Centre for Law and Democracy

On 15 July 2012, Mam Sonando, a prominent Cambodian broadcaster, was arrested and charged with attempting to form a secession movement in the province of Kratie. The charges were wholly without merit, and the arrest was announced the day after Mr. Sonando appeared at the International Criminal Court for a presentation by the Khmer People Power Movement to the Office of the Prosecutor on alleged crimes against humanity by the Cambodian government. As a result of the timing of the arrest, the lack of evidence against Mr. Sonando, and the fact that Mr. Sonando had been arrested twice before on spurious charges after publicly criticising the Cambodian government, many in the international community believed that Mr. Sonando was arrested for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

At that time CLD, along with Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and the International Federation of Journalists, wrote a letter to Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen protesting the arrest. On October 1, Mr. Sonando was convicted of the charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Cambodian authorities have still not presented any evidence justifying Mr. Sonando’s detention, nor have they given due consideration to his advanced age (he is 70 years old) or his ill health in their treatment of him.

CLD, along with the International Federation of Journalists, have now drafted another letter calling for Mr. Sonando’s immediate release, and calling on the Cambodian government to respects its international human rights obligations.

Click here to read the Open Letter

Egypt is in the midst of a vitally important phase in its democratic transition, and a vibrant debate is ongoing over the nature of its constitutional protections for human rights. In order to provide support to this discussion, the Centre for Law and Democracy today released a set of Comments, in English and in Arabic, on the Freedom of Expression and Information Clauses in the Draft Constitution for Egypt.

Click here for the Comments
Click here to read the Comments in Arabic

“The fact that Egypt is having a democratic debate about the content of its new constitution is an extremely positive sign of the profound changes that have taken place,” said CLD Executive Director Toby Mendel. “At the same time, the specific proposals on freedom of expression and access to information, while an improvement over the 1971 Constitution, need to be amended to bring them more fully into line with international standards.”

Specific areas for improvement indentified in the Comments include:
• Stronger positive guarantees for freedom of expression, which also protect the rights to seek and receive information and ideas.
• The need for the Constitution to set clear limits on the scope of permissible restrictions on freedom of expression, rather than leaving this important question open.
• The need to guarantee the independence of both bodies with regulatory powers over the media and the public media.
• Defamation should be fully decriminalised.
• There should be clear and unambiguous protection for the right to information.
• The right to engage in criticism of religion without inciting hatred against the believers of that religion should be protected.

The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) is celebrating the 10th anniversary of International Right to Know Day by launching two comparative publications and by hosting a debate on the right to know. “Incredible progress has been made on the right to information in the last the years,” said CLD Executive Director Toby Mendel. “But far more needs to be done. Implementation languishes in many countries and much remains to be done in terms of pushing information out to citizens. Our Right to Know Day work reflects both of these recurring themes.”

Study on Better Practices by election commissions
CLD is today launching a study on better practice approaches to the provision of information by bodies which oversee elections (election commissions). The study provides a comparative view of how election commissions perform in seven key areas – including voter education, informing the electorate about parties and candidates, being open themselves and the controversial issue of releasing election resuts – along with recommendations for better practice.

Click here to read the Election Commissions Study (in English) (in Bahasa Indonesian)

Study on Canadian Jurisdictions
The RTI Rating is an objective and scientific tool for assessing the quality of legal frameworks for the right to information. CLD has rated the legal frameworks for information in all 14 Canadian jurisdictions (federal, provincal and territorial). All 14 jurisdictions fall seriously short in terms of protecting the right to information, with the federal system rating 55th globally when compared to other countries. It is time for Canadians to stand up and protest against this miserable performance.

Click here to see the Canadian Rating and accompanying Analysis

Debate on the Status of the Right to Know
To mark Right to Know Day, CLD is hosting a debate on the status of the right to know in Canada and globally. Join the conversation by sending comments to @law_democracy on Twitter or debate@law-democracy.org, or follow us on #righttoknow or Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Law-and-Democracy/164303533623512. Those in Halifax can join us at the Hub, 1673 Barrington Street.

FOIAnet’s 10-10-10 Statement
CLD would like to thank the Freedom of Information Advocates Network (FOIAnet) for its tremendous work over the last ten years, and for serving as a centre of support and motivation for groups working on the right to information. FOIAnet’s 10-10-10 Statement on its achievements over the last ten years, the challenges that it faces and its priority goals for the next ten years encapsulates the work of the organisation.

