RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uruguay‘s state-owned communications company Antel today joined in criticized censorship of Russian media outlets reporting on the military conflict in Ukraine.
The president of the entity, Daniel Gurméndez, communicated on his Twitter account that he instructed to suspend the broadcasting of the Russia Today (RT) signal on the public channel VERA TV, which was immediately contested by the director representing the Frente Amplio, Daniel Larrosa.
For his part, Pablo Schiavi, a specialist in information law, pointed out that this was a unipersonal decision without a pronouncement by the board of directors as required by the statutes.
He warned that it also leaves a dangerous precedent for the future since it suppresses the right of citizens to know the position of each side of a conflict.
When asked about the censorship of RT, the president of the House of Representatives, Ope Pasquet, who belongs to the Colorado Party of the government coalition, expressed himself in the same sense.
The editor-in-chief of the regional office of the Russian media Sputnik in Montevideo, Patricia Lee Wynne, denounced that “Russia has the right to its truth” and that this measure constitutes “an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression“.
In this avalanche of censorship, Twitter also labeled users and journalists affiliated with Russian media. It is the case of the Uruguayan Sergio Pintado, stigmatized for working in one of them.
Lee considered the sanction as an act of “persecution” when journalists are only doing their job, and added that “only one truth is wanted, the truth of the United States and NATO, but Russia has the right to its truth”.