Underb the MSM Radar, Peru: Garcia closes TV station

Yet more news that flies under the radar of the mainstream media news. The funny thing is though, that if it was Venezuela or Ecuador or Bolivia or Nicaragua or Cuba it would be headline news. As it's Peru under fatty-boy right wing pro-US Alan Garcia, there's no news worth reporting. Otto over at IKN
calls it: "The stinking hypocrisy of English language media coverage in South America"
 
However, there is news, even though they won't report it: Alan Garcia has closed the Amazon community TV channel based in Yurimaguas: Radio Oriente.

Their crime? According to the Instituto de Prensa y Sociedad (Press & Society Institute) in Lima (funded by both the NED and Soros at one time or another):

"On 15 January 2010, the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) cancelled Televisión Oriente's operating license. The TV station used a VHF frequency to operate in the city of Yurimaguas, Loreto region, in northeastern Peru.

This decision was made after the MTC verified, during a technical inspection in 2005, that the TV station had not operated during its first 12 trial months.

Geovanni Acate, a journalist and Radio y Televisión Oriente's director, explained to IPYS that the station started proceedings to obtain a license in the 1990s and that during Alejandro Toledo's government, when the permit was granted, the station did not have the financial resources needed to buy TV broadcasting equipment."

IPYS then go on to say that the Ministry issued "an authorisation certificate" in April 2006, "confirming it complied with all legal requisites and allowing it to operate."
 
And further, that in its 2007 inspection the Minsitry "found that Televisión Oriente, which belongs to Yurimaguas's Apostolic Vicariate, had four authorized antennas with a "good quality signal". Acate added that the TV station is up to date in all its payments to the MTC for TV broadcasting."

IPYS continue: "Roberto Pereira, a lawyer with the firm Pereira & Associates, who is an expert in freedom of expression related issues, said "it is a clear case of abuse of official control, that constitutes an attack on against freedom of expression. Five years after the MTC verified the alleged lack of compliance with obligations particular to the installation and trial period, it decides to cancel the TV station's licence when it currently operates within all legal requirements. The MTC accuses the station of not complying with legal deadlines when it's the MTC itself that has failed to comply with them. The inspection that should have taken place within the three months that followed the end of the installation and trial period was carried out more than a year later.

Acate believes the measure is an attempt to silence the radio station.

IPYS noted that Acate is facing a legal case for Radio y Televisión Oriente's coverage of the Amazonian communities' protests in May 2009. "

IKN also reported last October here that Acate had received threats ."According to Acate, the authors of the threats are presumably police agents of the DIROES special operations unit."

And there we have the real crime, Radio Oriente covered the Bagua massacre last year. At the time "Interior minister, Mercedes Cabanillas, publicly threatened to close La Voz de Bagua and Radio Oriente, for their alleged “support” for violence against security forces after demonstrations last June by the indigenous population protesting mining rights granted to multinationals on ancestral lands....
In another such case, Alejandro Carrascal Carrasco, editor of the weekly Nor Oriente in Bagua, was sentenced on 12 January to one year in prison for “defamation“.
According to RSF Mr. Carrascal Carrasco is paying the consequences of having reported in favor of the protesting indigenous population."

Will Mr Rory Carroll get on his horse after drinking his milk and report something about this?

UPDATE
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The President of the Peruvian Congressional Investigation, Guido Lombardi of the National Unity Party, which is investigating what happened in Bagua has announced that he will also be investigating 'in detail the cancellation of the television license by VHF Radio Yurimaguas East."

UPDATE II - 25/1/10
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Thank you BBC. You have proved me right.  They have zero coverage on the Peru tv station closed while afford headline coverage to western bogeyman Chavez.