Unusual harassment of journalists by Interior Ministry officials adversely affected press freedom during this period. In several parts of the country, police officers and other Interior Ministry officials arrested and beat a journalist, pressured and insulted another and filed criminal lawsuits against many journalists.

In a rare incident for Uruguay, a journalist was shot by an unidentified person after reporting corruption in the local soccer scene.

The executive branch dismissed Oscar Peri Valdez as attorney general, accusing him of “violating human rights.” The charges against Peri Valdez included policies limiting press freedom.

The most important events in this period were:

On October 26, journalists from several media outlets were insulted and ejected under the threat of force from a sports club where the labor federation was holding a meeting of the Inter-Union Workers Plenary-National Workers Convention (PIT-CNT).

On November 5, three officials of the municipal government of Canelones, who were being criticized on the television program “Zona Urbana” for taking civil servants’ salaries without going to work, went to Channel 10 in an attempt to intimidate the journalists who made the report.

On November 6, Omar Hidalgo, editor of the weekly La Prensa, which is published in Maldonado department, reported being pressured and verbally abused by local police officials. Hidalgo had reported that two police officers convicted of torture had not served their sentences.

On November 11, Judge Roberto Timbal acquitted Gustavo Calandra, who had been put on trial for a criminal offense by Attorney General Oscar Peri Valdez. The national prosecutor, who has repeatedly been accused by the Uruguayan Press Association (APU) of opposing press freedom, said in a written presentation to the courts that Calandra should be put on trial because an opinion article he published in the magazine Politicamente Incorrecto constituted incitement to hatred and racism. The magazine is published by Youth for Nationalist Renewal (JRN).

On November 18, José Pose Sanmartín, chief of police of Lavalleja department, filed civil and criminal lawsuits against Federico Fasano, editor, and Federico Gyurkovits, police news editor, of the daily La República. The newspaper had published news implicating Pose Sanmartín in alleged corruption.

On November 19, the Chamber of Deputies unanimously approved a copyright bill that protects journalistic work. The bill is now under consideration in the Senate. The current copyright bill dating from 1937 does not protect journalists’ work.

On December 2, riot police wearing bulletproof vests began to “patrol” the newsroom of the daily La República at the request of its editor, Federico Fasano, who is involved in a heated salary dispute with his journalists. This was publicly denounced by the newspaper’s journalists union, the APU and the union federation PIT-CNT, and the police action was televised. The journalists have said the atmosphere at the paper is “like an armed camp.”

On December 21, sports writer Ricardo Gabito Acevedo was shot in the leg as he arrived home from work. Gabito Acevedo works in the daily La República and television channels Teveo and TeveLibre.
Apparently the assailant shot at him without saying a word and the journalist was hospitalized with a bullet lodged in his left thigh. A few days earlier the journalist had reported that the president of the Uruguayan Soccer Association (AUF), Eugenio Figueredo, and the director of the Uruguayan youth soccer program, Nelson Spillman, had threatened him because of reports he had made about them. Before the attack, Gabito Acevedo wrote, Spillman had told him that he was “corrupt” and would get what was coming to him. Figueredo, he said, had asked other soccer officials two years ago to give the journalist “a scare.” Gabito Acevedo blamed the “soccer mafia” for the attack.

On December 25, Luis Alberto Pérez Albertoni, a correspondent in Salto for the daily El País of Montevideo, was detained, beaten and jailed by police officials as he was doing his work. Pérez was covering the reenactment of a traffic accident in which a man was killed and his wife was injured. The reporter commented to the police that they had behaved badly during the event, and one of them detained him and accused him of “contempt.” Pérez complied with the arrest order and was subjected to many acts of violence. He was forcibly transported, beaten, insulted and then, at the police station, he was thrown into a cell containing urine and excrement. Later, he was taken to a hospital where the effects of the attack were confirmed, and he was subsequently interrogated. On December 26, he filed a criminal lawsuit against the police officers who had detained and abused him, even though the investigation continued against him until mid-January. The police officers involved are being investigated and were removed from their jobs by the Interior Ministry.

In its “2003 Report” on “attacks on the right to information and press freedom” on January 20, the Uruguayan Press Association urged the government to support the repeal of the definition of “criminal contempt” because it gives the good name of public officials precedence over the right to inform and express opinion. The IAPA has repeatedly demanded this. The press association also demanded the dismissal of Attorney General Oscar Peri Valdez for sending prosecutors across the country instructions “with elements that clearly restrict the practice of journalism and the right to information.”

The APU also requested definitions of “all the reports about awarding of government advertising” to media outlets and the “alleged wiretapping of the telephones in the newsroom of the weekly Búsqueda since July 2000.”

On February 12, the executive branch dismissed Attorney General Oscar Peri Valdez and began legal proceedings against him for “attacking human rights.” Among the irregularities attributed to Peri Valdez by Education and Culture Minister Leonardo Guzmán was the discovery of an illegal registry the prosecutor had created and used to suggest to other prosecutors what evidence to gather against those on the list and what crimes to charge them with, as well as his support for restrictions on press freedom.

On February 16, during a labor conflict between the management of the daily La República and its journalists, two of the paper’s executives, Enrique Piqué and Albérico Barrios, made use of provisions in Uruguayan law that still provide for prison sentences for journalists whose reports or opinion pieces are considered “defamatory” or “libelous.” They went to criminal court to request three-year sentences for several journalists, including three from their newspaper, alleging that they were “offended” by reports published about them. In addition, Piqué, one of the plaintiffs, is the “right-hand man” of Interior Minister Guillermo Stirling, according to the unions. The minister himself confirmed this.