Freedom of expression

Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami will address the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly in Strasbourg on Tuesday. Foreign Minister Joe Borg will also address the Assembly and answer some subtle questions, in his capacity as chairman of the Committee of Ministers. Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer will then update the Assembly about the Council's policy.

Freedom of expression has been defined as the oxygen of democracy. It implies that individuals and media outlets be free to express their ideas freely in accordance with a self-imposed set of ethical and professional parameters, without any fear of being harassed in any way.

This is the subject of a comprehensive, outspoken report prepared by the Assembly's committee on culture, science and education (doc. 9640 revised). Its draft recommendation will be debated by the Assembly on Tuesday.

The report looks at the way freedom of expression is practised by the media in many Council of Europe member states - from Albania to Azerbaijan, Croatia, Italy, Moldova, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Ukraine.

The situation is far from satisfactory, with one or two exceptions. Luxembourg is one of the exceptions. It has recently updated and enacted its law on freedom of expression, after it was examined and okayed by Council of Europe experts. Malta should follow suit.

One of the most appreciable activities of the Council of Europe is its monitoring the media situation in 44 member states. There is a small, if active and dedicated group which does this - with the backing of the Assembly's culture committee. This group should be strengthened.

It should operate on the lines of the well-organised committees on torture and racial discrimination. Members of these two committees pay regular visits to member states and publish reports, which carry a lot of weight. So should the media section, in my view. In an age in which the media are so important, the Council of Europe should rise to the occasion and fill a certain void.

The European Union, which cannot possibly do everything, seems to have taken little interest so far in the freedom of expression issue. Aidan White, secretary-general of the powerful International Federation of Journalists, said so while addressing a conference on "The media in a democratic society" in Luxembourg three months ago.

The draft recommendation now before the Assembly states that serious violations of freedom of expression continue to occur in Europe - ranging from legal harassment (huge fines), imprisonment and even murder of journalists (especially in eastern Europe) to permitting direct government interference in the broadcasting policy, violation of journalists' right to protect their sources of information and concentration of media power in the hands of a few individuals or companies (of a single person in Italy's case).

"The number of journalists attacked or even murdered in Russia is alarming. Violence has also been recorded recently in Armenia, Macedonia, Georgia and Ukraine... It is unacceptable that journalists should be sent to prison for their work, as in the case of Mikola Markevich, Pavel Mazheika and Viktar Ivashkevich in Belarus, and of Grigory Pasko in Russia. Criminal prosecution against journalists continues in Turkey."

Even the more advanced new democracies, now on their way to EU membership, find it difficult to adopt a genuinely independent broadcasting system and to ensure proper balance between government and opposition.

In certain western countries the courts continue to violate the journalists' right not to disclose their sources, and this despite numerous decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

This violation has taken place recently in France, whose press law dates back to 1881 and needs updating. Restrictive provisions are, however, hardly ever applied in France, which is generally considered a model of media freedom, intelligently and daringly applied.

Among other things, the draft recommendation requests the Council of Europe's highest organ to publish the findings of its monitoring exercise on media freedom, and in particular to request member states:

1) to set free all unfairly imprisoned journalists and to abandon the practice of subjecting freedom of expression to criminal prosecution;

2) to revise their media law and in particular their broadcasting legislation;

3) to incorporate the caselaw of the ECHR on media freedom into their domestic legislation and train their judges accordingly; and

4) to ensure the plurality of the media market through appropriate legislation.

Freedom of expression in Malta

Malta is not mentioned in this report, but we know that we do not have a brilliant record of media freedom. Not long ago a journalist had his house gutted by fire. A freelance journalist was denied a high-ranking appointment, which he deserved, because an article he wrote at that time was not liked by the powers-that-be. The constraints of a small country do not enhance freedom of expression.

Full-time journalists have to toe the party's or the publishers' line. Freelance journalists and columnists are slightly more independent, and many of them have recently improved Maltese journalism. My impression is that Maltese TV and radio lag behind the written press.

Hats off to our religious leaders for having issued a clear statement on the EU membership issue. They have made it abundantly clear that it is our precise duty to vote on such an occasion. This implies that no-one has the moral right to tell the people not to vote.

The bishops' statement was an exercise in freedom of expression in its own right. So was the enthusiastic support for European unification expressed by the COMECE bishops' conference in Brussels a couple of months ago. The Jesuits and the Dominicans have opened offices in Brussels to lobby for the ethical side in drafting and interpreting EU legislation. This, too, is freedom of expression.

Arnold Cassola has rightly created a stir internationally for an attempt to deny him the right to vote in the referendum (and political elections). He is a brilliant man who managed to attain the prestigious post of secretary-general of the European Greens. His work required him to reside mainly in Brussels. He has not emigrated from Malta for good. So why should he be deprived of the right to vote in his home country?

On the other hand, the Malta Labour Party, which requested to strike him off the electoral register, has simply applied a particular law enshrined in the Constitution, which denies the right to vote to any Maltese citizen who has not lived in Malta or Gozo for at least six months during the 18 months preceding the publication of the electoral register (September 30 in this case).

The flaw lies in the Constitution. I wonder why Professor J.J. Cremona, who drafted the Constitution single-handedly in 1962-63, thought it fit to include this legal provision. Maybe he can explain (it would be a nice exercise in freedom of information). Surely it has no sense today, when mobility and working abroad are increasingly common.

Our Parliament has already discussed the possibility of doing away with this outdated piece of legislation. The MLP disagreed, with the result that the required two-thirds majority was not attained.

But now that so much bad publicity has been done to Malta, and to the MLP in particular, by the "Cassola case", should not our political parties have second thoughts and repeal the bad law? They would thus show Europe and the world that the Maltese can be as modern and dynamic as any other country, if they want to.

Maltanapoli

The latest issue of this 30-year-old review has been published by Michele Di Gianni, Malta's esteemed honorary consul-general in Naples. It contains cultural contributions on Malta and Naples.

There are articles by Laurence Grech on the Italo-Maltese financial protocol, Carlo Liberto on Joe Sammut's book on Maltese monetary history, Michael Galea on the Jesuit church in Valletta, and Giovanni Mangion on European enlargement.

Free copies may be collected from H. Mifsud and Sons, 19, Sir Luigi Preziosi Street, Floriana, and from the Italian Cultural Institute in Valletta.