Ascendant Drops Million Dollar Libel Suit Against Periodico Intag

ASCENDANT DROPS MILLION DOLLAR LIBEL SUIT AGAINST PERIODICO INTAG

Press release - Intag Newspaper

March 5 2005

Transnational mining company Ascendant Exploration has dropped its lawsuit against Periódico INTAG. INTAG is a small community newspaper based in the sub tropical region of Cotacachi County, Imbabura Province.

Paul Grist, Ascendant president, requested an out-of-court settlement the day before the first hearing. Negotiations and the final decision took place during that hearing on Mary 10, in Criminal Court in Ibarra, capital of Ecuador.

Since Ascendant announced that it was suing INTAG’s editor for a million dollars, for damages allegedlyffered as a result of articles published in our pages, INTAG and friends/organizations launched a national and international campaign to inform people in Ecuador and the world about this attempt by a transnational mining company to silence the voices of INTAG’s contributors, most of whom are peasants from Intag. As a result, the president and CEO of Ascendant, as well as government officials, were inundated with hundreds of letters and hundreds of signatures on petitions, from people outraged by this violation of freedom of expression, a right guaranteed in the constitutions and laws of just about every country in the world.

Because INTAG exists for and is written by members of organizations and residents of Intag, the decision to accept Ascendant’s offer to “reconcile” and the content of the agreement finally reached, were worked out in a collective fashion by representatives of grassroots organizations present at the hearing, including the president of the Assembly for County Unity, the president of DECOIN, a member of the Young People’s Coordinating Committee of Cotacachi, members of INTAG’s team, and representatives of Hermanos Muñoz, a foundation that is currently setting up a community library in Intag. Negotiators were advised by Dr. Edgar Merlo, the newspaper’s lawyer, and Dr. José Serrano, the lawyer from the Center for Economic and Social Rights who is presenting the case for the illegality of the mining concessions in Junín to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission. Ascendant, you will remember, is interested in mining the copper under the forests and farms of Junín, and it is the position of residents and county government and grassroots organizations, that the government of Ecuador violated the constitution in auctioning off those concessions because they did so without consulting the people who will be directly affected by a copper mine in their backyards and forests.

The company’s decision to drop the case appears to be an implicit recognition (if only subconsciously) that they chose an inappropriate tactic, one destined to criminalize the struggle to defend the natural world and the rights of people who live in areas like Intag, a struggle that, in the end, is being carried out on behalf of all humankind given that we depend, now more than ever, on the integrity of the remaining forests and water sources to assure the survival and well being of future generations.

According to Dr. Serrano, this victory “is only the first step. What we hope for is not only to dismiss doubts raised about the real motives of people who, in the struggle, face daily threats resulting from their defense of their rights. Our final goal is to reveal how government authorities and the corporations they work with violate fundamental rights guaranteed in our constitution and in international treaties to which Ecuador is a party. And we want the persons responsible for these violations to be identified and punished. This is the major point the people of Cotacachi and Intag have been making, and this is their priority for the future.