(IPYS/IFEX) – “El Tio”, a sensationalist daily, printed two articles in its 25 May edition attacking journalists Cesar Hildebrant and Angel Paez. Hildebrant is the host of a political program shown Monday to Friday on Global Television. Paez is a reporter with the investigative reporting department of the daily newspaper “La Republica.” The headline of […]
(IPYS/IFEX) – “El Tio”, a sensationalist daily, printed two articles in its
25 May edition attacking journalists Cesar Hildebrant and Angel Paez.
Hildebrant is the host of a political program shown Monday to Friday on
Global Television. Paez is a reporter with the investigative reporting
department of the daily newspaper “La Republica.”
The headline of the article about Hildebrant reads “The Wretch Hildebrant
plays for our Ecuadorian enemies.” The article, based on statements by a
Member of Congress of the governing party, accuses him of having spread
false information about presumed movements of Peruvian troops on the
Peru-Ecuador border at a time when Peru is trying to sign a peace agreement.
In another section of the newspaper called “Special”, the third
part of a series by Luisa Zananata, a former agent of the Intelligence
Services, was published. The article was headlined “Traitor Paez sends
secret army documents out of the country.”
At least two former agents of the Army Intelligence Service have reported on
plans to silence journalists, among them Cesar Hildebrant and, more
recently, Paez, who reported receiving death threats in April 1998.
Previously, the sensationalist press attacked journalists Fernando
Rospigliosi, Edmundo Cruz, Angel Paez and Jose Arrieta. These attacks were
the catalyst for an IPYS communique denouncing a campaign against
journalists. The context in which the Judiciary and the Public Ministry fail
to provide the necessary guarantees of independence in dealing with people
or institutions opposing the government, places the journalists who find
themselves targets of the National Intelligence Service at risk.
