Two notes this morning on freedom to information in the region. First, as mentioned the last couple of days, interesting news from Cuba this week where, in an unannounced move, the government unblocked island access to more than 40 internet sites critical of the current government – among them Yoani Sanchez’s “Generación Y” blog.
“If they opened the door, it’s not the time to just stay on the threshold, but to tear up the door frame and take down the bars,” Sanchez tweeted shortly after accessing her blog at internet cafés in various Havana hotels this week.
While hopeful, the Miami Herald says both Sanchez and her fellow blogger and husband, Reinaldo Escobar, are cautious in their optimism. “We know that access to Voces was unblocked about one week ago. We confirmed it Friday,” Escobar told the Herald, adding that a second portal, Desde Cuba, was confirmed open on Monday. But according to Escobar, what remains a mystery is why, and for how long.
One possibility, according to the Miami Herald, is this week’s Informatica 2011 fair, a computer science technology fair which ends today in Havana. Among the conference participants was the head of the United Nation’s telecommunications agency. And Reinaldo Escobar suspects that the unblocking of the 40+ sites this week came with the international conference in mind.
Incidentally, the unblocking of the various sites came shortly after Yoani Sanchez was, in Reuters words, “mentioned prominently…in a leaked videotape of a government meeting about the Internet as the new battlefield in Cuba's ongoing ideological conflict with the United States.” Interpret that statement as you will. The unblocking also came ahead of the long-awaited arrival of an underwater fiber-optic cable to the island from Venezuela. The Wall Street Journal cites Cuban and Venezuelan officials who say the cable, which reached Cuba Wednesday, “promises more and faster Internet and telephone service” to the “least wired” country in the Americas. Commentary from Boz.
A different but no less important freedom of information story is in El Salvador where there has been significant legislative discussion in recent weeks about how long the government should be given to implement the country’s new Access to Information Law, approved in late 2010. The latest from El Faro is that the FMLN will support President Funes’s request that the government be given one year from the time the new law goes into effect. (That’s opposed to the six months originally outlined in early December). The opposition PCN and Gana also appear to be supporting the decision to extend the timeline for implementation while Arena remains opposed.
Efemelenista Margarita Velado says the delay only makes sense given the current state of public information. “We know that information is in a state of disaster and that we have to get it in order. There remains an institutional culture of not caring for paperwork.” More specifics about the new transparency law and its implementation in a comprehensive El Faro interview with Marcos Rodríguez, El Salvador’s Deputy Secretary for Transparency.
To other stories:
· On another piece of much anticipated legislation – Colombia’s reparations law, or “Ley de Víctimas – journalist Roque Planas has a useful post at the Americas Society’s site. As Planas writes, “even as [President Juan Manuel Santos] builds support for the Victim’s law, the legislation faces obstacles…”:
“As it currently stands, the Victims Law would allow victims of violence and their direct heirs to seek reparations from the government if a panel of five judges finds that a person suffered an abuse—whether that abuse was committed by left-wing guerrillas, paramilitaries, or the state. Reparations would include repayment for victims’ funerals, subsidies to offset schools costs, and cancelation of tax debts. Victims would also receive priority attention for access to social programs, including technical training, subsidized land purchases, and welfare support. The measure would oblige the government to help those displaced by violence recover illegally usurped land, or relocate them to new plots of land.”
Disputes remain about the legislation’s cost and “the date from which a person can be legally considered a victim of political violence (1993, as the current legislation stands vs. into the 1980s as some human rights groups, victims’ families, and the Colombian Left are demanding).
· At OSI’s blog, Denise Tomasini-Joshi, legal officer with OSI’s Justice Initiative, praises one set of new criminal justice reforms in Mexico. Specifically, Tomasini-Joshi looks a new initiative in the state of Morelos which, she says, “seeks to balance the principle that all people are innocent until proven guilty, with the need for citizens to feel secure while that determination is made.” Its focus is juvenile offenders:
“In a new pretrial services office, trained staff will evaluate accused adolescents and provide information that will assist the prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge determine to make reasoned arguments about whether he or she should be provisionally released while the trial proceeds. If, after a well informed debate, the judge rules for provisional release, the office will also supervise the accused to make sure that he or she complies with any conditions that may be set.”
