Representative on Freedom of the Media

At a 2003 Paris expert roundtable on Libel and Insult Laws, held by the OSCE Representative and Reporters sans Frontiers (Reporters Without Borders), recommendations were adopted for governments and legislatures that encouraged them to support the decriminalization of libel and the repeal of so-called insult laws.

Libel laws hinder media freedom

Recently, the OSCE Representative intervened on several occasions regarding libel cases in the OSCE region. He raised his concerns with government officials in Kazakstan, Hungary and Poland, as well as Slovakia and Armenia.

In Hungary, an appeals court in early July suspended a 10-month prison sentence against editor Andras Bencsik for two years. An eight-month suspended prison sentence against journalist Laszlo Attila Bertok was upheld. The case was brought to court by liberal MP Imre Mecs after Demokrata, the weekly which Bencsik edits, alleged that testimony of Mecs had played a role in the sentencing of four people to death after the 1956 revolution.

In Poland, the Warsaw Supreme Court upheld a three-month prison sentence against Andrzej Marek, Editor-in-chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie (Police News), for libelling a local official.

In another case in May 2004, Beata Korzeniewska, a journalist for the daily Gazeta Pomorska, received a suspended one-month prison sentence for libelling a judge from the city of Torun.

On 16 July 2004, in a libel suit brought to court by the Presidential Administration, an Almaty district court in Kazakstan ordered the weekly newspaper Assandi-Times to publish a retraction and pay 50 million Tenge (approximately 380,000 US Dollars) in moral damages.

"These ancient libel laws are inadequate, even detrimental, to a modern democracy where freedom of the press and uninhibited discussion of public issues could be diminished by a general chilling effect of a criminal libel sentence used against journalists for their work," said Miklos Haraszti. "There are many other legal means to deal with libel through civil adjudication."

Successes in decriminalizing libel

In Armenia and Slovakia, where changes are being made to the criminal codes regarding libel, the OSCE Representative encouraged the governments of both countries to decriminalize it completely.

In Georgia, the Representative welcomed that on 15 July 2004 President Mikheil Saakashvili signed a new Law on Freedom of Speech and Expression and amendments removing criminal libel from the Criminal Code. Georgia joins several other OSCE participating States that have recently decriminalized libel, including Ukraine and Moldova.

Currently, the Representative is preparing a database on libel legislation in the OSCE region which he plans to use to advocate decriminalization from Vancouver to Vladivostok.

Assisting the participating States in reforming their libel and insult laws to secure freedom of expression remains one of the Representative's priorities. This he stressed in his first quarterly report to the OSCE Permanent Council in June 2004.