The International Press Institute ended its 51st Annual Congress held in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Sunday, and adopted a nine point resolution urging the cessation of media suppression through quasi-legal means including Israel and Palestine to stop hindering news coverage and murdering journalists; the UK courts to remove their pressure to disclose news sources; the end to press oppression in Kenya, Nepal and Syria.
The IPI characterized the former as tax probes targeting the media, laws that prohibit deficit management for more than two years, excessive value added tax on newspaper sale, government mandated price increases, limits of ownership within media companies, forcible use of joint printing and distribution, and limiting the use of public broadcasting facilities.
IPI vice-chairman and president of the Chosun Ilbo, Bang Sang-hoon will maintain his position within the organization as long as the newspaper faces government pressure.
The following is the IPI resolution pertaining to government led suppression:
IPI Resolution on Legal and Administrative Harassment
The International Press Institute (IPI), meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, for the IPI World Congress and 51st General Assembly (9-12 May 2002), condemns the use of legal and administrative threats to intimidate and suppress the media.
In a number of countries around the world there are governments prepared to divert the institutions that in a democratic society should underpin the rule of law to permit the free flow of information.
Over the last two years, this type of pressure on the media has increased. For instance:
targeted raids by masked tax police,
civil laws stipulating that companies cannot run deficits for more than two years,
disproportionate value-added-taxes on the sale of newspapers,
government-inspired increases in the price of news print,
government instigated attempts to limit private ownership of independent media,
prohibiting the printing and/or distribution of critical independent mass media, wherever government owned or government controlled printing plants and distribution systems have a monopoly, and
pressures on independent private broadcasters in countries where they are required by law to use the transmission systems of government broadcasting organizations.
Accreditation is another problem for the media with journalists being prevented from reporting by governments, which claim the journalists have failed to meet the demands of overly bureaucratic laws.
Freedom of the media is an essential and fundamental element of any democratic society and governments must do everything possible to ensure that this right is upheld.
Bearing the above in mind, the IPI membership calls on all governments to refrain from suppressing the media through spurious legal and administrative actions.
(From Slovenia Choi Woo, wschoi@chosun.com)
See our list of related articles titled
"Press Under Siege."
