{"id":5978,"date":"2013-09-09T11:15:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T11:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soros.kz\/punishment_for_defamation\/"},"modified":"2018-02-21T16:48:27","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T10:48:27","slug":"punishment_for_defamation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/punishment_for_defamation\/","title":{"rendered":"No Criminal Punishment For Defamation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ASTANA, Sept. 9, 2013<\/b>\u00a0\u2013 Civil society calls legislators to decriminalize defamation. Adil Soz Foundation in partnership with Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan, the OSCE Center in Astana and the Netherlands Embassy facilitated a round table \u201cInternational Standards To Press Freedom\u201d to raise public interest to this pressing issue.<\/p>\n

In 2011, President Nursultan Nazarbayev in\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0Opinions Page<\/i>\u00a0wrote<\/a>, Kazakhstan will \u201cmake defamation a civil rather than a criminal offence,\u201d following its pursuit to build a stronger democracy. Two years after, with the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences being under revision, defamation is still treated as a crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn April 2011, Kazakhstan adopted\u00a0administrative praejudicium (prior judgment)<\/i>, which imposes criminal liability only on those, who have re-committed an offense within a year while serving the first administrative punishment. In that respect, Kazakhstan has followed an example of Belarus while other five CIS countries, including Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine, fully decriminalized defamation,\u201d said in an opening speech\u00a0Anton Artemyev, Executive Director of Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan<\/b>.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Tamara Kaleyeva, President of Adil Soz Foundation<\/b>, in Kazakhstan,\u00a0administrative<\/i>\u00a0praejudicium<\/i>\u00a0for defamation cases is futile because subsequent amendments have not been introduced to the Code of Administrative Offences. \u201cEven if the procedures were fulfilled,\u00a0administrative<\/i>\u00a0praejudicium<\/i>\u00a0per se does not concretely resolve the issue. In democratic societies, a repeated act of defamation or insult is subject to a stricter administrative punishment, which must not be substituted by criminal liability as Kazakhstani legislature currently suggests.\u201d<\/p>\n

Any restrictions to freedom of expression or information must be legitimized by law. However, defamation laws must neither stifle public discussions, nor seizure critical voices. Adopting a separate norm, stipulating the public interest, will offer Kazakh journalists greater freedom to report with loyalty to citizens without stepping on a venture of devastating lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the statue of limitations for defamation cases needs to be decreased from the existing three to one year after the publication date. It is also essential to establish a statue of limitations for civil cases that concern the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Artemyev<\/b>, a state fee to file a civil lawsuit must be reasonably increased. \u201cA fee of 865 tenge (about US$6) is disproportionately small, compared to the excessive multi-million amounts being claimed in moral damages.\u201d<\/p>\n

For information:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2012, Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan and Open Society Foundation’s London Media Program supported Adil Soz Foundation’s project “Liberalization of Media Legislature A Coalition\u00a0Article 20<\/i>,” aims to introduce changes to national legislature in compliance with the international standards for press freedom and freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

Borrowing its name from the Constitutional amendment on freedom of the press, the Coalition\u00a0Article 20<\/i>\u00a0unites 12 human rights organizations, including the leading national civil society activists, such as Adil Soz Foundation, International Center for Journalism\u00a0MediaNet<\/i>, Center for Supporting Journalists\u00a0Minber<\/i>, North-Kazakhstan Legal Media Center, National Association of Broadcasters of Kazakhstan, Internews Kazakhstan, Kazakhstani International Bureau for Human Rights and Lawenforcement, etc.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[77],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soros.kz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}