|
Freedom of speech in tomorrows Romania
Tuesday, December the 5th, 2000, the Media Monitoring Agency and the
Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Freedom of
Expression (APPLE) organized a meeting of the Journalists Protection
Network entitled Freedom of speech in tomorrows Romania. The meeting
was chaired by Mircea Toma, director of the Media Monitoring Agency,
and
Ioana Avadani, director of Centre for Independent Journalism, and was
attended by 70 journalists included in the Journalists Protection
Network, while it also enjoyed the presence of Valeriu Stoica,
Minister
of Justice, Theodor Stolojan, PNL leader, Varujan Vosganian, president
of the UFD and Monica Macovei, Attorney-at-Law.
The meeting lasted approximately 8 hours and it had the following
agenda:
1. Submission of the report The condition for the freedom of the press
in Romania"; evaluation of the legislative framework after 4
years of
governing by the CDR-PD-UDMR;
2. Appointment of the APPLE Board of Administration and Chairman;
3. Setting of the APPLE strategy for year 2001.
1. Submission of the report The condition for the freedom of the press
in Romania; evaluation of the legislative framework after 4 years of
governing by the CDR-PD-UDMR;
The report The condition for the freedom of the press in Romania is an
inventory of the cases of harassment of the journalists, monitored by
the Media Monitoring Agency during 1999 2000 and of the main local and
international organizations aimed, among others, at the protection of
the right to freedom of speech. Said report includes 42 cases of
harassment in court, by means of threats and body injury. In the
presence of Minister Valeriu Stoica, several journalists, including
Mariana Gavrila (Jurnalul Bihorean), Toma Trifon Nicolae (Drapelul -
Timisoara), Cristian Popa (Ziua de Ardeal), Florin Chima
(Ziua de Ardeal), Dorin Suciu (Adevarul - Tg. Mures), Silviu
Vasilache (Ziua de Galati-Braila), Dan Apostol (Capital), Anca Mihaela
Spanu (Viata Libera - Galati), Simonffy Katalin (TVR Hungarian
language department) and Marius Draghici (Adevarul), presented their
own
experiences with respect to the breaching of the right to free speech.
The Minister of Justice stated that the amendments operated over the
last 4 years on the legislative framework regulating the freedom of
speech were the result of a compromise inside the government
coalition.
Consequently, the amendments were limited to a slight easing of the
sentences for press offences, without, however, considering the issue
of
excluding the same from the Penal Code. The minister also mentioned
the
regulation regarding the implementing of a legal guaranty (a stamp
fee)
of 10% of the amount required in the case of the moral prejudice
requested in civil lawsuits. Valeriu Stoica criticized law not
so much
for the large number of lawsuits filed against journalists (although
cases where magistrates sued journalists, often in coalition against
the
same, are frequent), as he criticized the manner of settlement of the
litigation. The Minister stated that some of the laws sanctions
against journalists were exaggerated and that some of the judges held
their immovability as a shield against incompetence and dishonesty.
Mr. Valeriu Stoica also stated that in some cases freedom of speech
was
a danger for other values and he referred to the articles published in
the Romania Mare and Politica magazines. He also mentioned the
threat represented by the tendency to concentrate property in the
field
of the press, in the absence of an anti-trust law.
The PNL leader Theodor Stolojan underlined one of the issues that the
press deals with during the transition period: the sometimes brutal
involvement of the owner in the editorial policy as a result of the
newspapers financial difficulties. The UFD president Varujan
Vosganian
structured the freedom of speech into the freedom of thinking, freedom
of speaking and freedom of changing and acting, and considered that
the
only flaw of the prosecution departments and the prosecutors offices
failure to react to the signals sent by the press.
2. The appointment of the APPLE Board of Administration and Chairman.
The APPLE management resulted pursuant to the vote of the Association
members present at the meeting is as follows:
Chairman: Mircea Toma
Board of Administration: Alina Bargaoanu Vasiliu
Florin Chima
Laszlo Kallay
Justinian Moga
Executive director (appointed at the first meeting of the Board of
Administration): Liana Ganea
3. Setting of the APPLE strategy for year 2001.
The APPLE members undertook the following for year 2001:
- to continue to militate for the annulment of the law articles
referring to insult and calumny, from the jurisdiction of the Penal
Code;
- to participate in actions of direct informing of the Romanian
magistrates with respect to European jurisprudence and norms, for
purposes of imposing such jurisprudence and norms;
- to support a deontological code of the journalist; such code shall
also be intended to discourage the possible attempts to pass a press
law;
- to request the simplification of the procedures which extend the
press
lawsuits over several years; this is firstly due to the fact that the
long-lasting procedures are often used as a method of harassment of
the
journalist;
- to support the replacement of the truthfulness that the journalist
called before justice must prove with his/her good faith;
- to act for the support of implementing a regulation regarding the
protection of the journalists sources;
- to prevent the tendency to concentrate property in the media;
- to promote the necessity to improve (loosen) the audio-visual Law;
- to support the Romanian journalists who, pursuant their convictions
in
Romania, want to appeal to the European courts; APPLE decided to
become
a source of information for the European Council;
- to prevent any extremism tendency which could represent a threat to
freedom of speech;
- to take stand against any other form of limitation of the right to
free speech.
Media Monitoring Agency
APPLE
Journalists advise people to vote
The Association for the Protection and Promotion of the Freedom of
Expression,
in its General Meeting on December 5, 2000, in Bucharest, found that
the
freedom of speech is seriously threatened by the ascending of
extremism. Implicitly, the citizens right to correct information
is
threatened as well.
The attending journalists believe that all media is partially
responsible for the signaled phenomenon, by the fact that it failed to
duly and consistently focus attention on this political and social
flagellum.
The main party that is guilty of the ascending of the extremism is,
however, the political class, because it failed, over the last 11
years,
to consolidate the state de facto and the economy of the country.
Due
to the fact that the alternative of a new dictatorship is unacceptable
for Romania as it is today, APPLE recommends its citizens to go vote,
and to exercise their vote against extremism.
APPLE General Meeting
APPLE was set up upon the decision of a group of initiative who met in
Sinaia, on January 21 23, 2000. The purpose of the association
is to
protect the journalists professional rights, and specifically of the
freedom of speech, by monitoring the circumstances obstructing the
same.
__________________________________
FreeEx Project was made possible by support from Freedom House under
the
auspices of the Professional Media Program, which is funded by the
U.S.
Agency for International Development. The development of the project
during year 2000 is supported by Foundation for an Open Society
Romania
and the World Bank Resident Mission in Romania.
|
