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Alert

WPFC commends committee's approval of bill to eliminate insult laws

(WPFC/IFEX) - The following is a 7 July 2003 WPFC letter to Deputy Guillermo Ceroni:

July 7, 2003

Deputy Guillermo Ceroni
President
Committee on Constitution, Legislation and Justice
Chamber of Deputies
Chilean Congress
Valparaíso, Chile

Dear President Ceroni,
On behalf of the World Press Freedom Committee (www.wpfc.org), I wish to congratulate you and the members of your committee for having passed Bill No. 212-347 eliminating Chile's insult laws and sending it to the full floor of the Chamber of Deputies for approval.

This bill, urgently sent to Congress by President Ricardo Lagos on August 26, 2002, constitutes a necessary reform of the Chilean legislation which maintains the anachronistic concept of criminal insult in seven articles that effectively protect 350 public officials from the scrutiny of 15 million Chileans.

Insult, or "desacato" laws - obsolete statutes dating back to the Roman Empire and used historically as tools in the censorship arsenal of autocratic regimes - still represent a serious threat to the basic liberties of the vast majority of Latin Americans. Only Argentina, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Peru have completely eliminated these pernicious laws.

In spite of recommendations by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which considers insult laws as "contradictory" to the San José Pact, your country, a signatory of the accord, has unfortunately retained these laws and authorities have continued to apply them.

This situation must change.

"There is no doubt," as President Lagos correctly stated in his Bill's introduction, "that the existence of these laws in Chile has degraded into an unjustified privilege established to favor certain individuals, which contradicts Article One of the 1980 Political Constitution, which consecrates the equality before the law of any person's dignity and rights."

Indeed, articles 263, 264 and 265 of the Criminal Code, and articles 276, 284, 416, and 417 of the Code of Military Justice contradict the concept of equality before the law as consecrated in the Chilean Constitution.

President Ceroni, we urge you to use your legislative powers to overcome further interruptions in the parliamentary process so that Bill No. 212-347 can be adopted into law without further delay.

In adopting this important legislation, Chile will be accredited as a protector of civic liberties and as a leader in the fight against outdated laws shielding public officials from proper accountability to their constituents.

Respectfully Yours,

Marilyn Greene
Executive Director
World Press Freedom Committee
Reston, USA