Last Friday, the majority of the National Regeneration Movement Party in the Puebla State Congress approved a reform to the State Penal Code to include a new criminal offense, the crime of “Cyber-Ban.”
It read as follows:
“Article 480.- Anyone who, through the use of information and communication technologies, social networks, email, or any other digital space, insults, injures, offends, harms, or abuses another person with the necessary persistence to cause harm or damage to their physical or emotional integrity shall commit the crime of cyberbullying.
Anyone responsible for the conduct described in the preceding paragraph shall be sentenced to eleven months to three years in prison and a fine of fifty to three hundred days of the daily rate of the Unit of Measurement and Update in force at the time of the commission of the crime.
When the victim is a minor, it shall be presumed that damage to dignity is involved because the victim is a person in the psycho-emotional and physical development stage, and the penalty shall be increased from one-third of the minimum sentence to two-thirds of the maximum sentence.”
The reactions were swift, and accusations of prior censorship and criminalizing the right to freedom of expression were accompanied by warnings about a hidden intention to intimidate and harass (what a paradox) the critical press.
The absurdity came that same weekend, when the governor of Puebla, Alejandro Armenta, sent a letter to the State Congress requesting the opening of discussion forums. This should have happened earlier, but it wasn’t. This is the style of governing in Puebla, so similar to that of Manuel Bartlett, Mario Marín, Rafael Moreno Valle, or Luis Miguel Barbosa, all well known for their authoritarianism.
But two things must be made clear:
- Freedom of expression as a human right has limits, and they are found in the enjoyment of all other rights. Therefore, expressing our ideas and opinions cannot and should not be a pretext to offend, discredit, discriminate against, or falsely accuse anyone.
2.- Everyone has the right to protect, protect, and defend themselves against those in the media who use the power of the printing press, cameras and microphones, or megabytes to offend, discredit, discriminate, or falsely accuse.
But digital violence cannot be prevented through criminalization and criminalization, an issue that affects everyone, anywhere in the world.
If former Governor Barbosa were still alive, he would surely be one of the first to be charged with this crime. And go tell Senator Gerardo Fernández Noroña or Minister Lenia Batres Guadarrama that when they go to Puebla, they shouldn’t even think about criticizing anyone on social media, because they’ll be charged with the crime of “cyberharassment,” invented by their brilliant party colleague.
Source: verificado
