IAPA condemns the closure of the magazine Vanguardia by the Communications Law

Vanguardia magazine closes

Following the announcement of the closure of the magazine Vanguardia, the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) reported that the Communications Act, passed by the regime of Rafael Correa “began to take its first victims.”

According to the IAPA, it refers to this standard as the “media gag” that goes backwards into a “more serious” harm for the freedom of expression in recent years and recalls that it has been widely criticized by several international news organizations. They also mentioned the intervention of the Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Through its website, IAPA explained that with the new law, the magazine Vanguardia, “which since its birth more than seven years ago developed investigative reporting on current issues, and now it has been disabled of doing their homework“.

This week Vanguardia published a letter explaining his decision not to accept the provisions of the law, for which the Government of Ecuador can determine which issues to be addressed, appointing “a censor commissioner” and prohibit the publication of judicial news “until there is a sentence of last resort.”

In their letter, the directors of Vanguard stated that “we will not ever tolerate this” because “it would be undignified and contrary to the values we stand for.”

Claudio Paolillo, President of the Commission on Freedom of the Press and Information of IAPA, lamented the closure of the magazine and blamed the regime leader Rafael Correa, of applying “a systematic policy and freedom-for the purpose of silencing all distant voices.”

For his part, President Correa, said in its weekly report on last Saturday, that the magazine Vanguardia was already broke and its closure was imminent, but apparently used the new law to justify its closure. He said they were now obliged to publish the print run for, charging the publicity, and the magazine said his movement was 15 000 copies, when in reality it did not reached 3000.