Daniel Wilkinson – managing director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW) – wrote a piece entitled “Environmentalists Under Siege in Ecuador”

Environmentalists are so “under siege” in Ecuador that they are given lengthy interviews on big private networks with extremely sympathetic TV journalists.

In this TV interview –  one that Wilkinson refers to  in his piece – the activist Esperanza Martinez claims that “it has been proven” that a road being constructed in Yasuni National Park which the government has claimed would be no more than 5 to 10 meters wide is in fact a “freeway” that is “60 meters wide”. It is at the about 11:00 point of the interview.

Vice President Jorge Glas ridiculed the claim while he hosted one of President Rafael Correa’s weekly TV shows. He noted that it would make the road in Yasuni the widest freeway in Ecuador.  Please note, contrary to some outrageous lies that circulate on the internet, people who don’t want to watch the President’s show can simply switch to another channel while it is on.

Wilkinson wrote “Martínez had merely cited, during a televised interview, a piece of research by an Italian geographer who claimed that a road the government was building in Yasuní had a potentially negative environmental impact.”

Did Wilkinson even watch the Martinez interview himself?

If he did then he is being flagrantly dishonest, not the first time for him as I wrote in this piece regarding Venezuela. Esperanza Martinez very specifically claimed that a 60 meter wide freeway was being built. She did not make a vague reference to potential negative impact as Wilkinson wrote.

Wilkenson also wrote that Ecuador has “passed a media law granting the government similarly broad powers to regulate and censor the country’s private news outlets, including punishing them for coverage that officials consider to be incomplete, inaccurate, or damaging to their reputations.”

This is a huge lie of omission. Any Ecuadorian citizen, not just government officials, can bring a complaint before the regulatory body (Supercom) created by the communications law. About a third of the complaints brought in the last two years have been by private citizens and have included complaints about racism and homophobia. Complaints have been brought against government owned media, not just private media.

Wilkinson writes about a radio journalist, Gonzalo Rosero, who faced a complaint for stating that Ecuador’s electoral council (CNE) ruled against a referendum on drilling in Yasuni National Park simply because Correa didn’t want a referendum.  The CNE ruled that an insufficient number of valid signatures were collected to force a referendum.  In the interview I mentioned, Esperanza Martinez said that the disqualification was “ridiculous” and that her group planned to appeal to international bodies.

Anyway, back to Gonzalo Rosero, Wilkinson never said what happened with the complaint against him to Supercom regarding the CNE’s decision about the Yasuni referendum. Rosero’s show was interrupted a few times by a brief government message asking him to admit that he had made an assertion he could not prove. Rosero refused.

In giving credence to Rosero’s allegation against the CNE, Wilkinson ignores a very public spat Correa had with the CNE president regarding Correa’s weekly TV show.  The CNE president had urged Correa to cancel a show a day before municipal elections in 2014. Correa responded that he would cancel only if the private media shut down as well.

I do not like some of the ways Correa’s government has sought to balance a media that for so long has been totally dominated by large private interests. To be specific, I am far from comfortable with the broad powers given to Supercom.  That said, the world would have a much better chance of survival if the media in big polluters like Canada and the USA were much more like Ecuador’s – if it had progressive government working hard (even if  imperfectly) to break the stranglehold that large private interests have over public debate.

Why couldn’t the rich countries of the world – the major polluters – raise the $3.6 billion Correa requested for several years to spare Yasuni from any drilling at all? That’s a pitifully small amount – less than 1% of annual US military expenditures, never mind all US government expenditures, or the combined USA-EU government spending.

A group like HRW – that cannot even close the revolving door it has with the US government – will never say it, but the fundamental barrier to addressing climate change is the elite dominated media in rich countries. HRW can’t even touch on that problem.  It is too busy trying to demonize progressive governments in Latin America that the US government would like to see disappear.

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