Supplementing provisions to the Penal Code (amended) to protect journalists

Representatives of the Press Department, the Department of Radio - Television and Electronic Information have proposed adding regulations to the draft Penal Code (amended) to protect reporters and journalists during their work.

More regulations to protect reporters and journalists

On the afternoon of August 21, 2015, in Hanoi, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Minh Hong chaired the workshop "Gathering comments on the draft Penal Code (amended) and crimes related to the field of information and communications".

Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Minh Hong chaired the Workshop. Photo: BM

At the Workshop, representatives of Departments, Divisions and units under the Ministry focused on contributing many opinions related to the field of Information and Communications, including the field of journalism.

Specifically, Article 133 of the draft Penal Code (amended) stipulates the crime of intentionally causing injury or harm to the health of another person. Clause 1 of Article 133 stipulates cases of non-custodial reform for up to 3 years or a penalty of 6 months to 3 years for intentionally causing injury or harm to the health of another person with a body injury rate of less than 11%, including cases of causing injury “To a person performing official duties or for the official reasons of the victim”.

Representatives of the Press Department and the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information have proposed to amend the above regulation, adding the case of "Obstruction of the victim's legitimate professional activities" to protect reporters and journalists.

Such a regulation would be more suitable to current practice, when many reporters and journalists are obstructed and assaulted during their work, while journalistic activities are not considered public service activities.

Another notable provision in the draft Penal Code (amended) related to press information activities is also attracting public attention, which is the provision in Article 166 - Crime of violating citizens' rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, access to information, and the right to protest: "Anyone who prevents citizens from exercising their rights to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, access to information, the right to protest and other democratic freedoms of citizens, if not falling under the cases specified in Articles 156, 157, 158, 159, 162, 163, 165 of this Code, shall be subject to non-custodial reform for up to 2 years or imprisonment from 3 months to 2 years.

Committing a crime in one of the following cases shall be punishable by imprisonment from 1 year to 5 years: Organized, Abusing position and power, Causing serious consequences.

Crimes causing very serious or especially serious consequences shall be punished with imprisonment from 3 to 7 years. Offenders may also be banned from holding positions from 1 to 5 years.

Adding many crimes related to telecommunications and IT

Also at the Workshop, there were many proposals to add regulations to the draft Penal Code (amended) related to the fields of telecommunications, radio frequencies, information technology, and postal services.

For example, according to the representative of the Management Board of the Project to Improve Computer Use and Public Internet Access in Vietnam (BMGF-VN), Article 158, point d, clause 1 needs to add the crime of "violating confidential information of telephone and Internet subscribers".

Explaining this additional proposal, the representative of the BMGF-VN Management Board said that for a long time, there has been a situation of taking personal information provided to advertising units to send spam messages. This crime should be added to the Criminal Code to increase deterrence.

Also to increase deterrence, the representative of the BMGF-VN Management Board also proposed to add to Article 175, Clause 1 the crime of “illegally appropriating or keeping another person’s personal SIM card”, because there is currently a situation where people who use beautiful numbers suddenly have their SIM cards taken away by SIM trading organizations, affecting personal rights. This situation is quite common.

From another perspective, a representative of the Public Telecommunications Fund commented: “The draft Penal Code (amended) mainly focuses on telecommunications, Internet, and frequency content, while the content on postal services is a bit limited. It is necessary to add more regulations related to the postal sector, such as how to handle cases of using the postal network to transport explosives and drugs with serious consequences; how to handle attacks on the postal network, postal systems, and exploitation centers...

In his concluding remarks at the workshop, Deputy Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Minh Hong highly appreciated the active comments on the draft Penal Code (amended) from units within the Ministry of Information and Communications, and requested the Legal Department to absorb, synthesize and submit to the leaders of the Ministry of Information and Communications a summary of comments in the coming time.

According to Infonet