Brazil

WHEREAS the executive branch sent to Congress a bill to amend Laws 4.878 of March 12, 1965; 8.112 of November 12, 1990 and Decree Law 2.848 of the Penal Code of July 12, 1949, and that these amendments, in addition to imposing administrative and criminal sanctions to cases of monitoring communications without court authorization or for reasons not authorized by the law, also make it a crime for the press or their sources to disseminate information they receive WHEREAS under these amendments, a judge could fine and sentence to two to four years in prison a journalist or a source in a flagrant violation of the Constitution WHEREAS the proposed amendments could become tools to restrain and restrict the free practice of journalism, a frontal attack to citizens’ right to be freely informed and a direct threat to press freedom WHEREAS when Brazil signed the Declaration of Chapultepec (in August of 1996 by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and in May of 2006 by President Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva) it committed itself to observe and guarantee its principles WHEREAS President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva constantly reaffirms his belief in the clues of a free press, without which he could not have carried out his political program and arrived where he is WHEREAS Principle 1 of the Declaration of Chapultepec says, “No people or society can be free without freedom of expression and of the press. The exercise of this freedom is not something authorities grant, it is an inalienable right of the people. THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE IAPA RESOLVES to ask President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to withdraw from the abovementioned bill the provisions that would allow surveillance of private communications of journalists, their vehicles and their sources without a court order for information that they receive.