· At Americas Quarterly, Colombian journalist Jenny Manrique looks at what impact the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance will have on the Southern Cone. The convention went into effect in December after being ratified by 21 countries, among them 9 Latin American nations (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, México, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina). As Manrique explains, the law is not retroactive, but, according to María Eugenia Carbone, a legal adviser to the Argentina human rights secretariat, the convention has important “moral and symbolic weight” against human rights abusers while also contributing to the country’s human rights policy of “Nunca Más.”
· In news headlines today, the AP and Colombia’s El Tiempo report that FARC hostage releases are expected to continue today with the release of two more individuals – this despite the fact that two new persons appear to have been kidnapped by the rebel group this week in the country’s southwest. According to the AP, the new kidnappings had President Santos on the verge of suspending present release operations on Thursday. Speaking critically of the FARC, Santos labeled the group’s actions “two-faced.”
· In Quito, Ecuador, the AP reports on demonstrations of hundreds in the capital Thursday, in support of President Rafael Correa’s decision to hold a referendum on a wide range of issues, among them reforms to the country’s justice system.
· Also on Ecuador, AQ on the prison release of a leading CONAIE activist. Pepe Luis Acacho – along with indigenous activists Fidel Kaniras and Pedro Mashiant – were arrested last week by the Ecuadorian police and charged with “organized terrorism” for inciting protests in September 2009 against the government’s proposed Water Act. An interview with Acacho, before his release, is available here. Upside Down World, meanwhile, posts a statement from various indigenous and human rights groups expressing “concern for growing criminalization against social protest of indigenous communities in Ecuador, which are mobilized in defense of their rights due to the presence of large scale mining activities on their territories.”
· In Bolivia, the BBC reports that Evo Morales had to cancel a public event in the mining city of Oruro Thursday as demonstrators took to the streets to protest rising food prices and shortages. According to the BBC, the protests included the “setting off explosions close to where [Morales] was preparing to give a speech in Oruro.” What appears to be a different set of protests also rocked the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz where demonstrators “blocked the road to the airport to demand the government scrap an agency set up to promote food production.”
· The AP on Haiti, and the possible return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. And CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot with commentary on Aristide in The Guardian.
· The Miami Herald on the Luis Posada Carriles trial which “ground to a halt Thursday” after Posada’s lawyer issued a mistrial motion, “accusing a Cuban government witness now on the stand of lying about his background, and the prosecution of delaying delivery of relevant documents to thwart the defense.” The proceedings have been suspended until Tuesday.
· The AP, earlier this week, on comments from Chilean President Sebastian Pinera that the 1982 death of former President Eduardo Frei be fully investigated. The statement follows the publication of a secret U.S. Embassy cable by WikiLeaks Monday which “predicted that questions about the death will never be fully resolved because evidence was destroyed when the dead president's body was hung from a ladder and drained of fluid, with key organs removed.” In 2009, Chilean Judge Alejandro Madrid said he had found evidence showing dictator Augusto Pinochet's intelligence agents covered up the real cause of Frei’s death.
· Reuters on US lawmakers decision to not renew the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act which will lapse tomorrow.
· At a hearing before the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence., U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Thursday that the abilities of the Mexican armed forces and police continue to be “inadequate” to combat the drug cartels and “contain criminal violence.”
· And finally BBC Mundo on Lula in retirement. The news service reports that in March the former Brazilian president will inaugurate the “Lula Institute” – a new NGO that will focus on issues of poverty and food security. It also mentions the president’s first international trip since leaving office – to Senegal for the World Social Forum. For those who may be curious Lula flew economy class on that trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment