WPFC Protests Prison Sentence of Colombian Editor-In-Chief

The World Press Freedom Committee sent the following letter of protest to the Constitutional Court in Bogota, Colombia:

Honorable Magistrates
Manuel José Cepeda Espinosa
Humberto Sierra Porto
Sala de Selección de Tutelas
Honorable Corte Constitucional
Calle 12 No.7-65
Bogota
Colombia
 
Your Honors:
 
The World Press Freedom Committee (www.wpfc.org) —an organization representing 45 press freedom groups from throughout the world—expresses its profound rejection of the decision by a Bogota court that ordered the arrest of the Editor-in-Chief of  Semana magazine, Alejandro Santos, for not exactly following the court’s instructions in the publication of a correction.
 
Magistrate Amanda Vargas de Norato, of Bogotá’s Criminal Circuit Court, ordered the arrest of Mr. Santos because he allegedly failed to follow the Court’s instructions in the publication of a correction ordered during a criminal defamation suit filed by José Alfredo Escobar, a former top official at the Supreme Council of the Judiciary. The alleged failure to comply, considered as a case of contempt of court, carries a penalty of three days in prison and the payment of a fine of 2.7 million pesos (US$1,200). This sentence must be delayed until it is revised by your Constitutional Court.
 
The original sentence stems from a Semana article published on April 28 about the alleged close relationship between Mr. Escobar and a person linked to drug trafficking. Mr. Escobar filed a criminal defamation suit claiming his honor, good name and privacy were blemished.
 
We consider this decision and the continuous judicial harassment on Mr. Santos and therefore his entire editorial team as an attack on press freedom and on the human rights of Mr. Santos, and more importantly, of his readers. These rights are consecrated in the Colombian Constitution. Also, Colombia is bound by two major international documents:  Section 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, as applied by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and also in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, whose biding power Colombia acknowledges, and by Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This criminal procedure clearly constitutes a violation of these and other principles of free expression.
 
Both the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court and the recommendations of the UN Commission on Human Rights support the concept that public officials should expect more, and not less, scrutiny and criticism from the rest of society. This acceptance of being a willing target of the media’s slings and arrows also implies public officials should restrain themselves from using these laws in order to silence criticism directed at them.
 
Both institutions also state that criminal defamation and insult laws, in the hands of public officials, can become a potent censorship tool to shield themselves from the scrutiny of the press and the rest of society. This legal feature, of great toxic power, is typical of autocratic regimes and not of democratic nations such as Colombia.
 
As a matter of fact, international human rights jurisprudence recommends that all laws that allow criminal penalties for defamation, particularly those that are applied against journalists and media outlets, ought to be decriminalized in all the countries where they exist, including Colombia. Likewise, they maintain that any fines that were to result from civil proceedings ought to be applied in a sensible way so they do not become intimidation weapons that impede the necessary flow of information in a democratic society.
 
Therefore, your Honors, I urge you to put an end to this judicial harassment on Mr. Santos and his Semana magazine by declaring the case null and void.
 
Respectfully,
E. Markham Bench,
Executive Director
World Press Freedom Committee
 
CC: To the members of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations:
Committee to Protect Journalists

Commonwealth Press Union

Inter American Press Association

International Association of Broadcasting

International Federation of the Periodical Press

International Press Institute

North American Broadcasters Association

World Association of Newspapers

World Press Freedom Committee
 
To members of the Colombian press.