AMICUS CURIAE BRIEF Submitted by PAKISTAN FEDERAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS (PFUJ)

Turkey4 where it was held that the “two finger test failed to meet the needs of an effective investigation.” In the same case, the Court referred to the United Nations (UN) Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,5 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Special Rapporteur in Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the. [...] The Court, while reaching its decision, cited the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the UN Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of their liberty (Havana Rules), the Beijing Rules, the Tokyo Rules and the UN Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (Riyadh Guidelines), which together place an obligation on Pakistan to provide protection under the law to juvenile offenders. [...] The Court found that the custodial sentence was a “disproportionate interference in the exercise of freedom of expression by journalists in general and especially in the 37 The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has ruled this most explicitly, but this conclusion can also be derived from the decisions of the European Court of Human Right, as described below. [...] 17 Regarding the degree of impairment of the right to freedom of thought and expression, the Court deems that that effects of the criminal proceedings in themselves, the application of a sanction, Mr. [...] In finding that the conviction violated the right to freedom of expression, the Court noted: It is understood that in the case of speech that is protected because it concerns matters of public interest, such as the conduct of public officials in the performance of their duties, the State’s punitive response through criminal law is not conventionally appropriate to protect the honor of an official.