Frigate Libertad:
La Nacion: “Ghana asks the boat be moved because it is upsetting the port”
Clarin: “Officials and ‘vultures’ on the streets of Accra”
Clarin: “The return of the sailors, surrounded by secrecy to avoid the press”
Press Freedom:
La Nacion: “Alert in the UN over the attacks on Journalists”
La Nacion
Ghana asks the boat be moved because it is upsetting the port
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
By Martin Kanenguiser
In a provocative document which criticizes the default pending for the last 11 years, the government of Ghana yesterday demanded that Argentina move the Frigate Libertad’s location over the economic “damage” , as well as harm to its “reputation” - that it is causing its foreign trade.
A letter from the general director of the Port Authority of Ghana, Margaret Campbell, reflects the poor mood of the government of Accra for having fallen into the middle of the dispute between Argentina and its aggressive private creditors.
After listing a series of arguments that would show the economic harm generated by the status of the Frigate in the place where it was detained in the port of Tema, the official said that the main cause which has generated the conflict is the responsibility of the Argentine government.
"The lawsuit in which the Frigate Libertad was held is due to a long lawsuit in which the defense has shown no positive willingness to settle the case,” said the representative of the government of Ghana in the written message, sent to the court that has the delicate case in its power which, at the time, provoked the government to denounce the African country before the UN.
The paragraph lays out a complaint because Argentina has until now “not deposited the bond” for US$20 million that the vulture fund NML demanded of the government as bail to allow the release of the Frigate Libertad.
In reality, the ship enjoys immunity as a sovereign asset, as it was said by the bellicose judge in New York, Thomas Griesa, several years ago.
For that reason, since the lawsuit is creating more and more political tension, the government of Ghana asked to move it to a less transited place to not cause greater harm to the entry of ships to the port of Tema, the main trading port for that country.
In the document filed before the court – which contradicts the theoretical spirit presented by the Ghana government as a “friend of the court” in favor of Argentina in lifting the attachment – says that the timing and place of the detention of the ship could not be less opportune in trading terms for being the period before Christmas.
In that part of the year, explained Campbell, there is a large inflow of ships to unload merchandise, which in these circumstances is “causing an alarming congestion of traffic in the port” which “harms the reputation of Ghana’s ports.”
"The ships that bring cargo for Christmas began to arrive into the port of Tema and most of these ships, which provide oil for industry in the country, are queuing up at the dock, for which the delays are lengthening with each day that passes,” said the official.
This situation “adversely affects the timing in the port and this harms the efficiency of this organization to handle faster ships in the highest traffic period before Christmas,” she added.
The official explained that, at the time permission was granted for the Frigate to be detained on October 2, supposing that it would be out two days later, while it’s worth recalling that it was the court of that country itself that impeded the movement of the ship, despite the favorable legal precedents for the Argentine government.
On that aspect, she said that in six days, the Port Authority has lost US$21,910 in revenues over the delay of other ships entering that anchoring zone.
For all these reasons, explained extensively in two pages, the Authority asks the court to proceed with requiring the movement of the ship to a different place while its future is decided.
The Argentine government resolved over the weekend to return the entire crew of the ship, except for the captain and 44 sailors, the smallest number for maintaining the ship’s operation, while it is in the port.
Clarin
Officials and “vultures” on the streets of Accra
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
By Daniel Juri
Ghana. Special Report – Beyond the habitual aversion by the government to speaking with the press, the Argentine delegation that is found in Ghana trying to negotiate the exit of the Frigate returned to being absolutely impassable. Here, in this torrid capital that looks out over the gulf of Guinea , Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuaín has already landed, as well as Defense official Alfredo Forti, diplomats in the legal area of the Foreign Ministry, representatives of other countries that have sailors invited on board (Chileans, Uruguayans, Brazilians, Peruvians and Ecuadorans, among others), the embassy in Nigeria, also in Ghana, Susana Pataro. They are all united by a common denominator: they are unreachable and secretive with the press, including local attorney Larry Otoo, contracted to defend Argentina.
All of them know that the fire power of the vulture funds is very strong, above all now that could put something concrete, the Frigate Libertad, before the press. Moreover: according to what Clarin could find out, the Argentine and Latin American delegations believe that the vulture funds landed with a battalion of people in this country, including spies that monitor the movements of the Argentines. They are interested in the political contacts that have been getting established with the government of Ghana, which until now couldn’t do anything concretely to reverse the judicial decision. Meanwhile, strictly speaking, the Ghanaian government is more concerned with the presidential elections in December than the fate of a ship from a country so distant and alien.
Attached to the intransigence of the Ghanaian judge, Richard Adjei Frimpong, of the Commercial Court of Ghana, the vulture funds don’t seem ready to relax their grip. For Adjei Frimpong –educated in England – Argentina renounced the sovereignty of the Frigate in the contracts that it signed to emit the debt bonds.
As Clarin reported at the time, both the courts in New York – where the now well-known figure of Judge Griesa emerged – as well as in London and Accra are ruled by Common Law, a legal system different from Argentina’s, in which the decisions of courts of one of those cities are accepted in others. From there NML Capital Limited, of the financier Paul Singer and Huntlaw Corporate Service, all headquartered in the Cayman Islands, were waiting for the Frigate to land in Ghana to file its claim. They are demanding US$300 million and another 100 in interest. The decision by Cristina’s government to evacuate all of the cadets from the Frigate, anticipates the long struggle that is approaching.
