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A national campaign for adopting the Journalists Syndicate draft law annulling the imprisonment sentence in opinion and publication cases
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13/3/2006
A collective demand for editors en chief of the Egyptian newspapers, Media professors, and representatives of human rights organizations, to initiate a national campaign is finally at hand. The campaign shall include university professors, members of the Higher Education Teaching Association, representatives from the civil society, Syndicates and political parties, and will aim at adopting the draft law provided by the Journalists Syndicate annulling the imprisonment sentence in opinion and publication cases. They also asked President Mubarak to fulfill his promise regarding the same issue.
The demand came at the closing of the seminar held by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) entitled "Towards a Law Annulling the Imprisonment Sentence in Publication Cases", on March 12th 2006.
Participants also asserted that in order to enhance the freedom of speech and expression's stance in general, and the press freedom in particular, a package of legislative and practical procedures shall be enacted by the Egyptian government and the People's Assembly…
Summed up in the following:
1- Annulling imprisonment sentence in publication cases, as President Mubarak promised in February 2004, in order to protect the press and journalists freedom, and to enact the Constitution and international laws providing the right to free opinion and expression, while keeping sentences in such cases as fines at their maximum limit, especially that the injured has the right to respond in the same newspaper and to file a case demanding remedy in a civil court of law, if the journalist is proven guilty.
Also highlighting that the legislative amendments related to the presidential promise shall include articles penalizing journalists with imprisonment, in all laws related to expression, publication and publishing, which are to be found in many laws, among which is the publication law, Penal Code, Journalism Regulation Law, State Documents Law, Civil State Personnel, Army news restriction and military verdicts, political parties law, and intelligence law. Beside the Journalists Syndicate support and empowerment of syndicate accountability mechanisms by means of the Journalists Charter.
2- Providing amendments to Article 47 of the Constitution, as it left the regulation of the freedom of opinion and expression to the legislator without providing standards for such legislator, which led to the appearance of many legislations that didn't regulate such freedom, but aimed at restricting it by banning all means of expression of opinions (Article 171 of Penal Code). Also the criticism to Article 206 of the constitution by law experts shall be considered… the article considered the journalism as a fourth authority beside the executive, legislative and judicial authorities, but didn't give it enough autonomy, authority and jurisdictions that should be given to such consideration, and that was a direct reason for the other three authorities' intervention in its affairs.
3- Taking the procedures needed to ensure the safety and integrity of the journalists, against abuse, assassination, arrest, monitoring or assaulting them. In such context EOHR is confirming occurrence of events of violence against journalists, which are considered breaches for the basic human rights norms, such as the right to live, the right of freedom and personal safety, the right of avoiding torture, to all such rights mentioned in the International Declarations of Human Rights and in the Egyptian Constitution. Article 280 of the Penal Code confiscated the right not be arrested, imprisoned or detained without an order from the authority with such jurisdiction. On the other hand, in the national criminal legislation, Article 40 of Criminal Procedures Law stipulated that, "Arresting or detaining any person is not allowed but by the authorities with the proper jurisdiction, and such person shall be handled in a manner respecting his human dignity, and he shall not be harmed either physically or mentally".
4- Providing the freedom of owning and issuing newspapers, audio and T.V. channels to the political parties, syndicates, associations and all judicial and natural Egyptian persons with full legal capacity, and reconsidering the state ownership for national and journalistic institutions, so as to be owned by a single person or party no more.
5- Preparing a legal mechanism penalizing the information restriction from the journalist, by any governmental or public authority, and banning any restrictions on the freedom of information flow, notwithstanding the defense and national security needs, and avoiding discrimination in information collection by different newspapers.
6- Ending the governmental control over media means, strictly and directly stressing on the autonomy of all forms of media and maintaining their neutrality, whether state-owned or private sector agencies.
7- Put an end to the state of emergency which is considered one of the main breaches for the freedom of opinion and expression. As the emergency law gives the executive authority the right to take whatever arbitrary measures it sees fit. And what makes it even worse is that Article 48 of the constitution allowed supervision over newspapers and publications in case of imposing the state of emergency, and also gave the executive authority the right to confiscate publications and newspapers and to shut them down, even though such a right was confined to cases where public security is at stake. However, the current emergency law increased such powers in its third article, and allowed the executive branch to confiscate, ban and shut down publications, releasing this right from its constitutional constrain. Beside what the emergency law allows, like the ability to commit random arrest, detention and imprisonment.
8- Reconsider the journalists payrolls structure. According to the World Bank indexes, the salaries of the journalists are below the poverty line. It is also important to abolish the risks of the special bonuses growth over the official salaries in the newspapers, a problem found in most of the governmental institutions. As the bonuses became as much as double the salaries in the Balance Sheet, which is considered a serious breach for the "Payment for Work" principle, followed in most countries of the world.
9- Annulling or constraining the Egyptian reservations on the international charters related to the freedom of opinion and expression, as leaving these reservations as they are will lead to the possibility of breaching such charters by the national legislations.
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