Government Pulls Globo TV Off Cable

The Commission Nacional de Telecommunicaciones (CONATEL) issued a memo on May 20 identifying 21 broadcasters it claimed were still broadcasting despite their licenses having expired.  On that list was Globo TV owned by Alejandro Villatoro Aguilar, which since 2009 has been one of the few opposition media.  The publication of that memo served as a warning to all of them that CONATEL would begin proceedings to fine them, and if they did not begin proceedings to renew their permits, CONATEL would shut them down.  The memo ended with the clause:

"respecting at all times the constitutional guarantee to defend yourself and due process"

before listing the 21 firms which included not only Globo TV but Angeluz TV, owned by the Diocese of Copan, and another station owned by an Evangelical Church.

Due process, according to journalist David Romero, involves giving the station 10 days to either correct the fault or challenge the allegation that its deficient in some way.  Of the 21 stations mentioned in the memo, 20 of them are still on the air, not yet sanctioned.  But CONATEL choose on May 16th to sanction Globo TV and issued an order to all cable tv system operators to stop carrying their signal.

Globo TVs license expired on February 21, 2016, about the same time as its company lawyer died, so there was a delay of about a week getting a payment for the renewal to CONATEL, but that money was paid on February 29, 2016, and until the notification today, Globo TV assumed everything had been taken care of.

Friday, May 20, Romero showed a copy of the memo CONATEL sent to the cable tv operators, dated May 16th, before CONATEL issued its public memo, stating that Globo TV had not paid to renew its license and ordering all cable tv operators in Honduras to cease carrying the channel. He then showed the stamped receipts from February 29 demonstrating that Globo TV had paid the license renewal fee in the Banco Atlantida on that day.

Ebal Jair Diaz Lupian, President of CONATEL, and Secretary of the Presidential Cabinet of the Government of Honduras said "You cannot renew that which is expired."

Yet that's precisely what the CONATEL memo tells them to do according to Soraya Solabarrieta, head of the Asociación de Empresas de Telecomunicaciones (Asetel).  She argued that the CONATEL order is inconsistent, saying:

"On the one hand it orders the cable systems to take off the air the signals of those operators who are supposedly operating without permission, but on the other hand, for all of them, it gives them 10 days to submit their statements, that what they need to do is present their requests to renew their permission [to broadcast]."

Javier Daccarett signed the order to cable companies to stop carrying Globo TV.  He's the first cousin of Anna Garcia de Hernandez, the wife of the President of Honduras.

So no 10 days granted to Globo TV, no due process, no right to defend itself, and selective enforcement against only Globo TV of the 21 stations operating with allegedly expired licenses, and only hard line intransigence as a response from CONATEL.

CONATEL attempts to shut down Cholusat Sur

(updated to link to image of CONATEL order)
The government of Honduras, in the form of the Comision Nacional de Telecommunicaciones (CONATEL), has issued an order to close the opposition TV station, Cholusat Sur, Channel 36 in Tegucigalpa in 4 days.

Why? you might ask.

For an "attempt against the economy" of Honduras. 

It all begins in June of this year, with Channel 36 covering the news story that the Banco Ficohsa and more importantly, its Honduran owner, Camilo Atala, have been charged in Panama with money laundering.

This is not speculation.  This is not rumor.  It's a fact.

Atala is head of the Honduran branch of the Consejo Empresarial de America Latina (CEAL). This was the group that hired Lanny Davis in 2009 to lobby then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to declare the Honduran coup a military coup. Atala is a powerful member of the Honduran elite.

In the current news coverage, Esdras Amado López has been reporting how Banco Ficohsa in Honduras moved $1.5 million dollars (about 33 million lempiras) as part of the IHSS scandal, without fulfilling the CNBS paperwork requirements for the transfer. The IHSS scandal is what initially fueled and continues to inspire the torchlit marches against corruption that also include demands for the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernández.

