Jul 28, 2017
Training Judges to Guarantee Free Speech in Latin America
It was a hot day, not unlike any other day in August in the city of Chihuahua, México. Enrique Perea Quintanilla was at his office working on the next issue of “Dos caras, una verdad” (Two sides, one truth), a monthly magazine he had created three years before, having spent 30 years as a police reporter for major local newspapers. At 11 a.m. Enrique left the office. It was the last time he was seen alive. That night his car was found. The day after, the police found his body on the side of a local road. He had been shot once in the head, once in the back. It was 2006.
More than 10 years later his case is still unresolved, according to the latest UNESCO´s Director’s General report on “The Safety of Journalists and the Danger of Impunity”, which has monitored the status of the judicial inquiries on the killing of journalists worldwide since 2006. This report shows that less than 10% of the cases are solved, making impunity one of the primary threats to the practice of journalism. “The message is clear”, said Karla Lottini, a Mexican journalist exiled in Canada in a recent article. “Kill a journalist, nothing is going to happen”.
Attacks against journalists are disturbingly on the rise. In 2016, 106 journalists were killed, according to UNESCO, 28 only in Latin America. Barriers to the right of freedom of expression are also increasing. In 2017 in Latin America, for example, a journalist was assaulted by government agents while reporting a protest; a group of foreign correspondents was required to sign a “commitment letter” to be granted entry to governmental buildings while covering an election; a journalist was convicted of defamation and sentenced to prison; a journalist was spied on to identify his sources. The list is long.
To stop this trend, UNESCO launched a pilot Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2014 for the judiciary in Latin America on international standards on freedom of expression in cooperation with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. The objective was to tackle attacks against free speech and impunity on crimes against journalists by training those who impart justice. Later, the office of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression joined the project.
Since then, more than 5,000 judicial personnel have been trained. The course is designed to provide basic knowledge on freedom of expression and access to information issues, applicable international law, precedent, case studies and resources. It also clarifies most common misunderstandings around the role of journalists and the limits to free speech. As one of the trainees said, “I changed the way I see journalistic work, I have realized the profound implication of those crimes for the whole society”.
Now, three years later, it was time to complete the project by creating a toolkit not only for those attending the course, but for any judge, prosecutor and lawyer in Latin America dealing with cases related to freedom of expression and access to information. The Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA) joined and hired me to write it. For nearly twenty years, I have worked on projects promoting free speech. I have also been a journalist. It is clear to me that for us to begin to turn the corner on impunity in the killing of journalists and the right to freedom expression online and off, we must work with the judiciary.
The guide “Estándares internacionales de libertad de expresión: una guía básica para operadores de justicia en América Latina (International standards on freedom of expression: a basic guide for judiciary personnel in Latin America”) deals with these and other related issues. As written in the foreword, it is “an effort to make real something that may have seemed impossible”, which is to summarize 70 years of jurisprudence in less than 40 pages with the aim of making this vast volume of knowledge easily accessible.
Silvia Chocarro Marcesse is a journalist and a consultant on issues related to freedom of expression and media development for international organizations and NGOs. She has recently been resident fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society and she is currently Global Advocacy Strategist for IFEX, providing strategic advice to the international network of more than 100 NGOs defending free speech worldwide. Besides, she has collaborated with the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), editing a toolkit on international standards on freedom of expression and access to information. From 2013 to 2017 she was the US Correspondent for the Spanish service of Radio France Internationale.
