Research On Some Issues About The Crime Of Communication Freedom Violation

Communication freedom is a basic citizens’ right, which is also an important legal interestprotected by criminal law. The article252of Chinese criminal law provides as “The person whoconceals, destroys or illegally opens other’s mails, aggresses upon citizens’ communication freedom, ifthe circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to less than1year imprisonment or criminaldetention.” Therefore, the crime of communication freedom violation refers to the grievous behaviors,including intentionally concealing, destroying, or illegally opening other’s mails, aggressing uponcitizens’ communication freedom. This concept has been widely identified by academic field. But therestill are different points of view and theoretical difficulties in the system attribute, behavioral object,objective behaviors pattern of this crime. Some traditional theory and legislative mode in civil law canprovide references for further improvement for this crime.For a long time, the crime of communication freedom violation is not paid enough attention byacademics in extensive and profound criminal law theory and numerous different crimes. The textbookof criminal law makes only short superficial introduction but deep specialized research to this crime.Scholars make generally introductions limited to the concept, constitutive elements, criminalresponsibility, crime and non-crime, case analysis, or select some aspects of the crime to makesystematically discusses. With the rapid development of modern communication technologies,behaviors to violate citizens’ communication freedom are various, thus it would be both theoretical andpractical significant to research the crime systematically and deeply.This paper is divided into seven parts, several important questions of this crime are discussed, andcorresponding legislative proposals are provided. The first part is the introduction, briefly introduces theresearch purpose and significance. The second part is the summary of the crime of communicationfreedom violation, briefly introduces the legislative history in China, and makes a comparative study inthe legislative mode between China and main civil law countries. The third part discusses the legalinterests protected by the crime in detail. The fourth part mainly analyzes the meanings, relations anddifferences of three objective behaviors of communication freedom violation, which are concealing,destroying, illegally opening other’s mails, hereinto the behavior of illegally opening would be analyzedemphatically. The fifth part studies the behavioral object of crime comprehensively, which is the keypoint and difficulty of this crime. The sixth part mainly distinguishes the crime and non-crime, tellsdifferences from approximate crimes, discusses judicial determination, especially analyzes typical casesin judicial practice as well as the differences between the crime of communication freedom violationand the crime of privately opening, concealing and destroying mails and telegraphs. The seventh partanalyses the crime comprehensively, and provides some legislation references to perfect the crime.