The money moved by Banco Ficohsa, Amado Lopez reports, was requested by IHSS head Mario Zelaya to pay bribes to facilitate payment of the Compania de Servicios Multiples and its subsidiary, Central American Technologies. These were payments for goods and services that were never delivered.

Amado Lopez says that both the US Department of Justice and the Fiscalia de Chile have documentation linking the Banco Ficohsa to the illegal movement of IHSS monies.

Chile is where one of Mario Zelaya's mistresses lives and she is charged in the IHSS scandal.

The US Department of Justice allegedly knows about the money sent from Honduras to Panama by the Banco Ficohsa, then deposited in MultiBank in Panama. Reportedly, the funds were then transferred to a bank in Louisiana where Mario Zelaya used them to buy real estate, property now confiscated for the government of Honduras by the US Department of Justice.

Other news sources have reported on this story, both inside of and outside of Honduras, citing court papers in Louisiana as the source of their information.

CONATEL, in its notification to Cholusat Sur that it was beginning procedures to shut down the station, said that this reporting was "an attempt against the economy" of Honduras in violation of the Constitution, the Telecommunications regulations, and the Administrative regulations.

So, it is now officially an "attempt against the economy" to report facts in Honduras.

Honduran Government vs. Freedom of the Press

Porfirio Lobo Sosa neither understands, nor likes, freedom of the press. He laments the fact that the Honduran press can print things that he thinks are not true, and threatens publishers for not supporting government policies.

Stories demonstrating this are not uncommon. On February 8, La Prensa published an account, headlined "President Lobo returns to threatening the media of communication", quoting Lobo Sosa complaining that newspapers shouldn't display images of violence because they affect young people:

"I don't know how Ana Pineda has not entered a complaint with the UN or before whoever it should be, you know the damage that the media of communication does to children, some of them in their front page display the violence".

Back in December, Lobo Sosa personalized his attack, decrying the publisher of two Honduran daily newspapers, La Prensa and El Heraldo, Jorge Canahuati, for allegedly opposing his police purification campaign, because they covered the rejection of the law by justices of the Supreme Court (later removed in a legally dubious way by Congress).

In February Lobo Sosa again singled out the same two papers, this time for criticizing his lack of progress against the level of fatal violence in the country:

Here we have two newspapers that greet me every day, what they forget is that although the days are passing by rapidly, they will never make me bend, I am going to impose order in Honduras, you can be sure.

We make no claim that the Honduran press is exceptionally reliable, or lacking in bias. But Lobo Sosa wants to stop the press from doing anything that makes his government uncomfortable, even though part of the role of a free press is just that: making the powerful uncomfortable.

Lobo Sosa's government has now developed a proposal for a new Ley Marco de Telecomunicaciones (Telecommunications Law).  As La Prensa reports, the proposed law would allow the government to close media outlets, and would introduce an unprecedented censorship body.

The target is broadcast media, radio and television, whose ownership overlaps with the print media against whom Lobo Sosa has railed, but which are more easily subject to government control because they are dependent on licensing of the broadcast spectrum.

At the end of last week, press reports on proposed reforms presented to Lobo Sosa by CONATEL (Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones) said the new law would

seek to regulate the granting of radio and television frequencies and to create mechanisms to censor radio, television, and print media. The proposal has been based on a proposal presented by the non-governmental organization Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre), whose content turned out to be more injurious than the Government's proposal for the regulation of media, since it even spoke of Committees of Censorship for radio and television news programs...

 C-Libre is a consortium formed in June 2001, with a stated mission to promote freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Honduras. It had previously made its proposed telecommunications law revisions available on its website. While much of their proposal has to do with ensuring access to broadcast spectrum by different sectors of society (including a proposal to limit ownership of broadcast media to one channel per family), it also included a passage that seems intended to respond to Lobo Sosa's critiques of the media: a call for a national council for the regulation of ethics in communications.

The new body they proposed would oversee programming to assure that it conforms to morals, to avoid what C-Libre called the loss of national moral values and identity.  It would have oversight to determine if programming was appropriate for a Honduran audience.  It would be able to make lists of the kind of programming considered damaging to the Honduran population.

