2023-10-27 05:45:30
Is press censorship becoming commonplace? In any case, the Dendermonde court ruled in favor of Conner Rousseau, the president of Vooruit, concerning the ban on the publication of articles concerning him in two Flemish media. A blatant attack on press freedom and a worrying deviation from justice.
The Rousseau affair
To understand, we have to go back to the Rousseau affair. You may remember, a few weeks ago, Conner Rousseau, the president of Vooruit, left a bar in Sint Niklaas drunk, followed by an altercation with police officers to whom he suggested that they should instead go and take care of themselves. Roma with their batons.
Comments which were the subject of a report by police officers and an investigation. Journalists from DPG Média, VTM and Het Laatste Nieuws are aware of the information and are doing their job. They cross-check the information and contact Conner Rousseau to get his version of the facts. He contacts his lawyer, who immediately launches summary proceedings, in extreme urgency, to preventively ban the publication of the articles. The judge ruled in favor of Conner Rousseau in the name of the right to privacy and the rights of the defense and sentenced the newspapers to a fine of 1,000 euros per hour if they published the article.
The next day, Conner Rousseau himself organized a press conference where he gave his version of the facts, during television news. Censorship and controlled communication, Conner Rousseau has won everything. The press and the public it represents have lost everything. However, the Dendermonde court has just confirmed the verdict of the summary judge.
European court of human rights
However, in 2011, the European Court of Human Rights had, in a very clear ruling, put an end to the preventive ban on publication in Belgium. It was in a case which concerned RTBF and a report from the program “Mise au point”. A doctor who was implicated in the show had managed to have his publication banned in summary proceedings in the name of his right to reputation, exactly like Conner Rousseau. The judgment was validated up to the Court of Cassation, but the RTBF won before the European Court of Human Rights. The Court recalled its constant jurisprudence in favor of press rights, but above all,The Court concluded that there was no specific law in Belgian law ordering such a restriction on publication.. The Court already concluded 20 years ago that a prior ban on broadcasting was only possible within a strict, precise and predictable legal framework, which was not the case in Belgium, where an article of the Constitution, Article 25 clearly states that censorship cannot be established. This has not changed today.
Surprising and disturbing
A surprising decision from the point of view of the vast majority of jurists who focus on media rights and public freedoms. The decision of the Belgian judges comes closer to the legal arm of honor to the European Court of Human Rights and to the convention that it interprets. Also worrying, because once once more, public freedoms are severely curtailed in favor of individual freedom by summary justice, that is to say emergency justice, in which there is no contradictory debate, where we act by unilateral request. The ban on pickets at Delhaize goes in the same direction. The ban on demonstrations is thus reduced in the name of the right to trade, the right to exercise one’s activity. Even if the right to strike is much less protected than the right to press.
Let’s return to Conner Rousseau. The public’s right to information has thus been undermined in favor of the right to private life of a public figure, who acts in public, in front of public agents. A drift that we imagine rather in illiberal regimes, a major step backwards in terms of press freedom in Belgium. Enough to question Conner Rousseau’s definition of democracy.
What also raises questions regarding the interpretation of public freedoms by certain judges. In the meantime, in Belgium, know that press censorship is now as easy to obtain as banning a strike picket. Contrary to what article 25 of the Constitution says: the press is free; censorship can never be established. Unfortunately, yes, she can.
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