Earlier, Semana (and then Tuerto) raised the alarm that Ecuador’s Correa and Venezuela’s Chávez contributed to recommendations to be brought before the OAS to reform its Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in a way that might neuter that body’s freedom of expression rapporteur. I am happy to say that the danger appears to have passed.
El Universo appeals to a higher court (the gringos, obviously)
Jan 26, ’12
2:19 PM
We love a free press, but does the Latin American version always have to be so darn elitist? (Image from George Baxter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
El Universo, the Ecuadorian newspaper that local courts have hit with a $40 million fine for slandering President Rafael Correa, took a curious tack this week as it sought to defend itself in the court of public opinion while the courts of law prepared to weigh a final appeal (cassation actually, if any lawyers are keeping score).
I got this note Monday, sent to the e-mail I use for my energy blog.
xxx@podesta.com via gmail.com to settysoutham…
Dear Steven,
I hope you are aware of the egregious attack on independent media currently underway in Ecuador and more generally across the region. If you have considered covering this topic, or already have something in the works, the next couple days are a great time to write. A high court hearing, followed immediately by a decision on the El Universo case, has been scheduled for Tuesday, January 24 at 9:00 am….
Wait: @Podesta.com?
A bone to pick with HRW
Jan 24, ’12
1:12 AM
The habitual brutality of Chile's carabineros during student protests was almost entirely left out of Human Rights Watch's 2011 annual report.
I’m sure the good people over at Human Rights Watch are very busy, and they already had plenty of horrifying material for their 2012 World Report. But it would have been nice to see them give more of a nod to the police abuses during this year’s massive student protests in Chile. The section on Chile saves a scant two paragraphs for police brutality, and really less than one sentence for the generalized abuses seen during the protests. Says HRW:
Cases of excessive use of force by police when dealing with detainees during demonstrations and Mapuche land occupations continue to be reported. In August 2011 a carabinero (uniformed policeman) shot and killed a 16-year-old student, Manuel Gutiérrez Reynoso, who had been watching a demonstration from a Santiago footbridge during a national strike. A police general—who had brushed aside accusations that the police were responsible for the incident—was fired, together with the alleged culprit and several other junior officers. A military prosecutor was investigating the case at the end of September. (Emphasis mine)
Truly, the Mapuches continue to get the very short end of the stick. A more-or-less representative video made the rounds recently showing a carabinero take a whack at a woman with the butt of a tactical shotgun while her children looked on:
But why almost nothing on the police violence during the student protests that rocked the country for much of the year?
Inmates funding the asylum
Jan 20, ’12
1:17 AM
Ecuador's Correa and Venezuela's Chávez are pushing to weaken a key OAS freedom of expression body.
Whatever the merits of Latin America’s left-wing presidents, their track record on freedom of expression has been terrible. The administration of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez has shut down opposition radio and television stations on the thinnest of pretenses. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa is in the process of suing the country’s largest newspaper (El Universo) out of existence. Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner and her allies have gone after Clarín and La Nación again and again, most recently by passing a law declaring newsprint to be in the national interest. All three administrations regularly take time during public appearances to verbally attack specific journalists or news outlets.
While it’s been basically tough beans for local journalists and media outlets, the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has done some good work cataloging the abuses and bringing cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – often to no avail, but at the very least it has maintained a useful legal-historical record of the abuses for posterity and the purposes of international shaming.
But because of its role as a state eye-poker, the IACHR is not exactly popular with the powerful, and next week the OAS is set to hold a vote in which its member states decide whether to smother one of its more bothersome (read: effective) parts.
Ranchers and Indians
Jan 15, ’12
2:04 AM
I just got around to watching Birdwatchers, a 2010 film by Italian/Chilean/Argentine/Brazilian director Marco Bechis about a group of Guarani-Kaiowà indigenous people in Brazil’s Mato Grosso do Sul state who decide to take back their ancestral land from a rancher.
It is not a Hollywood fantasy, not Avatar, not Dances with Wolves, not a feel-good movie, not an Oscar-grade downer of a movie, not pretty, but still gorgeous. It has a strong sense of place, doesn’t edit out the mud and toads and thick air of the Amazon. There are no cartoon bad guys, there are no cartoon good guys, and because of this you can never be quite sure what will happen next, which I like.
At its heart, it is character-driven and humanizing, and at its other heart it is a text-book case of how these kinds of things go: 1) Indigenous pushed off ancestral land and onto a reservation by farmers; 2) their way of life is ruined and they become a) slaves, b) starving, c) dead; 3) they try to take back their land; 4) powerful people with guns/lawyers stop/kill them. Human rights professors teaching units on collective and indigenous rights should start classes with this movie, because it has happened exactly like this all across the Americas (the world?) for centuries.
Amazingly, it is available on iTunes.