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Amend rules to protect scribes, says IPI

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV.11. Expressing concern over the Tamil Nadu Assembly's decision to sentence senior journalists of The Hindu and Murasoli, the International Press Institute, the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, has urged the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to condemn the attempt to ``stifle the media's right to report freely in accordance with Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Indian Constitution''.

In a letter to Mr. Vajpayee, Johann P. Fritz, director of the Vienna-based organisation, said the Supreme Court had only stayed the arrest warrants and urged him to ensure that the charges against the journalists were dropped and the decision to suspend their passes for reporting the Assembly proceedings withdrawn immediately. The Institute also wanted the Centre and the States to amend their rules to ensure that journalists could not be arrested or imprisoned for allegedly impugning an Assembly or its members, as such rules were in effect ``insult laws'', which had been condemned and scrapped in many nations. Journalists attempting to report on the daily work of an Assembly should not have to face arrest and imprisonment merely because the Assembly disliked the tone of their articles or editorials, it said.

``Aside from the point that an amorphous political entity such as an Assembly should not be entitled to a legal personality that can be impugned, the IPI feels that the civil courts are the right and proper forum for disputes arising from defamation of characters.''

The IPI also sought to ``remind'' the Tamil Nadu Assembly that journalists had a right to report freely without fear of Government intimidation or harassment.

The actions of both Assembly and its Speaker had jeopardised this internationally accepted principle and risked damaging India's reputation as a whole, the statement added.

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