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OSCE Media Representative asks Hungary and Poland to remove prison sentences from libel law

VIENNA 9 July 2004
Miklos Haraszti described libel laws in Hungary and Poland as "ancient, inadequate and detrimental to a modern democracy". (OSCE/Mikhail Evstafiev) Photo details

VIENNA, 9 July 2004 - The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, has raised with the Justice Ministers in both Hungary and Poland several recent cases of journalists being sentenced to prison for libel.

In Hungary, an appeals court last week suspended a 10-month prison sentence against editor Andras Bencsik for two years. An eight-month suspended prison sentence against journalist Laszlo Attila Bertok was upheld. The case was brought by liberal MP Imre Mecs after Demokrata, the weekly which Bencsik edits, alleged that testimony by Imre Mecs had played a role in the sentencing of four people to death after the 1956 revolution.

In Poland, the Warsaw Supreme Court upheld a three-month prison sentence against Andrzej Marek, Editor-in-chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie (Police News), for libelling a local official.

In another case in May 2004, Beata Korzeniewska, a journalist for the daily Gazeta Pomorska, received a suspended one-month prison sentence for libelling a judge from the northern Polish city of Torun.

"I am aware of the full independence and fairness of the courts in these cases. The judges have only applied the existing laws of the country," the Representative wrote to the two ministers. "The guilt of the accused has been proven in an adequate fashion in accordance with the rule of law."

"However, these ancient libel laws are inadequate, even detrimental, to a modern democracy. Freedom of the press and the uninhibited discussion of public issues could be diminished by the general chilling effect of a possible prison sentence being imposed on journalists for their work," Haraszti added.

The Representative asked the Ministers to work for a moratorium on prison sentences in libel convictions, and to prepare as soon as possible a legislative reform which would move libel and defamation from the criminal code to the civil code, or at least to make a start by removing incarceration as punishment for these offences.