(WPFC/IFEX) – The following is a 20 October 2005 WPFC letter to Panamanian President Martín Torrijos Espino: His Excellency Martín Torrijos Espino President of the Republic of Panama Presidential Palace Panama City, Panama cc: Honorable Representative Elías Ariel Castillo, Speaker of the National Assembly Honorable Héctor Alemán, Minister of Government and Justice Your Excellency: On […]
(WPFC/IFEX) – The following is a 20 October 2005 WPFC letter to Panamanian President Martín Torrijos Espino:
His Excellency Martín Torrijos Espino
President of the Republic of Panama
Presidential Palace
Panama City, Panama
cc:
Honorable Representative Elías Ariel Castillo, Speaker of the National Assembly
Honorable Héctor Alemán, Minister of Government and Justice
Your Excellency:
On behalf of the World Press Freedom Committee (http://www.wpfc.org), an organization comprising 45 press freedom groups from throughout the world, I wish to again urge you and the National Assembly to take the final steps in order to completely eliminate the crime of insult in Panama.
Under your leadership, Panama has taken exemplary steps toward the liberalization of your country’s press laws, especially your enactment of Law 22, which bans the imposition of sanctions based on the crime of insult. Such an initiative was brought about by the elimination of Article 33 of the Constitution as part of the constitutional reforms completed in November 2004. Up until then, Panama was the only Western Hemisphere country with an insult article in its constitution.
The new law states the following: “No public official with rank and jurisdiction shall impose any fines on or dictate prison sentences for those who are deemed to have treated them with disrespect or have insulted them while fulfilling their official duties.”
Panamanian legislation, however, still contains two insult laws and their elimination would be the last step in the eradication of these obsolete statues in your country. I am talking about articles 307 and 308 of the Criminal Code. The former states as follows: “Those who offend or affront the President of the Republic or the acting President shall be sentenced to six to ten months in prison and fined 20 to 50 days’ worth of income.” And the latter declares the following: “Those who publicly insult any of the State agencies shall be sentenced to six to 12 months in prison and fined 50 to 100 days’ worth of income”.
Insult laws are holdovers from colonial or autocratic eras, whose origins date back to the Roman Empire, which created them in order to shield the emperor from criticism from the rest of the public.
These laws constitute a challenge to the Inter-American justice system, which, through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, has declared insult laws “contradictory” to Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, to which Panama is a signatory.
Their elimination would allow your country to join a handful of Latin American nations that have already done away with them. Those are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Paraguay and Peru.
The National Assembly has a magnificent opportunity to either eliminate or reform these laws during the upcoming legislative debates, and several representatives have expressed their intentions to introduce such reforms. I urge you to continue showing leadership to democratize the laws that directly affect the workings of a free and independent press by insisting in the total elimination of the crime of insult in Panama.
Respectfully,
E. Markham Bench
Executive Director
World Press Freedom Committee
