H. E. Roberto Castelli
Justice Minister
Ministry of Justice
Via Arenula 71
Rome, Italy

Fax: +39 06 6875419

H. E. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi
President
Office of the President
Rome, Italy

Fax: +39 06 46992384

Vienna, 3 March 2004

Your Excellencies,

The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, is seriously concerned about the 18-month sentence without parole and 100,000 Euro fine for criminal defamation handed down to the Italian journalist, Massimiliano Melilli, on 24 February 2004.

Melilli, a journalist for the Venice office of the Italian public broadcaster, RAI, and a contributor to various newspapers, including the national daily, L’Unitá, was sentenced on appeal by a court in Trieste for an article in the local weekly, Il Meridiano di Trieste. The article, published in 1994, reported on alleged “festini a luci rosse” (red-light parties) attended by members of the local high society.

The criminal defamation charge was presented by the wife of the then mayor of Trieste, who felt attacked, despite the fact that the weekly did not mention her name in the article.

IPI would like to remind Your Excellency that its decision to hand down a prison sentence for defamation to a journalist is in breach of Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees everyone’s right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Furthermore, criminal defamation laws are restrictions on freedom of expression that have no place in a democracy. Their existence prevents the media from criticising government actions and contradicts internationally accepted standards.

While noting the ongoing trend in Europe and elsewhere to abolish criminal defamation laws, IPI joins the 26 February appeal of the Italian National Press Federation (Federazione Nazionale della Stampa Italiana – FNSI) to the Italian Parliament to reopen the discussion on the laws currently regulating criminal defamation and payment of fines for damages and to replace such provisions with civil laws that do not seek to punish journalists for practicing their profession.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director