Critical Media Hit by Legal Actions in Venezuela

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jun 17 2010 (IPS) - Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of the Globovisión television channel has fled Venezuela to avoid an arrest warrant issued by a court a week after President Hugo Chávez complained that Zuloaga was not being held in prison pending trials for illegal business practices, and for remarks that were deemed “offensive” to the president.

In the space of less than 10 days, Venezuelan media outlets have endured a Molotov cocktail attack on Cadena Capriles, which publishes three popular newspapers in the capital city, a jail sentence of nearly four years for a journalist who criticised a pro-Chávez mayor, and judicial investigations of other reporters who photographed rotting food in government storage facilities.

On Jun. 14, the government suspended operations at the Banco Federal, the eighth largest in the country, which has been in difficulties for several months and is owned by Nelson Mezerhane, a part-owner with Zuloaga of Globovisión.

In telephone statements, Zuloaga and Mezerhane claimed that the actions against them are in reprisal for the constant opposition views expressed by Globovisión, and for its refusal to modify programmes, sack presenters or tone down criticism in its newscasts.

“These measures are intended to strangle Globovisión, because it’s the only television channel left that is critical of the government and that takes up our protests and people’s demands,” trade unionist Pedro Rondón, leader of the steelworkers in the southeastern region of Guayana, told IPS.

Attorney General Luisa Ortega said that Zuloaga and his son, also named Guillermo, were charged with usury and conspiracy in their car business.

The Zuloagas own the Toyoclub car dealership in the city of Valencia, close to the capital. In May 2009, they stored 24 vehicles at a home they own in Caracas, for delivery to buyers, they said.

Ortega said the charge of conspiracy was justified by the association of two or more people to commit a crime, and that of usury because keeping the vehicles at non-commercial premises raised the suspicion that they were being hidden in order to sell them later at higher prices.

Car prices are not regulated in Venezuela.

The Zuloaga’s were obliged to appear before the justice authorities every Thursday and were not allowed to leave the country. But the ban on travel was lifted in February, when Alberto Ravell, a fierce critic of the government, stepped down as Globovisión’s director.

In March, Zuloaga told a meeting of the Inter-American Press Association on the Dutch island of Aruba that during a short-lived coup against President Chávez, on Apr. 11, 2002, Chávez ordered troops to fire on a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of his opponents who were calling for his resignation.

Snipers killed 19 demonstrators, both pro- and anti-government, and left dozens injured, but a truth commission was never established to find out who was responsible.

A second prosecution was opened against Zuloaga for allegedly making offensive remarks against the president. On Jun. 2 Chávez said Zuloaga “accused me at an international forum of ordering those people killed on Apr. 11.

“I’m not going to bring a lawsuit against a bourgeois,” said Chávez, ” but that gentleman was caught with a fleet of cars at his home. That’s hoarding, and that’s a crime.”

On Jun. 11, as Venezuelan football fans were glued to broadcasts of the World Cup matches, the court prosecuting the vehicle case issued an arrest warrant for the Zuloaga’s.

Meanwhile, a court in Valencia sentenced veteran journalist Francisco Pérez to 45 months in prison and a fine of 18,500 dollars, and banned him from professional and political activity for the duration of his sentence, for libel against the mayor of the city, Edgardo Parra, of the governing party.

Pérez accused Parra of nepotism in his opinion column in a local newspaper, because several of his family members were appointed to key positions in the mayor’s office.

Authorities in the northwestern state of Falcón decided to investigate photographers who published pictures of tonnes of food being dumped on garbage heaps because it had rotted in government warehouses.

The judicial police continue to investigate the Molotov cocktail attacks on the Cadena Capriles building. There were no casualties or material damages because the improvised devices did not explode.

“The cases of Zuloaga and Pérez are not just arbitrary fits of bad temper, but part of an overall plan to try to stifle freedom of expression in this country,” Carlos Correa, of the non-governmental organisation Espacio Público (Public Space), told IPS.

“The government’s strategy is to drag the authors of any unfavourable opinions or information through the courts, until free speech is crushed,” the head of the Central University’s Communications Research Institute, Gustavo Hernández, told IPS.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights wrote to the Venezuelan government, saying it is extremely worried by “the consensus between executive branch and judicial branch authorities on the idea that it is legitimate to silence critics of the government using the criminal law.”

In a television interview with the BBC this week, Chávez dismissed the IACHR’s criticism, saying the Commission “has supported coups d’état” in the Americas.

The president said he would like to see human rights reports about the United States, which bombed cities and killed children, and about Israel, which had destroyed the Gaza strip, murdered and massacred thousands of women and children in the sight of the world.

Business, political and professional associations in Venezuela and abroad criticised the action taken against the media and journalists.

Meanwhile, the Movement for Necessary Journalism, a group of reporters, again declared its support for Chávez.

“To link judicial action with an attack on freedom of expression, and to call it a violation of press freedom is clearly a falsehood and a distortion of the facts in a long chain of unacceptable condemnations of Venezuela,” the Movement said in a communiqué.

The Globovisión television channel, given as a free concession to Zuloaga by the Venezuelan state, “is on the air,” the communiqué stressed.