Click here to read the Statement

The Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) and International Media Support (IMS) today released an Analysis of the guarantees for freedom of expression in the 2008 Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. Although the 2008 Constitution represented an important step forward in terms of democracy and human rights, the Analysis highlights shortcomings in terms of both the positive guarantees for freedom of expression and the relatively wide latitude it allows for restricting that right.

Click here to read the Analysis

“Myanmar has made a strong commitment to reforming its law and practice on freedom of expression and other foundational rights for democracy,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy. “Part of that should include bringing the Constitution more fully into line with international standards, along the lines recommended in our Analysis.”

The CLD/IMS Analysis makes a number of recommendations to strengthen the Constitutional guarantees, including the following:
➢ The right to freedom of expression should apply to everyone, to all information and ideas, and regardless of frontiers.
➢ It should include not only the right to impart, but also the rights to seek and receive information and ideas.
➢ “Community peace and tranquillity” should not be included as grounds for restricting freedom of expression.
➢ Restrictions on freedom of expression should only be allowed where they are necessary to protect one of the interests listed in the Constitution.

“Myanmar has taken significant steps in the past year towards greater media freedom and freedom of expression for its citizens. A major challenge now is to ensure that repressive media laws are replaced and constitutional guarantees for freedom of expression are improved,” said Jesper Højberg, Executive Director of International Media Support (IMS).

We urge the Myanmar authorities to hold discussions with local stakeholders with a view to improving the constitutional guarantees for freedom of expression.

On 23 August 2012, Egypt’s newly elected President, Mohamed Morsi, passed his very first decree after having wrested back legislative powers from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) earlier that month. The decree cancelled the possibility of pre-trial detention for journalists charged with insulting the president, leading to the release of Islam Afifi, editor-in-chief of Al-Dustour newspaper. This is a positive measure, which has earned the President kudos. The laws on defamation, however, are in need of far more profound reform if they are to be brought into line with international standards. A Statement on the issue released today by the Centre for Law and Democracy describes the wider needs and offers recommendations for reform.

Click here to read the Statement

“We welcome President Morsi’s decree and the signal it sends that the Government of Egypt wishes to respect freedom of expression,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy. “But it remains a largely symbolic measure, unless concerted measures are taken to reform the whole area of criminal defamation law in Egypt.”

The CLD Statement makes a number of recommendations for reform, including the following:
➢ The criminal charges against Afifi and others charged with insulting the President should be dropped immediately.
➢ The whole criminal defamation regime should be repealed and replaced with appropriate civil defamation rules. The criminal rules against publishing false news should also be repealed.
➢ The system of pre-trial sanctions should be limited to highly exceptional cases where such measures are fully justified in all of the circumstances.
➢ The rules on the Journalist Syndicate, which effectively create a two-tier status among journalists, should be reviewed in consultation with stakeholders to come up with a more democratic approach.

The Government of Myanmar is preparing a press law which is supposed to significantly democratise regulation of the print media, an important part of its overall plans to become a democracy. In order to help ensure that the law promotes press freedom, the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD), working with the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), has published a report, Myanmar: Guidance for Journalists on Promoting an Empowering Press Law. The report aims to help local groups to assess whether the draft press law, once it is published, is empowering or restrictive. It is written in a simple style so as to be accessible to those who are neither lawyers nor media freedom experts.

Click here to read the Report in English
Click here to read the Report in Burmese

“The Government of Myanmar has made a strong commitment to reform the current, highly repressive, system of print media regulation,” said Toby Mendel, Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy. “It is important that local groups are able to critique the draft Press Law when it is published; this report will help them participate in the process.”

The report has been distributed in English and Burmese inside Myanmar, including at a recent workshop for journalists hosted by International Media Support (IMS), for which CLD provided expertise. There is massive interest inside Myanmar, especially among journalists, about what the draft press law will say. Local observers believe the law may be presented to parliament in the next few weeks, at which time it will be made public.

Centre for Law and Democracy, along with Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada and the International Federation of Journalists – Asia Pacific, have drafted an open letter to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen to protest the detention of Mam Sonando, an independent broadcaster and prominent critic of Cambodia’s government.
Continue reading →