CHILE: Stop Treating Community Broadcasters as Criminals, Say Activists

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By Pamela Sepúlveda

SANTIAGO,
Feb 9, 2010 (IPS) - Criminal law should not be used against freedom of
expression, nor to silence community radio stations in Chile, say
activists and journalists in response to closures of community radio
outlets in this South American country.

Seven community
radio stations were closed down in 2009 for broadcasting without a
licence and allegedly interfering with telecommunications - offences
that carry penalties ranging from fines and seizure of equipment to
prison terms, under Chile's law on telecommunications.

"No more community radio stations should be silenced by
applying criminal law to freedom of expression," Juan Enrique Ortega of
the non-governmental organisation Education and Communication (ECO)
told IPS.

Radio Sin Tierra (Landless Radio) is one of the broadcasters
that has been silenced. It was set up by local people and students who
work as volunteers at the Peñalolén station, in a low-income
neighbourhood on the southeast side of Santiago.

"I have been charged for simply communicating, for exercising
my freedom to communicate with the rest of the community," Fidel Galaz,
one of the broadcasters at the closed radio station, told IPS.

"Everyone has the right to communicate, whether or not they
can afford to pay Subtel," he said, referring to the Subsecretaría de
Telecomunicaciones (Subtel), Chile's telecoms regulator, which grants
broadcasting licences.

The licence fees are beyond the reach of this community radio station and of many others.

ECO says that it costs about 2,000 dollars in Chile to obtain a
licence, and points out that there are no subsidies to promote
community stations and equal access.

Galaz turned down a deal offered by the prosecution as an
alternative to facing trial: if he pled guilty and stopped
broadcasting, he would not have to do time in prison.

In his view, that would mean deserting a collective project,
and consenting to the radio station being silenced. If he is convicted,
he risks a heavy fine and a sentence of up to three years in prison.

Demanding a halt to what they say is criminalisation of radio
broadcasting is one of the planks of a social alliance comprising the
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), the Chilean
Peoples' Media Network (RMP), the University of Chile's School of
Journalism, ECO and Corporación La Morada, a leading women's
organisation.

The head of AMARC's Latin America and Caribbean office, María
Pía Matta, told IPS that "state coercion and the enforcement of
criminal law in these cases is, in our view, backwards."

Matta emphasised that by criminalising community radio
broadcasting, Chile "is failing to meet the international standards
subscribed to by all Latin American governments" in the American
Convention on Human Rights, in effect since 1978.

During her visit to Chile in September 2009, the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights' Special Rapporteur for
Freedom of Expression, Catalina Botero, said that "criminal law is not
intended to prosecute" those who set up community stations.

"Criminal law is intended to prosecute murderers, thieves, fraudsters," but not communicators, she said.

In Latin America, only Chile and Brazil still treat unlicenced broadcasting as a criminal act.

The communicators' organisations and community radio stations
are demanding the repeal of Article 36 b) of the General
Telecommunications Law, a legacy of the dictatorship of General Augusto
Pinochet (1973-1990), which criminalises unlicenced broadcasting.

Issued by Pinochet as a supreme decree in 1982, its purpose was to clamp down on and silence opposition media outlets.

Twenty years after Chile's return to democracy, the outgoing
government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet has only just now
seen fit to send a bill to Congress to eliminate the criminalisation of
community radio broadcasting without a licence.

"The government has promised to prepare and send a single-article bill
to modify the current law, so as to eliminate prison sentences for
these offences," said government spokeswoman Pilar Armanet.

The bill is to be sent to Congress in March, after the southern hemisphere summer recess.

On Mar. 11, Bachelet will hand over the presidency to Sebastián
Piñera, the rightwing billionaire who won the Jan. 17 runoff election.

Therefore, unless the executive branch requests urgent
treatment of the bill in Congress, the measure may be lost among the
new government's legislative priorities.

AMARC's Matta said there is no certainty about what Piñera's position on the issue might be.

And even if prison sentences are eliminated for broadcasting
without a licence, the seizure of equipment and levying of fines would
still stand.

A report on broadcasting in Chile, produced by RMP and ECO and
released in December, shows that nearly all the legal actions against
community radio stations were brought by members of the National
Association of Radio Broadcasters, which represents the interests of
private commercial broadcasters.

According to RMP, this is persecution with ideological
overtones, which seeks to impose a free-market perspective that sees
communication solely as a business, and causes harassment of community
broadcasters and their treatment as criminals by the justice system.

This persecution "means people involved in community media are
being tracked and monitored, in order to report them to Subtel or
directly to the Public Prosecutor's Office," Paulina Acevedo, a member
of RMP, told IPS.

The community broadcasters got some news in January that
raised half a cheer, when Congress approved a law creating "community
broadcasting services", which will benefit about 400 community radio
stations that currently hold licences as "minimum-coverage"
broadcasters.

The bill, awaiting Bachelet's signature, legally recognises
the radio stations as providing social and community services, offers
some technical improvements, like increasing their permitted power from
one watt to 10 watts, and extends their licence periods from three
years to 10 years.

RMP, made up of more than 50 community media outlets, regards
the new Community Radio Law as a step forward, but points out that the
development of these media will be restricted, since they are confined
to a small segment of radio frequency which limits the number of
possible concessions.

It also expressed concern over the requirement that radio
stations be certified as bona fide "community" broadcasters by the
Division of Social Organisations in the Secretariat-General of
Government, because this gives the government of the moment
discretionary powers over their licencing, opening the procedure to
possible abuses and arbitrariness.

ECO's Ortega said the problem is that there is little public awareness
that the right to communicate is an essential human right. "To raise
awareness on this and guarantee freedom of speech, communication must
be democratised, and this law does not do that," he added.

The new law restricts community radio stations to a segment
equivalent to only five percent of Chile's radio spectrum. Community
radio activists had lobbied for one-third of the spectrum to be
allocated to community broadcasting, as has been approved in other
Latin American countries.

The social organisations and community broadcasters have asked
the outgoing government to hold a workshop, with broad participation by
civil society, to discuss criteria for drawing up the regulations that
will determine how the Community Radio Law will be applied and
enforced.

This mechanism could fine-tune the regulations so that they
are appropriate to the reality of community media, and also push for
the repeal, before Mar. 11, of the article that applies criminal
penalties to community broadcasters.