Is Chávez Quelling Dissent with Anti-Defamation Law?

[Zorro]

<snip>

Guillermo Zuloaga isn't exactly a paragon of responsible journalism. In 2002 he and his Venezuelan television network, Globovisión, backed a military coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chávez. Since then, Globovisión has been so gratuitously and vociferously anti-Chávez it makes Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Barack Obama seem even-handed.

So who could make a media martyr out of a guy like Zuloaga? Chávez may well have done it on March 25, when his left-wing government arrested Zuloaga for making comments "offensive and disrespectful" to the President. Speaking in Aruba the week before, Zuloaga had remarked that it was a shame Chávez wasn't overthrown in the failed April 2002 coup and said the putsch happened because Chávez had ordered his forces to fire on antigovernment protesters, an opposition charge that has never been proven. Zuloaga went on to argue that Venezuela lacks freedom of expression because Chávez is increasingly harassing independent media, including Globovisión, a network Chávez has repeatedly threatened to shut down. "Chávez," said Zuloaga, who denies the defamation-against-the-state charge and is now free on bail, "is setting up a disguised communism."

Provocative stuff — but in few countries would it merit the five years in prison Zuloaga could get if he's convicted under Venezuela's defamation laws. Another Chávez opponent, former Zulia state Governor Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, was arrested on March 24 for suggesting, on Globovisión, that Venezuelan officials had aided the Basque terrorist group ETA, and that Venezuela had become a key transshipment point for drug traffickers. (He denies the charge of spreading false information but remains locked up, say prosecutors, as a flight risk.) "The end of impunity for the bourgeoisie has come," Chávez declared. He rejected claims that the arrests were politically motivated efforts to stifle opposition to his 11-year-old revolution as the economy falters and he faces a growing challenge in this year's parliamentary elections. And he insisted that due process was being followed. "Who can criticize that?" he asked.

It's not due process of law that's being criticized in these cases. It's the law itself that's under international scrutiny, even in judicially challenged Latin America. "The real question is not the legality of these measures but their legitimacy," says Mariclen Stelling of the independent Media Observatory in Caracas. Carlos Lauria, Americas coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists in New York City, agrees: "There is a growing international consensus that laws that criminalize speech are not compatible with human rights." Last year, Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica scrapped their criminal defamation laws; Mexico and El Salvador became the first to eliminate them, at least at the federal level, in 2007. This year justices in countries including Colombia and Chile have dismissed a number of defamation convictions.

<snip>


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1976582,00.html?xid=rss-topstories#ixzz0joTdMB9d