with ensuring respect for the rule of law, it should nevertheless adopt measures that are commensurate to this objective.” 158. It further stressed, in the same Judgment, that “in law the principle of proportionality or proportional justice is used to describe the idea that the punishment for a particular offense should be proportionate to the gravity of the offense itself. The principle of proportionality seeks to determine whether, by State action, there has been a balance between protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual and the interest of society as a whole.” (paragraph 149) 159. Also the Human Rights Committee, in its General Comments 34, noted that: “Defamation Laws must be crafted with care to ensure to ensure that they comply with paragraph 3, and that do not serve, in practice, to stifle freedom of expression. All such laws in particular penal defamation laws, should include such defense as the defense of truth and they should not be applied with regard to those form of expression that are not of their nature, subject to verification. (...). care should be taken by states parties to avoid excessively punitive measures and penalties (…) States parties should consider the decriminalization of defamation and, in any case, the application of the criminal law should only be countenanced in the most serious of cases and imprisonment is never an appropriate penalty.” (see paragraph 47) 160. With the same understanding, this Community Court of Justice, in the aforementioned case, Federation of African Journalist and others v. Republic of The Gambia, wrote that “The jurisprudence of freedom of expression suggests that the erosion of freedom of expression by indirect means as the above provisions seem to have done suggests that finding of violation is obvious. The existence of criminal defamation and insult or sedition laws are indeed unacceptable instances of gross violation of free speech and freedom of expression. It restrictions the right of access to public information.” 161. This judgment cited, among others, the jurisprudence of the European and InterAmerican Courts, where it was concluded that the existence of laws that criminally penalize defamation, insult, false news, etc., disproportionately violate the right to 37