The government of Peru Dec. 7 classified all information related to national security and defense as a state secret, also setting 15 years in prison as the punishment for violators.
A report by Silvia Hiquera on the blog of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas (Spanish and Portuguese) says the Institute for Press and Society (IPYS) called the change a “serious attack” on the Transparency and Information Access Law.
IPYS’ attorney, Roberto Pereira said that “this is a mistake that throws us back to the Fujimori era, in which everything was classified and nothing could be known,” reported the daily La República.
The change is to the legislative decree that regulates the National Defense System. (See the decree amendment here (in Spanish) on page 480165.)
Some of the country’s legislators have called the decree unconstitutional and a committee is expected to examine the matter.
“You can’t enact laws against journalism,” congressman Luis Iberico told Perú 21, the Knight report said.
Filed under: What's New