While in theory it could  not restrict the rights of the media with respect to guarantees of freedom of religion, ideas, or politics, this provision in C-Libre's proposal was denounced by a representative of the Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa (SIP) in Honduras, Rodolfo Dumas:

“It disturbs us very much when the proposal of C-Libre speaks of a national council of regulation of ethics in communication, that is worrying because we already known that both the Convención Americana [de Derechos Humanos], la Declaración Universal [de Derechos Humanos] and our internal law prohibits advance censorship, and it is an absolute prohibition, This type of article has to be approached with great caution."

He also noted that there even is a section of the proposal that speaks of the need for truth. It demands that the news should be true, which is a term that today many politicians like to use when they refer to these issues, he added, He noted that "there is already a declaration of principles issued by all those related in regard to liberty of expression in which the demands of truthfulness, expedience, and impartiality are incompatible with liberty of expression and liberty of the press, because the concept of truth is ethereal, it is subjective, so to demand the truth, whose truth will it be? The official truth? Your truth or mine?"

On Monday, La Prensa published an analysis comparing the law actually proposed by the Lobo Sosa government to the existing legal code. They found an inserted passage in the first article giving the government the right to regulate the content transmitted for the "protection of the ethical principles and cultural values of society".

What the government can demand is framed entirely in vague and lofty-sounding language, that nonetheless falls into the debatable terrain Dumas noted in the C-Libre model law:

“In regard to the content of transmissions... these should be subjected to the regulations, parameters, policies, dispositions and administrative rulings that for reasons of social interests shall be established in conformity with the law".

In other words: the government can say that you shouldn't broadcast stories about any topic it thinks would be against "social interests".

And if a broadcaster does violate this clause, the new law is ready, having established a new basis for formal sanctions if media "promote lack of respect either for the reputation of someone, or weakening of national security, public order, public health or the fundamental rights and liberties of infancy, childhood, and adolescence.” The fines approved would rise from a maximum of 500,000 lempiras in the present law (about $25,000), to 3% to 5% of the gross income of the enterprise.

Added to the call for a Regulatory Commission on Programming, the new language would put the government in a position to impose its perspective on what programming would be in keeping with government policies and views on ethics and values.

Whatever else that might be, it is not a free press.

But then: Porfirio Lobo Sosa doesn't like a free press. 

Pompeyo Bonilla

So who is Honduras's new Minister of Security, Pompeyo Bonilla? What's his recent resumé like?

Pompeyo Bonilla Reyes was a National Party Congressman from La Paz in June 2009 when he voted to remove President Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa appointed him to head the Instituto de Propiedad (IP), the government department that issues land titles in March, 2010. In December 2010 he served on the intervention committee that investigated INA's actions in the Bajo Aguan for improprieties.

Lobo Sosa then appointed him to head the Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CONATEL) in 2011.

Shortly after he assumed control of CONATEL, it issued a resolution suspending the issuing of low power FM broadcasting licenses for community radio stations. CONATEL argued that the frequencies were saturated in almost all departments in Honduras, and that it wanted to return these frequencies for use by the big broadcasters (so called high power FM broadcasters) to use as repeater frequencies. Low power FM broadcast licenses had first been authorized in 2005 as a way to democratize telecommunications in Honduras. Another of Bonilla's acts at CONATEL was to foster legislation authorizing wiretapping.

Pompeyo Bonilla Reyes is clearly someone Porfirio Lobo Sosa trusts. His government service is sure to be emphasized in coverage of the new office he is assuming.

Honduran sources, however, are reminding people of another episode in his long public career.

Bonilla started out in the military, and was an aide to General Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, who became head of state twice through military interventions (1963-71, and 1972-1975). During Lopez Arellano's second term as president, Honduras was given a moon rock by US president Richard Nixon. When that moon rock turned up for sale in Florida in the late 1990s, Bonilla was one of a group of individuals identified by La Prensa as possible suspects in the theft of the moon rock, which was government property. The moon rock had been kept in the Honduran presidential palace. It disappeared around 1994, and was tracked down in 1998 by federal investigators.

