Croatian journalists have joined in the campaign and this issue, along with other issues, will be discussed at the annual European Federation of Journalists conference in Bilbao on 3-4 April.
The latest cases in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, including the case of Croatian journalist Ljubica Letinic, who received a suspended prison sentence for defamation, have reopened the issue of decriminalising it.
The IFJ has therefore accepted that a journalist of Novi List daily and the chairwoman of the Croatian Journalists' Association Council of Honour, Gordana Grbic, participate in the international electronic conference on the freedom of speech and decriminalisation of defamation.
The IFJ campaign includes, among other things, the establishment of task forces and the organisation of seminars and workshops on the decriminalisation of defamation in an effort to put an end to using defamation as a means of disciplining "disobedient journalists", that is, as a form of pressure on the freedom of expression, IFJ president Christopher Warren has said.
The IFJ wants to encourage authorities in different countries, including Croatia, to decriminalise defamation, Warren said, recalling that many countries, such as Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Hungary, Ireland, Kenya, Moldova, Paraguay, Slovakia, Spain and Ukraine, had abolished or were preparing to abolish defamation as a criminal act. In many of the countries where defamation is treated as a criminal act, including France and Bulgaria, it is not punished with imprisonment, but only fines.