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AHC in
protection of freedom of the press
22.06.2007
In the context of its mission to
protect human rights, in May 2007, AHC sent a
letter to the Assembly of Albania, suggesting
the revision of article 159 of the Penal
Procedure Code, because paragraph 3 of that
article runs counter to the spirit of the
Constitution of Albania, the European Convention
of Human Rights, and the practice of the
European Court of Human Rights, with regard to
the principle of protection of press freedom.
According to article 159, it is permissible for
certain categories, such as lawyers, notaries,
medical doctors, pharmacists, etc., to keep
professional secrets. This category includes
professional journalists. However, in cases when
data is indispensable to prove a criminal
offence and the truthfulness of such data may
only arise through the identification of the
source, the court orders the journalist to
reveal the source of information. In other
words, the source of information may be revealed
even to discover a penal offence that represents
minor social danger.
Protection of
sources of information represents one of the
fundamental principles of freedom of the press,
sanctioned in journalists’ Code of Ethics and in
numerous international documents. Furthermore,
protection of this principle is guaranteed in
article 300 of the Penal Code, which exempts
from the obligatoin to report a committed crime
or a crime being committed to specified bodies
only those persons who are obliged to keep a
known secret due to their duty or profession,
which includes journalists. Without the
existence of such protection, the role of hte
press as a public watchdog in a democratic
society would be weakened.
AHC has
recommended to the Assembly of Albania that the
issue needs to be addressed differently when the
identification of the source has to do with
national security or other crimes that pose a
marked social threat. Even in such cases, this
needs to be weighed by the lawmaker and should
be expressly specified in the law.
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