{"id":31567,"date":"2021-04-29T11:27:20","date_gmt":"2021-04-29T02:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/apr\/29\/chilling-vanuatu-libel-bill-prompts-fears-for-free-speech"},"modified":"2021-04-29T11:27:20","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T02:27:20","slug":"chilling-vanuatu-libel-bill-prompts-fears-for-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=31567","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Chilling\u2019: Vanuatu libel bill prompts fears for free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill placing libel under criminal rather than civil law could see journalists jailed for three years for \u2018misleading\u2019 content<\/p>\n<p>Journalists and social media moderators in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/vanuatu\">Vanuatu<\/a> could face up to three years in prison under <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ralph.regenvanu\/posts\/10158131055138848\">a new bill<\/a> that broadly criminalises threatening words, gestures and the \u201creckless\u201d sharing of false statements.<\/p>\n<p>Changes to the criminal libel and slander provisions of the South Pacific country\u2019s Penal Code Act mean that Ni-Vanuatu could now face imprisonment for \u201cany representation that is untrue or misleading\u201d on public platforms including \u201ctelevision, radio, internet websites, social networking sites and blog sites\u201d.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/apr\/29\/chilling-vanuatu-libel-bill-prompts-fears-for-free-speech\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill placing libel under criminal rather than civil law could see journalists jailed for three years for \u2018misleading\u2019 contentJournalists and social media moderators in Vanuatu could face up to three years in prison under a new bill that broadly crimina&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2015,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,238,874,54,323,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-media","category-pacific-islands","category-press-freedom","category-vanuatu","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31568,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31567\/revisions\/31568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}