Dominican Republic

After a legal battle independent news media and civil society organizations managed to persuade the Chamber of Deputies to refrain from passing a law that would introduce penalties of up to three years’ imprisonment for offending the honor and reputation of the Dominican Republic’s President, its ministers, judges, legislators and other government officials. The Chamber of Deputies’ Justice Committee, which is studying a bill for a new Penal Code, announced at the beginning of March that it would refrain from including the clause that would have authorized the imprisonment of journalists and other citizens accused of the crimes of libel and defamation. However, it said that it would keep other penalties, which include fines equivalent to one to three minimum salaries for libel and four to 10 minimum salaries for defamation. The IAPA had warned that the now cancelled clauses represented a setback for freedom of expression. In late February, a committee made up of the editors of the newspapers Listín Diario, El Caribe and El Día, jointly with the Press and Law Foundation, filed a legal claim with the Constitutional Tribunal, to declare as contrary to the Dominican Constitution and the Inter-American Human Rights Convention six articles of the Penal Code and 11 of Law 6,132 on Expression and Dissemination of Thought, passed in 1962. The objective was repeal of the clauses that contain the penal sanctions of privation of freedom and fines for “press crimes.” In the appeal it was argued that international doctrine and case law show that a system of responsibility based on reply or correction, on fines and award of damages is sufficient to protect the honor of those who claim harm to reputation.