ECUADOR: Call for release of Milton Chacaguasay

30 April 2009

Update #1 to RAN 65/08

The Writers in Prison Committee of International PEN (WiPC) renews its call for the release of La Verdad editor Milton Chacaguasay Flores, who has been imprisoned since November 2008 for allegedly libelling a judge. Sentenced to 10 months in prison on 15 November, Chacaguasay has now served over half of his term and is therefore reportedly eligible for early release. The WiPC believes that Chacaguasay's conviction and imprisonment is in violation of the right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, to which Ecuador is a state party. It calls for his immediate release and for the decriminalisation of libel and other press offenses in the country.

Background
On 15 November 2008, a criminal court in the south-western province of El Oro sentenced Milton Chacaguasay Flores, editor and director of the weekly newspaper La Verdad, based in Machala, southern Ecuador, to 10 months in prison for allegedly libelling a judge. The judge who brought the case in late 2007 claimed that Chacaguasay had accused him of corruption in a report published in La Verdad in September that year. According to the editor, the report in question was not written by him or his staff but by a third party who had paid for its publication. The piece reportedly requested the National Judiciary Council to review a sentence issued by the judge, who was not named, that was considered to be unfair.

Chacaguasay was acquitted of the charges in May 2008 but was found guilty on appeal before a different court on 15 November and sentenced to 10 months' imprisonment. In February 2008, the same court had given the editor an eight-month prison sentence for allegedly libeling the leader of the Christian Social Party, whom Chacasaguay had reportedly linked to corruption in Machala municipality.

Chacaguasay was arrested and jailed on 30 November and since December has been serving his 10-month sentence in a maximum security prison in Quito. As he has now served more than half of his sentence, he is reportedly eligible to be considered for early release for good behaviour.

Useful inks

• Update by Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) - 15 April 2009: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=30832
• Letter by the World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) - 23 March 2009: http://www.wpfc.org/ProtestsEcuador32309.html