You're reading: Lawmakers say they will back off libel law

Threatened with a Stalinist libel law that a majority of the nation’s 450 lawmakers voted to support, many of Ukraine’s leading media outlets united in a series of protests that forced its author to back off – at least for now.

The new law, which passed the first reading on Sept. 18, would criminalize libel and defamation. Steep fines and jail terms of up to five years would be introduced for those who “deliberately spread libel.”

The law would leave it up to a judge to determine whether an accused person or news organization has deliberately broadcast or published knowingly false information about a person, constituting slander or libel. Moreover, the offending journalist could be banned from the profession for up to three years after the prison sentence.

The law would affect all citizens, but the measures proposed against journalists are the most severe.

The author of the draft law, Vitaliy Zhuravsky, a member of the ruling pro-presidential Party of Regions, initially defended his law, saying that “every Ukrainian has to receive effective protection for their honor and dignity.” But faced with pressure from dozens of media outlets, as well as President Viktor Yanukovych and his fellow party colleagues, Zhuravsky called off his draft from parliament late on Sept. 25.

However, because the draft law passed the first reading on Sept. 18, the procedure for calling it off is no longer simple. Zhuravsky is required to register a new draft resolution to rescind the law given initial approval. The resolution needs to win a majority of votes in parliament to annul the first reading of the libel law.

Representatives of the parliamentary minority said that the libel law is expected to be repealed next week. However, by the time Kyiv Post went to print, a vote had not been scheduled on the Verkhovna Rada’s agenda. The parliamentary majority supported the law in the first reading with 244 votes, with the most votes coming from the pro-presidential Party of Regions, the Communist Party and members of Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s bloc.

Lyudmyla Pankratova, a media lawyer with the Regional Press Development Institute, says the law will have very serious consequences for Ukraine. “It’s a direct way to self-censorship,” she said. “Because it can destroy careers and lives of any person, and particularly a journalist.

A person convicted for libel will lose the right to go back to their job, will have trouble getting visas or running for elections, and will have little chances to get employed, among other things.”

Moreover, the fines for libel will start from Hr 8,000 ($1,000) if this law takes effect, and will be used along with the moral damage compensation, which are often awarded now. These compensations hover around Hr 3,000, the lawyer said.

The other danger is that law enforcers will get the right to decide whether information in the media was libelous, based on any document such as a court ruling. The court could rule information as libelous if, for instance, an act of alleged corruption exposed by a journalist was never officially punished, Pankratova fears.

The biggest danger, of course, is to society if journalists and others stop investigating wrongdoing in government or business.

Predictably, the law angered many journalists, editors and media owners, who designed a series of protests that kicked off on Sept. 25. Dozens of media outlets, including the Kyiv Post, Ukrainska Pravda,Korrespondent, Segodnya.ua, LigaBusinessInform, UkraNews and Telekritika  put up a huge black banner on their websites to alert their audience to the threat of libel and to highlight those deputies who supported the move in parliament. “Call their office, write them an email and ask why they did it,” the banner said.

Also, about a dozen weeklies, dailies and magazines have come out with blank or protest-themed covers between Wednesday and Friday, including Korrespondent magazine, Vlast Deneg business magazine and many major newspapers in Lviv, as well as other regions. A protest rally is also planned on Oct. 1 on 18/2 Hrushevskoho St., in front of a parliamentary committee building.

The protests began at an awkward time for Yanukovych, who traveled to New York this week to take part in the United Nations General Assembly. He told Ukrainian journalists traveling with him that it was “no accident” that Zhuravsky called off his controversial draft.

“Zhuravsky did not take the decision to call it off by accident,” Yanukovych said. “He heard my point of view, the point of view of his fellow party members. These kinds of decisions cannot be taken hastily.”

Yanukovych said the author wants to correct his own mistake, which would cost the nation’s leaders much in the way of their already tattered reputation internationally and at home.

“If we tell [the world] that we are creating for the journalists, for the media, all [the right] conditions while we do the opposite – nobody will understand us,” Yanukovych’s press service quoted him as saying.

But there are plenty of signs that even if the law is halted now, the issue will arise again after the Oct.28 parliamentary election.

This is the third attempt by lawmakers to criminalize libel since 2008.  A number of pro-presidential deputies, including Zhuravsky himself, said they are determined to do so.

“I have decided today to take this issue off in the legal sense, but not in the political sense. I stand by my political positions and convictions: for a long time there has been a need in society to increase responsibility for infringement on the honor and dignity of every person, not just a politician,” Zhuravsky said in a statement on the Party of Regions website on Sept. 25.

Many democracies have laws against libel, but they are considered civil and not criminal infractions. A high standard is set for a public figure claiming libel. In America, for instance, public figures must prove that a journalist acted with malice in deliberating spreading information known to be false about a person. If that standard is met in a civil lawsuit, the punishment is not imprisonment, but rather modest monetary damages and/or public retractions and apologies.

In Ukraine, libel lawsuits have been infrequent and adverse judgments have been punished by relatively small fines or public retractions.

Article 19, a London-based free-speech watchdog, says the criminalization of libel is still prevalent in many nations and has a chilling effect on freedom of speech and press.

The group has an online map of the world here: http://www.article19.org/defamation/map.html?dataSet=defamation_legislation_2012

In Ukraine, criminal defamation provisions were removed when a new criminal code came into force in 2001, according to Article 19. The group said that Article 125 of the previous code prescribed imprisonment of up to three years for defamation.

Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]