Strasbourg, 14/04/2016 (Agence Europe) - In a recommendation adopted on Wednesday 13 April, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CoE) defined a series of guidelines to ensure the safety of journalists and other media players in the 47 member countries.
The text calls upon these states to re-examine their national laws and practices to verify that these comply with the European Convention on Human Rights and, if necessary, to change them.
More directly, article 10 of the said Convention is concerned. This article, which deals with the freedom of expression, is confirmed by the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). It involves a series of obligations “which must be fulfilled by the executive, legislative and judiciary powers, within government and by all other State authorities, including the services responsible for maintaining public order and national security, at all levels”.
Observing that journalists “increasingly come under threat, are the victims of harassment and intimidation,are placed under surveillance, arbitrarily deprived of their freedom, physically attacked, tortured and in some cases even killed due to their investigative work, their opinions and their reports, particularly when their work covers abuses of power, corruption, violations of human rights, criminal activities, terrorism and fundamentalism”, the Council of Ministers calls for “large-scale” measures to protect journalists and other “media players” in the digital age and to put an end to impunity for the abuses of power committed against them.
Ultimately, it is a matter of “securing the independence of the media and protecting pluralism” by safeguarding the “independence and permanence of public-service media and the community media”, of making sure that they feed into the public debate, ensuring the protection of data, confidentiality and security of communications and “protecting journalists' sources and whistleblowers”.
The Council of Ministers also made a number of recommendations to ensure that the legislation on defamation of character does not end up having a deterrent effect on the freedom of expression. This legislation must provide guarantees for the freedom of expression, including, in elements of defence such as “the defence of justification (the proof of the truth of an allegation: Ed), general interest or fair comment”.
Arbitrary arrests and mistreatment were of course condemned and the Council of Ministers therefore calls upon the member states to develop “training protocols and programmes for all services responsible for honouring their obligations on the protection of journalists”. These must be “fully aware of the State's obligations under international human rights law and humanitarian law”, the text adds.
In terms of physical protection, the recommendation stresses that as soon as there is a direct threat, the states should take preventative measures, such as police protection or voluntary evacuation to a safe place. Measures such as the creation of a telephone hotline or emergency points of contact to which journalists would have access are also recommended.
And when attacks, or even murders, take place, it is absolutely vital that investigations rule out all possibility of impunity for those responsible, the Council of Ministers stresses, adding that these investigations must be exhaustive, prompt and subject to public control. Stiffer sentences for state officials obstructing these investigations are also called for.
It is worth noting that when this recommendation was adopted, the Permanent Representative of the Federation of Russia said that his government reserved “the right to decide whether or not to comply with this text as it refers to other media players”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)