"Adil soz" on the protection of honor and dignity

On May 22, the International Foundation for the Protection of Freedom of Speech “Adil soz” held a press conference to draw the attention of the journalistic community to the draft regulatory resolution of the Supreme Court “On the application in judicial practice of legislation on the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation".

The international news agency KazTAG reported:

“We keep statistics of various claims against journalists and what we have found out is that the most frequent law articles used in such claims are the article about protecting honor and dignity, and the article about protecting business reputation. The regulatory resolution adopted in 1992 needs to be replaced with new one. We have long proposed to the Supreme Court various editions of such regulatory resolution but it drafted the resolution  on its own. The project is posted on the website of the Supreme Court. We were astonishedat it. Our lawyers studied it carefully from the point of view of the common sense and international standards, made their proposals and sent them to the Supreme Court. There are things that require the expression of public opinion, first of all, the journalistic community, ” said Tamara Kaleyeva, president of the Adil Soz Foundation, on Wednesday.

In her turn, the head of the legal department of the foundation, Tamara Simakhina, explained that the very notion of “business reputation” requires clarification.

“The first thing to be done is a clarification of what business reputation is. Claims for protection of business reputation are filed by government agencies and civil servants. In our practice we had lawsuits from judges as well. We believe that only business enterprises and individual entrepreneurs can have business reputation, because their activities are aimed at making profit, this is how the international laws interpret the notion of  business reputation, ” - she explained.

According to Simakhina, the proposals of the “Adil Soz” Foundation  concern the requirements for the defendant to prove the accuracy of the information disseminated. The Foundation believes  that the claimant should prove the inaccuracy of the information and the fact of moral sufferning or damage to goodwill.

Besides the draft regulatory resolution obliges defendant to bring official apologies.

“Article 143 of the Civil Code states clearly only for two ways to restore a damaged goodwill - publication of a refutation or publication of answer free of charge. The Supreme Court does not have the right to develop the new ways, it can only use the ones stipulated by the law, ” - she noted.

According to Kaleyeva, the deadline for discussing the draft resolution was extended till the end of 2019. “We had experience of cooperation with the Supreme Court and, as a rule, they take competent comments very seriously and take them into consideration. Now international organizations, such as OSCE are interested, there will certainly be some recommendations from international organizations, so I think there is a very real chance that the Supreme Court will heed the proposed changes, ”she added.

The complete text of the draft regulatory resolution and Adil soz proposals are availble in Russian HERE.