10
(h)
The web page of Aporrea.org, an op-ed site that “has enjoyed broad public
support from the national Government” had published “systematically, for seven
years, more than 50 articles with serious accusations against COFAVIC and Liliana
Ortega.” The last of these appeared on June 23, 2009, in an article entitled
“Oposición recurre al mismo formato de golpe. Comparación 2002-2009” [Opposition
uses the same coup d’état format. Comparison 2002-2009], which, according to the
representatives, criticized “the work of COFAVIC for using the international courts”;
(i)
The attacks made in articles published on the abovementioned site were
aimed at Liliana Ortega personally, indicating that “her NGO has provided her with
great [financial] satisfaction”; that “she had made a pact with the devil,” and that
“the human rights business had made her rich”;
(j)
On February 25 and 26, 2009, an alleged leader of the Socialist Party of
Venezuela, in his program “La Hojilla”, transmitted by the official channel Venezolana
de Televisión, had “incriminated COFAVIC, accusing it of being part of a conspiracy
that was trying to break up the civil-military union, merely to ask for justice in the El
Caracazo case,” and
(k)
On February 27, 2009, in a ceremony organized by the National Executive to
commemorate El Caracazo transmitted on all the national television channels, a
woman shouted out that “Liliana Ortega [COFAVIC] had taken away [her] rights and
should be investigated.”
31.
That, regarding the opinion articles that the representatives offered as evidence of
harassment, the State affirmed that they had been published “in private social media,” such
as “the daily paper VEA, the weekly paper Los Papeles de la Mandinga, the weekly paper
Verdades de Miguel, and the daily paper El Universal,” and “the representatives [had]
indicated that they were attacks by zealous followers of the Government’s policies.” In this
regard, the State alleged that “it could not ask or oblige the media not to publish this type
of article, because this would amount to prior censorship.” Furthermore, the State indicated
that “Liliana Ortega had the right to demand a right of reply in the same media and, if she
considered she had been harmed, she could resort to the courts and file the corresponding
action so that any possible responsibility for the opinions she had complained about could
be determined.”
4.4.
Considerations of the Court
32.
That, for the Court to be able to order provisional measures, Article 63(2) of the
Convention requires the presence of three conditions: (i) “extreme gravity”; (ii) “urgency”
and (iii) that the measures are needed to “avoid irreparable damage” to persons. These
three conditions are coexistent and must be present in any situation in which the Court’s
intervention is requested. Likewise, these three conditions must persist for the Court to
maintain the protection it has ordered. If one of them is no longer valid, the Court must
assess the pertinence of continuing the protection ordered.
33.
That, when ordering the measures of protection, the Court or the person presiding it,
does not, in principle, require evidence of the facts that, prima facie, appear to comply with
the requirements of Article 63. To the contrary, maintaining the measures of protection
requires the Court to assess whether the situation of extreme gravity and urgency to avoid