Manama: Bahrain's official move to decriminalise press offences was on Monday warmly welcomed by the Bahrain Journalists Association and the media amid intense calls to the MPs in the lower and upper houses to endorse the draft without delays.
The government on Sunday announced that it had approved a draft law that amends the controversial 2002 Press Law and scraps prison terms for journalists.
The amended law, a long-standing demand by Bahrain-based journalists, annuls restrictive clauses stipulating that journalists could be jailed for a string of offences, including denigrating religion, calling for political regime changes and undermining state security.
The draft law lifts censorship on local publications before they are printed, but keeps it on the foreign press reaching Bahrain.
Reforms
"The draft law is a step forward for the sake of keeping up with the overall reforms and I am confident that the parliament will endorse them," Information Minister Jehad Bu Kamal said at a press conference.
The draft will have to be approved by the bi-cameral parliament to become law, but with only two weeks remaining in the current term, the MPs will most likely debate it when they resume their sessions after the summer recess.
"The amendments will allow journalists to carry out their work in a more secure and serene atmosphere, particularly with the rise in legal cases brought against them," Eisa Al Shayji, Bahrain Journalists Association (BJA) chairman, said.
"While we welcome the move by the government which is in line with the calls of King Hamad, we now expect the parliament to endorse the law without delays," he said.
The BJA has often lobbied the MPs to endorse amendments to the press law and to drop the prison terms, but several MPs said in press statements that they would not pass a law that gave journalists special privileges.
"We hope that the situation will be better for journalists now. We had so far 15 cases brought against journalists in the first four months of this year. Last year, we had 47 cases and most of them were a waste of time and money since no action was taken against them," Al Shayji told Gulf News.
