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EOHR demands the enactment of presidential promise of annulling prison sentences in publication cases
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23/2/2006
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) calls upon President Mubarak to fulfill the promise he made two years ago concerning the annulling of prison sentences in publication cases. The President should assign to the government the representing of a draft law to the People's Assembly to amend the current legislations which penalize journalists condemned with defaming and insult with imprisonment.
In February 2004, President Mubarak announced in the opening ceremony of the 4th Journalists Conference that he will abolish prison sentences in publication cases concerned with journalists and publication which is stated in Law 96/1996 Articles(22,21,20,28) in addition to the Egyptian Penal Code Articles (307,306,303,302,171)
EOHR expresses it's anxiety concerning the continuation of applying laws that restrain freedom of opinion and expression and penalize with imprisonment, in addition to issuing new court-decisions of imprisoning journalists and interrogating others in similar suits. Accordingly, EOHR calls upon President Mubarak to fulfill his promise which constitutes a protection of freedom of expression and opinion which goes in accordance with the Constitution and international documents concerned with freedom of expression.
EOHR believes that applying fines is enough in publication cases especially that the right to respond in the same newspaper is granted to the injured in addition to filing a case in civil courts, and a fine should be applied if proved the journalist guilty.
It is worth mentioning that the Journalist Syndicate prepared a draft law concerned with this issue, and invited law expertise, lawyers and journalists to discuss this draft law. Same people also participated in meetings organized by the Ministry of Justice to discuss the amendments presented by the Government. Unfortunately, all these efforts never yielded to a law that abolish the imprisonment of journalists as long as the Government neglects the promise of the President.
On the other hand, EOHR renews its demands to abolish all laws that restrain the freedom of issuing new newspapers. EOHR declares its complete support to the demands of the Journalists Syndicate concerning the protection of journalists and empowering freedom of expression and human rights, in addition to establishing a mechanism of questioning and condemning those who hide information from journalists, whether whey are governmental or public personnel, and countering any restrains to the flow of information without affecting national security.
EOHR also stresses on countering any discrimination of obtaining information by different newspapers, and the importance of empowering and applying mechanisms of questioning journalists through the syndicate according to the East Journalists Charter. As for media, a level of dependency from the government should be sustained, and stressing on maintaining neutrality by all forms of media, whether state-owned or private sector agencies.
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