Andean Group - April 2014 (ISSN 1741-4466)

The government of President Rafael Correa has censured the annual report released by the office of the special rapporteur for freedom of expression at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on 24 April. It argues that the report is highly tendentious and should be revised to reflect the ‘reality’. The belligerent reaction is unlikely to achieve more than grab negative headlines abroad about freedom of expression restrictions in Ecuador and attract more attention to the report, while real progress by the Correa administration in other areas of human rights, especially access to quality education, go largely unreported.

The annual report of the office of the special rapporteur for freedom of expression in Washington D.C. accused the Correa administration, in over 40 detailed pages, of restricting freedom of expression in Ecuador through the new organic law of communication, and the use of State media to stigmatise NGOs, defenders of human rights and journalists critical of the government. The report criticised the government’s practice of using its legal authority “to issue mandatory messages for purposes of disseminating the pro-government opinion in private media outlets”.

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