H.E. Colin Powell
US Secretary of State
US Department of State
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC 20520
USA

Fax: +1 202 261 85 77

H.E. Tom Ridge
Secretary of Homeland Security
US Department of Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20528
USA

Vienna, 4 December 2003

Your Excellencies,

The enclosed case of the detention of an Austrian journalist at Los Angeles Airport on 2-3 December highlights the need for a fundamental change in U.S. visa regulations for journalists.

IPI, the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, fully supports the recent resolution by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), which appealed to the U.S. Congress to include journalists in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program for Visitors from Friendly Countries. IPI shares ASNE’s concern over the detention and expulsion of foreign journalists from the United States in recent months.

At present, foreign working journalists are excluded from the U.S. Visa Waiver Program under which visitors from 27 friendly countries can enter the United States for business or pleasure without a visa if they intend to stay for less than 90 days. Working journalists have been excluded from the Visa Waiver Program historically because they could obtain long-term visas with ease and because customs officials routinely waived them in without long-term visas.

However, in recent months numerous foreign journalists have been seized at U.S. borders, refused entry and deported forcibly to their home countries because they did not have long-term visas. Requiring visas for professional journalists who plan to enter the United States to cover news or stories damages the image of the United States as a free and open society, Moreover, such insensitive behaviour does nothing to enhance border security and encourages other nations to make conditions more difficult for American journalists travelling abroad.

You must be aware of the fact that in many cases journalists detained by the U.S. immigration authorities were treated like criminals; some were even handcuffed, prevented from making telephone calls which might help to clarify the situation or their identities and often the diplomatic representatives of their respective countries were not informed of their detention (as is required by international diplomatic rules).

We urgently appeal to you to issue guidelines about the treatment of journalists who forget to apply for a visa or who were unaware that visas were required.

Furthermore, we ask you to make these new requirements for journalists known as widely as possible among journalists’ and publishers’ associations so that these embarrassing incidents can be avoided in the future.

We would also like to remind you that the greatest success for American foreign policy in terms of press freedom was the Helsinki Act of 1975. This document, as well as other international agreements, says:

• States should increase the opportunities for journalists to communicate personally with their sources, including organisations and official institutions.

However, if visas are required, States should:

• examine in a favourable spirit and within a suitable and reasonable time scale requests from journalists for visas;
• ensure that requests by journalists receive, in so far as possible, an expeditious response, taking into account the time scale of the request;
• reaffirm that the legitimate pursuit of their professional activity will neither render journalists liable to expulsion nor otherwise penalise them.”

In addition, we note with regret that the current rule for visas is worded in a highly discriminatory fashion, since it associates journalists with criminals. According to these rules:

“You must apply for a United States visa if you … Are a professional journalist planning to cover news or informational stories; Have been denied entry on a previous occasion or have been expelled from the USA during the last five years; Have a criminal record or suffer from a serious transmittable disease or mental disorder; Are a drug addict, drug trafficker, or were involved in Nazi persecutions, and if you were or still are a member of a subversive or terrorist organization (source: Non-Immigrant Visa Section, www.usembassy.at).

We would remind you that journalists from a foreign country planning to cover news or stories are not seeking employment in the United States; they practice their profession in the interest of democracy and the free flow of information.

Furthermore, the very nature of the journalistic profession is such that journalists attending the United States on a tourist visa may well be confronted with a newsworthy event. Under such circumstances, the ethical code of a journalist means that he must act, he must cover the news or report the story. Given the current requirements of the United States, this could mean the journalist is penalised for merely practising his profession.

As an organisation which, since its foundation in 1950 in New York, stands for the defence and promotion of press freedom, for the free flow of information and for the enhancement of quality standards in journalism, we deeply regret this development in the United States. As a result, IPI has been deprived of a shining example of democracy to which we have often referred when presenting our aims and goals in undemocratic countries.

We thank you for your attention.

Yours sincerely,

Johann P. Fritz
Director

Peter Krobath was travelling to the United States at the invitation of the Hollywood motion picture company DreamWorks Pictures to participate in a junket (i.e. a media presentation) of the movie “Paycheck”, which will be released in Austria on 23 January 2004 by UIP (United International Pictures), a worldwide distributor of DreamWorks Pictures, among others.

When Mr. Krobath landed at Los Angeles Airport (LAX) on 2 December 2003 to cover the above-mentioned junket, he was questioned about the purpose of his visit and further interrogated for almost five hours. After he was body-searched, and his photograph and fingerprints were taken, two security officers led him handcuffed to an isolation room. Later on he was transferred to a downtown prison where he spent the night together with about 45 persons (some of whom were convicted criminals) in a room with iron benches and two open toilet facilities but without blankets despite the low temperature. His luggage and his personal belongings were kept separately.

His crime? He wanted to interview a few Hollywood actors about the new movie but did not have a journalist visa. He showed proof of the junket invitation issued by the Hollywood company and UIP Vienna as well as his return ticket, booked for Thursday, 4 December. That, however, was of no importance to the authorities.

At first, he was only allowed one telephone call, which he made to his contact person in Hollywood, Elisabeth Sereda, a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. She informed the Austrian Consulate General, which was of great help in establishing official contacts. After Krobath’s night in prison the Austrian consulate informed him that he would be transferred to the airport that afternoon and he was finally able to leave Los Angeles aboard a Lufthansa airplane, which departed on 3 December 2003, at 17.30.

IPI’s investigation resulted in the discovery that the U.S. requires all foreign journalists to have a special visa in their passports if they are planning to cover news or stories in the United States. This rule was never really enforced until now but as a result of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the U.S. immigration bureaucracy is obviously interpreting these regulations to the letter. Apparently, none of the embassies and consulates were told about this, so they were unable to inform anyone in their respective country about the changes.

Mr. Krobath last visited Los Angeles upon invitation by the UIP motion picture distributing company, from 18-23 March 2001 for a junket and interviews regarding the movie “Bridget Jones”. Furthermore, he was in New York from 30-31 October 2002 doing interviews for the movie “The Missing” (Columbia Tristar). The immigration authorities must obviously have had access to this information. Mr. Krobath has a contract as a freelancer with the movie magazine SKIP, with a circulation of 435,000 copies per month, published at the Lifestyle Zeitschriften Verlag GmbH, Vienna.