Ljiljana Smiljanic, a member of the Board of Directors of the Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Journalists Association, spoke in an interview about whether the announced changes to the law protect or restrict freedom of speech and whether the media community can change the course of the rulers in the Republika Srpska (RS) through announced protests.
Since November, the media community has been warning about how bad this legal solution is, reminds Smiljanic – but the government does not want to hear anything. Protection against defamation already exists in our laws, she notes, and there is no need to insert it into the criminal code.
“We see this move by the Government of the RS as an intention to limit the media that it does not control and has no influence on,” claims Smiljanic.
The Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code of the RS, in relation to the original proposal, underwent certain changes – regarding the price of fines, explains Smiljanic: “The draft stipulated for all these criminal acts against reputation and honor that the fines range from 5.000 to 120.000, which was terrible to hear. Now it has been reduced, but that is only part of the problem because in our country criminal proceedings last up to five years – it may be prohibited to leave the place of residence, and there can be an impossibility of obtaining documents for work if the application requires a certificate of non-conduct of criminal proceedings…”
“In the European Union (EU) countries where defamation is criminalized, you hire a lawyer – the prosecution, that is, the state does not stand behind the procedure, as would be the case here if the changes are adopted,” Smiljanic explains.
She added that media workers in Europe and the non-governmental sector thought that the law would be copied from EU countries where defamation is criminalized and that there is nothing controversial because this option is almost never used, but instead, a civil lawsuit is filed.
“In these countries, there is a campaign to decriminalize defamation. This means that something we have is more advanced than in the EU countries – and yet we want to go back 20 years in the past,” warned Smiljanic.
E.Dz.
