New York, February 12, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today
called on the Costa Rican legislature to remove criminal defamation
provisions from its penal code after a recent Supreme Court decision
eliminated prison terms from its 1902 Printing Press Law.

Under Costa
Rica’s Penal Code, anyone who libels,
slanders, defames, or reproduces offensive statements against someone, even
public officials, can be fined or placed on an official list of convicted
criminals, but not imprisoned,

“We consider the Supreme Court’s decision an important step
forward toward what we hope will be the total elimination of criminal
defamation in Costa Rica,”
said Carlos Lauría, CPJ senior program coordinator for the Americas. “We
now urge Costa Rica’s
legislative assembly to eliminate defamation provisions from its Penal Code.”

Laws that criminalize speech are incompatible with the
rights established under Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights,
which Costa Rica has
ratified. As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated in 1994:
“Considering the consequences of criminal sanctions and the inevitable chilling
effect they have on freedom of expression, criminalization of speech can only
apply in those exceptional circumstances when there is an obvious and direct
threat of lawless violence.”