U.S. Consulate official in Curaçao pressured editor to remove opinion piece

A foreign service officer at the U.S. Consulate in Willemstad, Curaçao, pressured and then threatened Curaçao Chronicle Editor Aldrich Hermelijn after he refused her requests to take down a Feb. 14, 2025, opinion piece, Hermelijn told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

The freelance columnist who wrote the piece, Michael Walsh, told the Tracker it was one of a series published in various international outlets during the Biden and Trump administrations that, among other issues, addressed what he described as the low quality of official information published by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Walsh’s Chronicle article argued that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio should order a reevaluation of the strategic plan for the U.S. Consulate General in Curaçao to make sure that it meets the State Department’s information quality standards.

Hermelijn, who is from Curaçao, told the Tracker that the foreign service officer, Vienna Munro, called him the day the article was published, saying it did not reflect the views of the consulate or the State Department. She demanded that he take it down immediately and told him that leaving it online could get him “in trouble.”

Hermelijn said he declined to remove the article, but offered to publish Munro’s response in an op-ed. Munro continued to call him over the next several days and pressured him to take the article down, Hermelijn said, and repeated the warning that he could “get in trouble” — without specifying what that meant.

Hermelijn said he asked her to communicate via voice or text message, instead of phone calls, and when Munro continued to call, he stopped answering.

After his exchanges with Munro over Walsh’s article, Hermelijn said his relationship with the consulate “changed noticeably.” For example, his name was removed from the guest list for the consulate’s annual Fourth of July celebration, an event to which he had been invited in the past. He said he spoke with another consular official, who confirmed that Munro had removed his name and who promised to add it back to the list; however, as of early September, he had yet to receive any official written invitations.

“I would expect this kind of pressure from the Chinese Consulate (and indeed, they have done so in the past), but never from the U.S. Consulate,” Hermelijn added in an email to the Tracker.

“I felt threatened,” he said.

Walsh also expressed surprise at the reaction, saying he “never imagined that this article would have elicited such a response from the U.S. government.”

He said he had no idea what motivated that takedown request, but said it could have been because the article “reflected poorly on their mission and thereby weakened trust and undermined cooperation with the local population. Of course, that is not the only possibility.”

Walsh noted that a small outlet such as the Curaçao Chronicle is particularly vulnerable to pressure from the U.S. Consulate, which has a measure of control over access to information about the U.S. government and its activities on the small Dutch Caribbean island.

Walsh said he notified the office of Sen. Tim Scott about the incident because the senator had spoken out about freedom of speech in the past and he thought it was likely that Scott’s office would take action. Walsh said it was his understanding that the takedown requests stopped after Scott sent a formal letter to the State Department on his behalf. The U.S. diplomat who made the requests then departed her post, Walsh added.

The U.S. State Department’s Office of Press Relations did not reply to the Tracker’s questions about the incident, including whether Munro had departed her post in Curaçao.