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GOVERNMENT AGREES TO REPEAL CRIMINAL DEFAMATION LAW

The Argentine government has agreed with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) recommendation that it should repeal its criminal defamation law, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). This move will make Argentina the first nation in Latin American where journalists can not be charged or jailed for criticising public officials, states CPJ. "This will affirm the press freedom that Argentine journalists have been using for the last two decades to investigate the government and denounce corruption," says Argentine journalist and PERIODISTAS vice-president Horacio Verbitsky. Verbitsky, who was often a target of former President Carlos Menem's government because of his investigative reporting, argued for the repeal of this law before the IACHR in Washington in the United States, on 1 October.

As part of the settlement, the Argentine government agreed to repeal the legislation and put into place legislation to counteract its contents. The new bill which has been drafted states that "plaintiffs in civil libel cases will be required to prove not only that the published information was false, but that the journalists knew or should have known it was false at the time of publication," reports CPJ.