ZAGREB, March 13 (Hina) - The Croatian Justice Ministry has sent its final bill of amendments to the Penal Code to the government. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) club of deputies will soon send to parliament the set of amendments
to the Penal Code the Constitutional Court rescinded late last year because they had not been adopted with the required two-thirds parliamentary majority.
ZAGREB, March 13 (Hina) - The Croatian Justice Ministry has sent its
final bill of amendments to the Penal Code to the government. The
Social Democratic Party (SDP) club of deputies will soon send to
parliament the set of amendments to the Penal Code the Constitutional
Court rescinded late last year because they had not been adopted with
the required two-thirds parliamentary majority.#L#
The SDP amendments are more comprehensive than those moved by the
Justice Ministry. Minister Vesna Skate-Ozbolt has announced the first
phase will include a mini reform of the Penal Code, namely the
amendment of provisions required to adjust penal legislation with
European standards.
The introduction of longer sentences, including lifetime imprisonment
or the extension of the statute of limitations, as well as other
possible changes to penal legislation will be carried out in the
second stage of the reform, it has been announced.
The two bills of amendments to the Penal code deal with and
decriminalise libel and slander through the media in different ways.
The SDP proposes removing the imprisonment penalty for all acts
against reputation and honour, regardless of whether they have been
committed via the media or not, if there was no intention to slander
or libel. The Justice Ministry does not propose removing the
imprisonment penalty, saying that changed provisions on criminal acts
against honour and reputation have in effect decriminalised media
libel and slander.
The ministry has said it does not propose removing the imprisonment
penalty for journalistic slander and libel, something on which the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Croatian
Journalists' Association insisted on, because no European country has
done so and reputation and honour are to be protected as fundamental
human rights and freedoms.
According to the ministry, its amendments, even though they do not
envisage cancelling the imprisonment penalty, would bring Croatia's
penal legislation closer to international recommendations, which say
that civil liability is sufficient to pay damages for media slander or
libel. Croatian penal provisions would thus guarantee maximum media
freedoms without penal repression, the ministry says.
Under both bills of amendments, proving that there was no intention to
slander or libel is not up to the defendant, i.e. the journalist, but
up to the plaintiff. A journalist could not be punished for libel is
he/she wrote the truth. A journalist could be punished only if the
method of expression and other circumstances indicate conduct which
was aimed at undermining someone's reputation and honour.
Both bills envisage removing the objective accountability of the
editor-in-chief who until now was held accountable, for example, for
unsigned articles even though there were no elements indicating his
personal responsibility. The editor-in-chief would no longer be held
to account for a criminal act committed by someone else.
(Hina) ha sb