The US court convicted a different person, retired colonel Roberto Agurcia Ugarte, as responsible for selling the moon rock to a US collector, a retired member of the US military named Allen Rosen, who testified that he bought it from a member of the Honduran Armed Forces. But it is telling that in Honduras, Pompeyo Bonilla was considered capable of taking national property and selling it for personal gain.

Bye Bye Community Radio

CONATEL would like to stop issuing licenses for these low power stations and so proposes a rule to suspend the issuance of licenses for such stations. The indication that they intend this to pass without meaningful input is that they've allowed less than a week for public comments on the resolution, and have not publicized the rule at all.

The radio spectrum, especially FM is mostly saturated in the urban cities of Honduras, but those signals don't reach very far because Honduras is a mostly mountainous country. The large media conglomerates that own the urban stations have not invested in repeater stations across the country, so that their signals often are not available far outside the urban centers. That's where low power community radio stations come in to play.

There are currently 28 low power community radio stations licensed in Honduras. They broadcast on frequencies that duplicate those of stations in the larger, urban market, but because they use low power transmitters, their signal doesn't interfere with the urban station, even if they are relatively close by.

Community radio serves to broaden public access to the airwaves. They are, in general, not owned by media conglomerates; they serve the community they're located in, not some management team in a different town.

Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Opinion, recently expressed concern over the climate of violence and criminalization towards community radio in Honduras. He singled out the Lobo Sosa government for its attacks on community radio.

The garifuna station, Faluma Bimetu had to close down for several weeks because of threats to burn the station and its occupants. Someone burned the station down once already in 2010. The community station in Zacate Grande security forces forcibly took over the station and damaged it.

La Rue said that the attacks on community radio in Honduras had increased since the coup, and continued under the Lobo Sosa administration. He reminded the government of the International Civil and Human Rights Pact.

Now the Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones (CONATEL) wants to issue a rule suspending the issuance of licenses and frequencies for low power FM community radio stations. The claim in the proposed resolution, is that these FM frequencies are saturated such that in populated parts of the country, they can't issue any more licenses to normal FM stations. Second, they allege that these low power FM transmitters are an obstacle to the introduction of new broadcast regions and services for these "normal" stations.

Reading the resolution, what's happening is that the oligarchy controlled media companies want to install repeater stations (see paragraph two of the "Resolves" part) using their frequency and cannot because at least in some cases, the frequency is in use by these community radio stations. In other words, community radio stands in the way of the large media companies increasing their monopolies.

Only in the departments of Olancho and El Paraiso will CONATEL consider issuing new community radio licenses under this resolution.

So by all means, please comment on this extension of the rights of media empires to get larger at the cost of more public access to media. Comments will be received by CONATEL either by mail at:

Edificio CONATEL, Colonia Modelo, sexta Avenida Sur Oeste contiguo a HONDUTEL. Comayagüela M. D. C., Francisco Morazán, Honduras.
Aportado Postal: 15012 Tegucigalpa

or by email at: consulta.publica@conatel.gob.hn and do so before February 4 at 5 pm.

Just don't be surprised when they ignore you.

Technical Foul: Corruption in the allocation of Channel 8

A huge amount of ink is being spilt over Honduran TV Channel 8, once used by the Zelaya administration as a government information channel, then allocated to a private businessman by court action, rented back by the de facto regime, then claimed again by the current government.

Stay tuned for further developments. But meanwhile, a word from your sponsors about TV channels in Honduras and how they end up in private hands.

CONATEL is the Honduran agency that is in charge of administration of telecommunications, radio, and television, the equivalent of the US FCC. Its current operating rules were established in 2002 by accord 141-2002 and include procedures for allocating bandwidth and supervising all broadcasters in Honduras. This accord also establishes dispute resolution procedures, not that they were followed in the current case.

That case is the on-again, off-again pursuit of analog Channel 8 by Elias Asfura.

