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The deputy Carmen Hertz (PC) referred this Saturday to the statements of the director for the Americas of Human Rights Watch (HRW), José Miguel Vivanco, who assured that the bill on denial presented by the opposition is “incompatible with the standards international standards on freedom of expression “and, in his opinion, it will probably do” very little “to stop offensive expressions.
The parliamentarian of the Communist Party told The counter which differs in total and absolute form from Vivanco’s statements since it seems that the senior HRW official “ignores various provisions of international human rights law” and, therefore, his considerations are “legally incorrect and rightly constitute a fallacy”.
Hertz explained that the bill recently dispatched to the Senate seeks to penalize the denial, in the case of Chile, of the crimes of extermination, international crimes committed by the civic-military dictatorship and consigned in the national reports of the commissions that the same State instructed, like the Rettig and Valech reports. Therefore, since the crimes were identified, the PC deputy said that Vivanco’s first fallacy is that the project does not sanction ideas, does not sanction investigations, but rather sanctions “the denial and approval of these facts, concrete facts.”
Carmen Hertz added that denialism, being classified as a crime, as stipulated in the bill, does not collide with freedom of expression (as Vivanco pointed out) and this issue, as she commented, has long been resolved by international law, among other instances, by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Law and the American and European Convention that indicate the limit of freedom of expression, the honor and dignity of others.
Otherwise, said Deputy Hertz, if it were as Vivanco points out, that freedom of expression could not be limited, there would be no crimes of libel and slander, for example.
The lawyer expert in Human Rights explained, in this sense, that the project also requires a result, that is, that the crime of denial or approval of the crimes of extermination has the consequence of disturbing public order or limiting human rights .HH. Of the third parties, in this case, of the victims or their next of kin.
Finally, the deputy gave as an example the European countries, such as Germany, Austria, Belgium, Israel, Switzerland, among others, that sanction denialism and there are even some that sanction it in generic terms and do not demand a result like the project presented in Chile.
“All decent States that have experienced traumatic international crimes sanction denialism, therefore, the considerations put forward by Mr. Vivanco are legally incorrect and rightly constitute a fallacy,” Hertz declared, explaining that this means that the official of HRW “ignores the norms of international law and ignores the recommendations of the United Nations human rights system, which is universal.”
“I am concerned that the director of an organization such as HRW, which is a supervisory body on human rights issues, expresses such distortions of what the legal provisions are and such ignorance of what denialism is,” he concluded.
It is worth mentioning that Vivanco entered fully into the debate on the project that on Tuesday of this week was dispatched by the Chamber of Deputies to the Senate and that seeks to criminalize incitement to violence and denial of human rights violations during the dictatorship. “The bill on denial is incompatible with international standards on freedom of expression and will probably do little to stop offensive expressions,” the HRW official told El Mercurio. According to Vivanco, according to international human rights law, “these expressions, no matter how unpleasant they may be, must be confronted with arguments, not with criminal law. Otherwise, Chile runs the serious risk of turning those sanctioned into victims and generating greater interest in their reprehensible ideas. “
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