DRAFT TREATY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 143, 30 March 1948, Page 3

DRAFT TREATY

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION j 7 4* (Rec. 10.30) GENEVA, Mar. 29. It is understood that the main points proposed in the British draft treaty on the freedom of expression and information are:—(l) Each State to grant its own nationals and the nationals of other States freedom to send and receive information without Government interference; (2) no State to regulate communications in a discriminatory manner; (3) States to impose restrictions on the flow of information only to prevent disorder or violence designed to overthrow a Government, or on grounds of libel or obscenity; (4) the State retains the right to refuse entry to any particular persons; (5) the printer or publisher oi a defamatory expression might be obliged to publish a reply; (6) disputes to be referred to the International Court of Justice. It is understood the British plan offered “certain difficulties” for the ’Americans, but may be acceptable to the French. 1 Mr Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, read out to the conference the entire statute on the control of the press in Russia, promulgated in 1931, which placed full control over all newspapers, periodic cals, broadcasts, lectures, exhibitions and films in the hands of the People’s Commissariat of Educations, and forbade the publication of works containing agitations and propaganda against Soviet authority and the dictatorship of the proletariat.