Costa Rica

In an encouraging development, three courts in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Chile have recently followed the growing regional consensus against criminal defamation by dismissing criminal penalties against journalists accused of libel and slander.

The newsweekly magazine Semana reported that a piece written by Alfredo Molano, at left, in the op-ed pages of the Bogota-based daily El Espectador in February 2007 described how the members of a family in Cartagena and Valledupar had undue influence in private businesses and public offices in the country’s Caribbean region.

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.

Two photographers reported being shot at by bodyguards outside the home of Brazilian supermodel Giselle Bündchen in the western Costa Rican city of Santa Teresa de Cóbano on the afternoon of April 4, 2009, according to local and international news reports. No one was injured. 

New York, December 20, 2007—Two men were sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison for the murder of Costa Rican journalist Parmenio Medina, a popular radio host who was shot dead outside his home in July 2001. The Committee to Protect Journalists hails the conviction as a step forward in the fight against impunity.

A court in San José, Costa Rica’s capital, convicted businessman Omar Chaves of ordering Medina’s murder, and gunman Luis Alberto Aguirre Jaime of carrying it out. Father Mínor de Jesús Calvo Aguilar, the other accused mastermind, was acquitted in the murder case but convicted of fraud and sentenced to 15 years in jail. Chaves also got an additional 12-year jail term on the fraud charge. Six other suspects, accused of being intermediaries in the crime, were acquitted.

New York, July 20, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is encouraged by a letter from Costa Rica’s top justice official stressing her government’s opposition to newly proposed press restrictions.

On June 8, CPJ sent a letter to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias expressing concern about a May 3 decision by the Costa Rican Constitutional Court to uphold defamation laws that set criminal penalties, including prison sentences of up to four months. CPJ was also alarmed by a bill recently introduced in Congress that seeks to regulate journalism by establishing strict controls and regulatory bodies.

Your Excellency: We are writing to ask you to use the authority of your office to reform Costa Rica's archaic defamation laws, which are incompatible with international standards of freedom of expression and rulings by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Attacks and developments throughout the region