As is often stated, there are now 34 elected governments stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With one notable exception—Cuba—journalists and the media are operating under elected governments which have at least nominal commitment to basic political and civil rights, among them freedom of expression. These journalists today operate under a regional normative framework that commits the governments to protect freedom of expression and the free exercise of journalism.

And despite all the concern about democratic stability in the region—much, but not all of it, legitimate—we must also point out the positives: the good things that have happened in the last two decades of democratic transitions in the region.

First, for the most part gone are the dark days when citizens had to fear a knock at the door by jackbooted thugs who could drag out a family member, never to be heard from again. Disappearances, state-organized death squads, while they still exist in some quarters, have decreased or even disappeared in the majority of the countries in the region. Citizens now fear their state much less.

Second, for the most part gone are the dark days when journalists had to pass every piece of written material to a government censor, to have offending passages excised and the rest approved. Overt censorship and government control over the media are by and large—with one notable exception, which I’ll talk about—gone. Newspapers, television stations and radio stations today are significantly much freer than they have ever been in the history of Latin America to investigate cases of government abuse and fraud, to shine a light on public and private corruption, to demand accountability of elected officials and to defend the rights and demands of citizens. Travel around Latin America today and you get the impression that the media is almost so free that it comes close to being irresponsible muckraking. But the point is that the media is free to enjoy and exercise its rights as the defender of the public interest—even if there is some confusion as to what that is—and this, as we all know is a powerful (perhaps the most powerful) tool of democracy. It is essential to free and fair elections, to political organization and participation, to human rights and ultimately to accountability.

Third, for the most part gone are the days when journalists were isolated from their colleagues around the world and within their own countries. There has emerged in the last 10 years a very impressive and extremely powerful regime of norms and a network of contacts to defend the rights of freedom of expression and protect journalists. Internationally, the evolution of international human rights law and its application in cases of freedom of expression has been impressive. In the OAS, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission since 1999 has had a special rapporteur for freedom of expression who receives cases of attacks against the media and issues declarations in particularly grave situations. And human rights groups have also taken up the cause of protection and defense of freedom of expression, with a growing body of human rights case law and precedent for documenting and defending cases of violations of freedom of expression. This has amounted to a remarkable and laudable expansion of the traditional conventions of human rights to new arenas.

Along with it there has been the expansion of international groups to defend freedom of expression: the Committee for the Protection of Journalists, Inter-American Press Association, Reporters without Borders, IFEX (International Freedom of Expression Exchange). We all know about these.

But even within the countries there have emerged important networks and protectors for the rights of journalists.

A group that started out in Peru under the Fujimori government, IPYS, now has regional networks in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia and Peru that link together journalists throughout those countries using e-mail and toll-free numbers. They serve as a means to alert officials in the capital and internationally when there is an attack or threat against a journalist. The important thing about these networks is that they link local journalists with journalists in the capital city, many of whom often work with larger media and are better known.

In Colombia you have the Fundación para el Nuevo Periodismo Ibero-Americana, which trains journalists and provides support and protection to journalists in violent areas.

In all these cases, one important lesson is emerging: that freedom of expression and journalists are essential not just as a forum for freedom of expression but are probably the most important support or bulwark for democracy.

The case of Baruch Ivcher in Peru demonstrates the importance of the media to democracy and its power. In 1998 the Fujimori government seized Channel 2, a private television station owned by local businessman Baruch Ivcher, after a group of journalists had started to run a series of investigative reports detailing human rights abuses and domestic espionage by the Fujimori government. The seizure was based on a trumped-up charge that Mr. Ivcher was not a Peruvian citizen—that because of mishandled paperwork he never got his Peruvian citizenship and was still a citizen of Israel. The charge quickly slid into anti-Semitism, and the government seized the channel, redistributing Baruch’s share to the minority shareholders.

In doing that they made a grave mistake. Until that point human rights groups, opposition politicians, and civic advocacy NGOs had all been actively campaigning against the government, pointing out abuses and trying to get international solidarity. But it was when the Fujimori government tangled with the media that he really felt the full weight of the international community come down on him

Newspapers, television stations—often with the backing of international journalists associations—started to actively detail the string of abuses and violations of the Fujimori government. They began to take up the case of Baruch Ivcher. For many, they said it was a bellwether of the deterioration—a symbol of the corruption and authoritarianism of the Peruvian government. Shortly thereafter, international observers descended on Peru for the national elections, which the government attempted to steal. Baruch and his colleagues led the charge internationally in denouncing the electoral results. Shortly after the stolen elections, a videotape was leaked that started a string of revelations of extensive corruption that led to the downfall of the Fujimori presidency. And who leaked the videotape? An ex-journalist who had worked with Baruch and had joined politics.

I often think that Fujimori must be sitting in Japan, and when he thinks about what he could have done differently he must think: “If only I hadn’t tangled with Baruch.”

In this case and in the case of Venezuela, there is a very clear pattern that emerges: freedom of expression is the most important political space in democracies. In cases of elected governments that have autocratic tendencies, let’s say (like Peru or Venezuela today), protecting this political space is one of the most important tasks for groups seeking to defend and protect democracy.

