ANEM Activities

Home / ANEM Activities / Advocacy activities

30. 12. 2011

ANEM SUGGESTIONS FOR ADDITIONAL MEASURES TO ACCOMPANY THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF DEFAMATION AND INSULT

In the course of 2011, the Ministry of Justice announced several times that defamation and insult would be removed from the Criminal Code of Serbia. Although the possibility to criminally prosecute a journalist for defamation and insult has a deterrent effect on freedom of expression and is undeniably one of the generators of self-censorship in the Serbian media, ANEM believes that decriminalization per se is insufficient to significantly improve the situation on the media scene. It is therefore necessary for this measure to be accompanied by other measures that will further improve the protection of freedom of expression in Serbia.

Namely, the fact is that journalists in Serbia typically fare better when privately prosecuted for defamation than in litigation for damages. At the same time, the experience of countries that have already decriminalized defamation and insult shows that this move was shortly followed by a spike in the number of litigations for damages in media-related cases. The amount of damages that was awarded was on the increase too.

The practice of civil courts in Serbia shows that the provision of Article 18 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, under which human and minority rights are guaranteed and implemented in accordance with the universally recognized rules of international law, is insufficient to ensure legal protection of media and journalists' rights before national courts, which would be at least comparable to that enforced by the European Court of Human Rights in the implementation of Article 10 of the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights. There are many reasons for such a state of affairs, including the fact that the most significant decisions of the ECHR are still not being sufficiently translated in Serbian language, thus remaining unavailable to judges that should act upon them, let alone to the media and journalists that could invoke such decisions in legal proceedings.

In view of the above, on December 30, 2011, ANEM addressed a letter to the Government of Serbia, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Culture, Media and Information Society, urging them to consider other necessary steps aimed at enhancing the right to freedom of expression in Serbia. In the said letter, ANEM called for the amendments to the Public Information Law and provided nine concrete proposals for such amendments, aiming at ensuring greater security and protection of journalists with respect to freedom of expression.

In addition to these proposals for amending the Public Information Law, ANEM emphasized in the aforementioned letter that it was necessary to translate as many pertinent freedom of expression-related decisions by the ECHR as possible in Serbian language and to publish these decisions in the most appropriate manner.

These ANEM proposals were supported by other media and journalists' associations from the media coalition - NUNS, UNS, NDNV and Local Press, so they have joined to this letter.