MIAMI, Florida (June 20, 2003)The Inter American Press Association (IAPA)
said today it trusts that the Colombian Constitutional Court will uphold freedom
of the press by rejecting proposed law that would require journalists to be licensed
as professionals and be university graduates.
Rafael Molina, chairman of the IAPAs Committee on Freedom of the Press
and Information, said that the hemisphere organization supports any attempt
to make journalists more professional but is against it being obligatory for
them to belong to an association or guild or having to be a journalism school
graduate.
Molina, editor of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, news magazine Ahora,
recalled that both Article 8 of the IAPA-sponsored Declaration of Chapultepec
and Article 6 of the Organization of American States Declaration of Principles
of Freedom of Expression, based on Article 13 of the American Convention on
Human Rights, both regard the membership by journalists in an association as
solely a voluntary matter.
The IAPA also upholds the advisory opinion issued in 1985 by the Inter-American
Human Rights Court that declared obligatory licensing to be contrary to freedom
of the press and of expression. This opinion led to a number of countries in
the Americas, for example Costa Rica and prior to that the Dominican Republic,
declaring obligatory licensing to be unconstitutional.
Molina expressed surprise at the Colombian Senates rejection of objections
to the bill expressed in December by Colombias President Alvaro Uribe,
who had refrained from signing the bill into law on the grounds that it violated
the nations Constitution.
An international IAPA delegation during a visit to Bogotá in January
had in fact underscored Uribes stance that the practice of journalism
must not be restricted.
Molinas surprise also sprang from the fact that the law enacted in 1975
requiring that only university graduates could work as journalists and they
must obtain a license from the Ministry of Education had already been repealed
in 1998 by the Constitutional Court equivalent to the Supreme Court
in the United States a move that was hailed at the time by international
pres organizations.
Molina said he trusted that the Constitutional Court would endorse freedom
of the press by declaring this proposed law to be unconstitutional and thus
aligning itself with the executive branch that had told the IAPA that no measures
restricting the practice of journalism would be countenanced.
Meanwhile, in connection with that IAPA mission to Colombia, the organization
welcomed the withdrawal of a legislative bill introduced by Rep. Juan Gómez
Martínez that sought to increase penalties for criminal libel when committed
by journalists and news media.
In this regard, the IAPA has been giving it support to legislative reforms
throughout the Western Hemisphere that seek to decriminalize libel.
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