It is the media that dictators—whether they come to power by election or at the other end of a gun (and yes, dictators are elected)—need to close off before they can effectively establish control over the government and society that they seek. And for that reason, the international community needs to use that as a gauge, a barometer, of where the country is heading democratically and defend it.

Unfortunately, we are seeing in the last few years a backsliding of democracy in the region, by almost every measure. The best measure that we have is the threats and attacks against journalists, which are on the rise.

A perfect case in point is Venezuela. In the current climate of citizen mobilization for a constitutional process to request a recall referendum, the government has stepped up its attacks against the media. In the last week I’ve received over 20 reports of attacks or threats against journalists in Venezuela. Most of them have been cases of journalists that have been threatened or violently attacked at political rallies and marches.

These include:

• a case of a newspaper reporter in Ciudad Bolivar who was hurt when a national guardsman fired a tear gas canister in her back while she was covering an opposition march;
• the case of a newspaper photographer in San Antonio de los Altos, just outside Caracas, who tried to take photographs of a national guard officer hitting a marcher in a demonstration. The officer, seeing the journalist approach, hit the journalist with the butt of his gun and took his walkie-talkie.
• the case of another newspaper photographer, in the same town, San Antonio de los Altos, who received a death threat from a military officer attempting to control the crowd;
• two cameramen with a Venezuelan television station who were hit and had their equipment stolen by a group of what looked to be off-duty army officers when they tried to film them shooting their guns down streets and at buildings.
• and last, in a sign of how polarized and potentially explosive the situation has become, one case where a group of local partisans of opposition parties attacked newscasters of a local pro-Chavez radio station, cursing them as Chavistas.

This last note is particularly important. It indicates how important freedom of expression is for everyone, how it is a right for all citizens. When political situations deteriorate, as they have in Venezuela, they can become polarized on all sides, putting freedom of expression dangerously in the middle.

I would like to end with a brief mention of the country that does not fit within the 34 mentioned earlier: Cuba.

In the last 10 years there has been a remarkable growth of the peaceful democratic, civic movement inside Cuba. A large part of that movement has been the emergence of what are called independent journalists.

As the number of these brave individuals has grown, the Castro regime has cracked down. Exactly one year and 9 days ago the Castro regime launched its most brutal crackdown in recent history. In a three-day period, government security agents rounded up over 75 independent activists, and then in the following two weeks the government tried them in summary kangaroo courts and sentenced them to terms up to 27 years.

Of those detained and sentenced, 29 were independent journalists exercising their right to write and publish what they want. Charged with ridiculous offenses that only a totalitarian regime could drum up—such as acting against the independence and integrity of the state and subverting the internal order of the nation—they received prison sentences ranging from 14 to 27 years.

The evidence that was used to convict these champions of the freedom of expression? A typewriter; cameras; laptop computers; fax machines; and, in the case of one journalist—no exaggeration—the plastic chair that the U.S. ambassador had sat in when he attended a training session.

It turned out that the Castro regime had also planted secret agents among the journalists to spy on them, sow divisions among them, plant false news and report on their activities to state security. People like Manuel David Orrio, Nestor Baguer, and Aleida Godinez had for years worked with and befriended journalists; all the while they had been sent there by the Cuban regime to spy on its own citizens. In the week after the crackdown these plants resurfaced to testify against their onetime journalist colleagues.

As if we needed any more evidence, this revelation was an indication of the complete cynicism of the regime and lack of respect for individual freedom.

Included within those 29 were Raul Rivero, Manuel Vazquez Portal, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, Omar Rodriguez Saludes and Mario Enrique Mayo Hernandez.

Today, as we speak, these individuals are being kept in maximum-security prisons, often with unsanitary conditions, inadequate medical care and some in solitary confinement.

The pattern here is clear. Why is it that existing dictators and wannabe dictators (as in Venezuela) attack the media? As we all know, journalism, freedom of expression, the media are all essential to political participation, liberty, protection of individual rights, accountable government—things that are all anathema to autocrats, of the left or right alike—elected or unelected.

Media is the enemy of dictatorship because it is the keystone to democracy. And it is for this reason we see that, on one hand. freedom of expression has flourished in the last 20 years as elected governments have sprung up and citizens seek to exercise their newfound rights and, on the other, freedom of expression is coming under increasing strain as leaders seek to accumulate power by closing off avenues for opposition by shutting off dissident voices, violating checks on their power and denying citizens their rights to express themselves.

What Can Be Done?

As policymakers, we can:

1. Expand attention to journalists working at the local level. When we look at the reports on violations and attacks against journalists, sure the national cases get the most attention, but over 90 percent of the attacks and threats against journalists are occurring at the local level—by local narco traffickers, by people who exist outside the bounds of law.
2. Recognize the importance of freedom of expression to prevent democratic backsliding. It is an absolute right. This is a charge that, for example in Venezuela, we’re constantly confronting. Journalists don’t deserve to be punished or attacked for the views of their owners.
3. Treat independent journalists in Cuba like professionals. More of an effort needs to be made to reach out and publish their articles in mainstream media. There are dozens of websites and Cuba-related publications that publish the stories of independent journalists. Mainstream newspapers in the United States and Latin America, wire services, should seek out these journalists and hear what they have to say.