CONATEL had a policy of only allocating the odd analog channels (3,5,7,9,11) to avoid interference between the channels. The FCC used that allocation approach for years in the US before finally allocating some adjacent channels in crowded urban markets.

Technically, in analog television, adjacent channels don't actually overlap, except channels 7 and 8. The frequencies of these two channels do overlap, so that allocating both in the same market assures there will be some interference. The FCC has not allocated both channel 7 and channel 8 in the same market, even in the crowded New York City market.

Channel 7 had already been allocated in much of the country to TeleSistema Hondureña, S.A.

So in 2005, Teleunsa, S.A., owned by Asfura, was denied permission to operate a television station on channel 8 by CONATEL.

Rather than use the dispute resolution solutions specified in the CONATEL rules, Asfura chose to appeal the decision in the courts.

In May, 2007, a lower court found in favor of Asfura and ordered the government to give him channel 8.

Rasel Tomé, then legal counsel of CONATEL, filed an appeal on November 4, 2007, which the appeals court ruled was technically invalid because it was filed one day too late.

CONATEL had valid technical reasons for not allocating channel 8 to Teleunsa, S.A.. Nonetheless, in 2007, when the government requested a channel, CONATEL went ahead and allocated channel 8 to the government, for a period of 15 years, publishing its decree in La Gaceta. On August 10, 2008, the government began broadcasting on channel 8 as the Red Informativa del Poder Ciudadano.

But El Heraldo reported that on August 5, 2008, Rasel Tomé, as legal counsel of CONATEL, had signed CONATEL resolution AS327/08 allocating channel 8 to Asfura.

Under Honduran transparency law, CONATEL posts a document on its website that notes that every authorization/allocation of spectrum, be it a radio station, TV station, or other use, brings with it financial obligations to pay for the rights to the channel, the registration of that right, and for CONATEL's supervision of the operation of that broadcast unit. Resolution AS327/08 cannot be found on CONATEL's listing of 2008 resolutions, but the transparency law in Honduras is not enforced, so that, in and of itself means nothing.

Tomé's lax handling of the case was apparently scandalous. Enrique Flores Lanza, as Zelaya's principal advisor, stripped Tomé of his legal responsibilities at CONATEL. So, between August 5 and November 24, 2008, CONATEL apparently recognized Asfura as the owner of channel 8. But on November 25, 2008, CONATEL appealed the case to the Supreme Court using a new legal team.

Fast forward to June 2009, when in the week before the coup, Channel 8 broadcast Manuel Zelaya's appeals directly to the people from the presidential palace and the speeches of those who came to join him in an attempt to ward off his removal from office.

After the coup, on August 4, 2009, a lower court again awarded channel 8 to Asfura.

By then, the de facto regime had replaced several members of CONATEL and installed Miguel Rodas as its head. Another of Asfura's companies, Eldi, was assigned channel 12, which he won in another legal suit, this one against SOTEL.

Roberto Micheletti recongized the utility of having a government channel and on assuming power after the coup, signed a contract in which the government rented back from Asfura the rights to channel 8 for the duration of his government, 7 months, renting the channel from Asfura for 1 lempira a month. Micheletti rebranded channel 8 Televisión Nacional de Honduras.

Therein lies (part) of the current problem.

As part of the transparency law, CONATEL must post its fees, which in 2008-2010 included a 57,924 lempira annual fee for the right to transmit on a particular channel, fees for spectrum use, annual fees for supervision, etc? Did Teleunsa pay these fees?

When Micheletti rented back from Asfura the broadcast rights on channel 8, he violated CONATELs operating rules, which prohibit any transfer of broadcast rights without review by CONATEL and a corresponding published resolution.

In short, Micheletti acted irregularly in signing an agreement with Asfura. But equally, the courts which repeatedly have ignored the dispute resolution process applicants are supposed to file in order to affirm Asfura as owner of Channel 8 seem, at the very least, to be acting outside their authority.

As CONATEL argues, the airwaves belong to the government. But it would be hard to tell that by the actions either of Micheletti or the courts.