Jurisprudential Reflection On Criminal Libel In The Context Of Mainland China

There are people continuously through cell phone text messages, press reviews, brochures, web blog, anonymous reporting, etc. to expose, criticize and ironic misconduct of government officials. However, they were put into prison because of their expression. They didn't take the "regular" channels, reflect the "positive", "constructive" attitude and ironic government officials, which are seen as a violation of government and government officials' honor and challenge officials'prestige, has been considered a defamation. Local governments believe that such incidents were extremely negative to local social order and security, so local police took criminal coercive measures to criminal suspicion. Under Article 246 of Criminal Law, criminal libel is based on the principle of private prosecution, charge of prosecution as an exception, moreover, the object of libel restricted to individuals, not including the government, institutions or organizations. This violation the principle of legality, and have suffered strongly criticized from the media and academia. The reason of frequent cases on the one hand is low degree of openness of government information, the government confuse their own role. On the other hand is ambiguity provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law; together with China is in a political and social transition, a lot of various contradictions appears; lastly, China lack of political tolerance tradition. However, to use criminal libel carefully is significance. It is not only conducive to safeguarding the citizen's right to know, the right to expression and the right of supervision, but also beneficial to the government and government officials foster the spirit of political tolerance, and the whole social attitude of tolerance, promote the process of democratization, safeguard social stability. Meanwhile, be use with criminal libel carefully become the trend of the world. In accordance with other countries of provisions on those involving public figures, the majority adopted a strict rule, set a higher threshold for conviction, under the effort of judiciary and academia to safeguard citizen's freedom of speech. Therefore, China should follow the word trend, from the legislative to judicial and other parties make clear and specific provisions of law, to achieve caution use criminal libel, protect citizens'freedom of speech.