Clarin
The return of the sailors, surrounded by secrecy to avoid the press
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
By Daniel Juri
Ghana. Special Report – The order seems precise: the cadets will have to be evacuated with absolute stealth and the goal is that they not be intercepted by the press. That, at least, is what was reported to the crew of the Frigate Libertad on Sunday night.
“They said that to us, that they’d leave us in the Aeroparque or El Palomar to avoid the press and that the plane that they’re going to bring us in is in Ghana now. They also said to us that they’ll give us a week’s leave,” said one of the cadets to Clarin and asking, as always, absolute anonymity. They already learned their lesson: they know that they have to be careful with the press.
Yesterday, the Foreign Ministry reported that tomorrow at 8:00pm 281 sailors will arrive in Buenos Aires. Remaining in the port of Tema will only be the captain and 44 other crew members. Before returning, there will be the graduation event.
“We never complain. We are holding up well. Also: many times they said to us that before handing over the Frigate we’d rather set it on fire,” says the cadet from the anonymity of his telephone. For them, it’s a kind of heroic feat that will end in a few hours, when they board the Air France jet that the national government hired – at an estimated costs of between US$250,000 and US$300,000 – to bring them back to Argentina. For the lengths that Argentine officials took them to. They confirm the mutual coldness that there was during the visit of Vice Foreign Minister Eduardo Zuain to the frigate. They say that they would have at least liked to have heard directly from him and Defense Vice Minister Alfredo Forti, who brought a greeting from the Argentine people, but there was nothing. And they looked askance at the Chilean envoy who visited the cadets from his country daily and one night “even took them to dinner in Accra.”
It’s a cloudy and humid night. Typical of Accra. The majority of the crew spends it last hours in the port of Tema, which has already become a familiar landscape despite its sordidness.
Many have bought heavy suitcases to bring clothes on the plane. The Frigate Libertad will remain floating silently on this pier for who knows how long.
The same Frigate that Peron built, which was inaugurated by Aramburu and that – due to the debt contracted by the dictatorship, that couldn’t be swept under the rug by the UCR and Carlos Menem – was attached to Cristina’s surprise on October 2, while, with pomp and circumstance, the President celebrated the third anniversary of the media law. Almost a metaphor for the country.
La Nacion
Alert in the UN over attacks on journalists
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
By Martin Dinatale
Argentina yesterday received a shower of international criticism in one of the issues that is most trumpeted by Cristina Kirchner: the fight for human rights. The setting for the criticisms was at a meeting of the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, where 62 countries attended, many of whom objected to the government’s attacks on freedom of expression, pointing to the lack of access to public information, the situation of torture in prisons and the manipulation of poverty data that the INDEC conducts.
While Argentina reaped reiterated praise for its policy of condemning the military men who participated in the dictatorship, the criticism and recommendations were stronger that were raised over other issues that were made on defense of human rights. The working group of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), held under the UN Commission on Human Rights, called on Argentina to take measures to improve its standing on human rights. All indications are that the criticism issued by the government yesterday towards the government over the different countries meeting in Geneva will be included tomorrow in the final report that the commission will issue.
A broad delegation led by Human Rights Secretary Juan Martín Fresneda defended the legal measures taken against former repressors, making an extensive defense of the media law and social plans for the poor. But it would seem the 25 page report that Argentina brought and the words from Fresneda were not sufficient to switch off such objections.
Among the recommendations there was an emphasis on creating a national mechanism for preventing torture and the promotion of training state security forces on human rights matters. It was also recommended that complaints be investigated around accusations of torture committed in Argentine prisons and that they review the current penitentiary system.
The reiterated complaints over the freedom of expression was significant from the emissaries in the UN from Germany, United States, Australia and Spain, among others.
"We recommend strengthening the actions in defense of freedom of expression,” said Spain in its report. During its turn, Germany also expressed concern over freedom of the press, and Australia, for example, emphasized that this year alone there have been 161 attacks on journalists. The Australian delegate suggested that measures be taken to protect reporters.
They weren’t the only objections over this issue. The United States showed its concern “for the atmosphere under which the media works.”
In an attempt to reject these criticisms, Fresneda refuted: “To those who say that Argentina is not honoring standards of freedom of the press, I ask them to watch or read the covers of the newspapers tomorrow (today) which will certainly have opinions on the speeches that we just heard here.”
In relation to access to public information, there was a strong reproach from Belgium, Canada and Switzerland, among other nations, that demanded a law on state information access.
Over this issue, Prison Service director Victor Hortel came out in defense of the government, assuring that “never in Argentina has there ever been so much access to public information as in this government,” and made reference to the decree for public information access that only applies to the Executive Branch.
The criticism of INDEC was also not lacking at the UN chamber. For example, Switzerland criticized the manipulation of data related to poverty indices.
The denunciations of torture in Argentine prisons merited a call for alert from Spain, Chile, India, Great Britain and Austria.
On this issue, Paola García Rey, Argentine coordinator of Protection of Human Rights from Amnesty International, who was in Geneva yesterday, told LA NACION that “the lack of an adequate response from the state on these cases of torture in the prisons and the elevated indices of maternal mortality over the lack of access to safe abortions are pending issues around human rights.”
The countries present yesterday at the UN forum also called on Buenos Aires to deal with gender violence, facilitate access to justice for its victims and increase efforts to fight trafficking of persons. It also made reiterated calls on the government to increase participation of indigenous communities in public life.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen