Draft law against silence, hampered by Colombian congressmen
In Colombia a bill that seeks to eradicate an easy and efficient form of censorship: the presentation of legal actions in order to intimidate the press. The problem is that those who are in charge of discussing and approving it are precisely the type of people who most often resort to this kind of harassment.
The strategy of taking legal action against the press is effective because, even if the journalist involved has done a diligent job and has evidence to justify his publications, he will be forced to pay a lawyer and will be subjected to the anguish of defending himself for years in the courts. Faced with this threat, journalists often prefer to delete their publications and choose not to refer to the topics of coverage in the future.
This is what some call “judicial harassment” or “strategic litigation against public participation” (SLAPP), a strategy that is often used by officials and others of public notoriety. In Colombia, specifically, three avenues are used: tutela actions (a judicial action to achieve the rapid protection of fundamental rights), criminal complaints for libel and slander, and civil claims for damages.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has repeatedly expressed its concern about the harassment of the press with legal actions, noting that the laws that prohibit defamation of the authorities are incompatible with the American Convention on Human Rights. Under this logic, the Inter-American Court found in 2008 that Argentina had violated this convention by criminally convicting journalist Eduardo Kimel and He decided that the State should adapt its domestic legislation. Consequently, in Argentina there are no libel and slander when referring to matters of public interest.
According to figures from the Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa [Foundation for Press Freedom] (FLIP)In Colombia, the strategy has been growing steadily since 2017. In view of this, the organization El Veinte, with the support of FLIP, drafted a bill that is being discussed today in the Senate, which seeks to eradicate harassment in Colombia.
The project presents a simple proposal. On the one hand, it seeks to reform the Code of Criminal Procedure so that the Prosecutor's Office can file a criminal proceeding when it realizes that the accused acted in the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression. Similarly, it proposes modifying the General Process Code, the statute that guides civil cases, to authorize judges to issue early sentences in these cases. As explained in the bill's explanatory memorandum, laws like this already exist in some states in the United States and in Canada.
Despite the reasonableness of the proposal, the project faces a major obstacle: Congressmen frequently resort to harassment from those who question their actions and publish opinions that are not to their liking. This became more than clear in the middle of the first debate in the First Committee of the Senate of Colombia, when five of the senators presented impediments, precisely because they had previously sued the press.
Several of the congressmen accused the journalists of being irresponsible. One of them accused them of using the microphones in a "miserable and visceral" way to say atrocities. Another announced that his party had discovered the preparation of a smear strategy against a center-left electoral coalition, in which they would supposedly participate. influencers and the media, in association with the current government.
Senators seem to be losing sight of what the bill proposes: if approved, it would not eliminate the possibility of initiating legal actions, but rather it would allow the authorities to terminate a process early when they realize that the objective of activating justice is not to rectify the law. information or repair damage, but rather intimidate journalists and the media. This, in addition to improving the situation of the press, saves efforts and resources for the already flooded judicial branch.
Given the number of impediments presented, Rodrigo Lara, the senator rapporteur, asked the president of the Commission to suspend the debate and the voting of the project to reformulate the deliberation strategy of the proposal, since this type of bill requires qualified majorities. However, the outlook will not be promising as long as congressmen perceive the approval of the project as a shot in the foot and not with an important democratic guarantee for public debate in Colombia.
