading the charge in an international campaign against what IAPA president Enrique Santos Calderon decried on August 2 as “the gravest attempt to silence the press that has occurred in the last few years in the region”. Santos was not referring to the continued violence against journalists and dissident media outlets by the fascist coup regime in Honduras, headed by Roberto Mitcheletti. This is possibly because, together with Honduran representative to the IAPA, Edgardo Dumas Rodriguez, Micheletti co-owns a major newspaper in the Central American country whose elected government was overthrown on June 28. This may explain why the IAPA has refused to label the coup as a “coup” and describes Micheletti as the legitimate president. In a July 31 IAPA statement, Santos instead referred to “a blow to the people’s freedoms and what remains of democracy in Venezuela”. This final death blow was nothing more than the fact that on July 30, Venezuelan Attorney-General Luisa Ortega Diaz presented her proposal for a “Special Legislative Bill Against Media Offenses” to the National Assembly. In other words, one person presented some ideas in the context of a debate about a possible law. This didn’t stop the international media going into a frenzy, presenting a picture of a parliament on the verge of approving a law to “shut down individual and collective liberties”. None of these media reports mentioned the comments made by the Manuel Villalba, the chairperson of the permanent commission on science, technology and communication in the National Assembly. Villalba said on August 4 that such a law “has not been presented in the Parliament nor in the commission on science, technology and communication”. He said no consensus existed in the commission on the issue. Nor have comments by National Assembly secretary Ivan Zerpa been widely reported. Zerpa said the same day that, as Ortega Diaz is not a parliamentarian, she is unable to submit a proposed law for discussion by the assembly — a right reserved to parliamentarians. No member of the assembly has so far come forward to move or second the attorney-general’s proposal. Instead, Ortega Diaz’s ideas have incorporated into a discussion and debate to be held throughout before a law is presented in the assembly. None of this stopped the IAPA condemning this non-existent law as a “harsh blow to Venezuela’s democracy”. On available evidence, it seems the IAPA feels freedom of speech only extends to the right to openly support coups (as in Honduras) and spread disinformation and lies to destabilise elected governments (as the private media is doing in Venezuela). The IAPA statement indicates these free speech warriors do actually believe some limits should exist on freedom of speech. Among the “abuses” committed as part of “President Chavez’s 10-year strategy to constrain the press”, the IAPA listed: “The 1999 constitutional reform which requires that only true and impartial information be published”, “the application of regulations requiring media to have columnists of all ideologies” and “the launch of numerous state online and print media and news agencies used to disseminate propaganda”. For the IAPA, free speech extends to supporting coups and the right to lie, but excludes the right of people to discuss and vote on a new constitution or even raising suggestions as Ortega Diaz did. Also ruled out is the need to report truthful and impartial news, allowing all voices the right to be heard equally, or the government having its own media. No doubt the IAPA are cheering the recent moves by the coup regime in Honduras to privatise the country’s state TV channel. And then the IAPA wonders why the Venezuelan government might be discussing a law affecting coup-plotting and destablising media outlets. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
