Iraqi Parliament Bans Pornographic Sites while the Young Demanding Government to Tackle Unemployment
Iraqi Parliament Bans Pornographic Sites while the Young Demanding Government to Tackle Unemployment
After banning the mobile game “PUBG” by a parliamentary resolution, censorship restrictions increase to ban pornographic websites and the free use of Iraqi Internet.
The Iraqi parliamentarians began collecting 100 signatures to block pornographic websites on the pretext that ” it undermines the young’s ability and distracts them from their priorities”.
Member of Parliament, Hussein Aukkabi, in the Victory Alliance, clarified that the deliberation of this subject is to “preserve the future and behavior of the new generation.”
Adding, in an interview with North Press that after the completion of other legal procedures,” This subject will be discussed as a bill in a session of the Parliament.”
The Iraqi young, for their part, wonder why the parliament prioritized this attempt whereas there are more important subject to be deal with.
Haidar Khalid, an Iraqi young man, believes that what Iraqi parliamentarians are doing “can not be implemented because those who want to visit these websites will resort to special programmes break the bans”
Khalid said that attempts to find jobs for the young are prior to think of unnecessary thing.
Ahmed Haitham, another young man sitting in a cafe in Baghdad where young people and men meet after the breakfast, finds that these decisions are not effective because they are not accompanied with awareness campaigns for young people on one hand, and the existence of other problems occupy the minds of Iraqis on the other hand.
“Launching local factories where the young can work , is more necessary and urgent than banning websites,” he said.
Once the Iraqi political authorities try to block the pornographic websites through Ministry of Communications and Media Authority, they face attacks by the opposition activists who consider it “an interfere with personal freedoms and it is linked to religious parties seeking to restrict freedoms gradually.”
In 2011, banning the pornographic sites file was presented in the Iraqi parliament ,but soon it was closed because of the opposition of the civil stream and the leak of information about the impossibility of blocking these sites due to the number of companies that provide Iraq with Internet service, which are separated from each other.
However, the Parliament justified the isolation of the file from debate because of concerns about the public budget files and others linked to the service situations.
Yet, political blocs brought the file back to their agendas and presented it in September 2015 in a quick session attended by 190 deputies.
In a short debate, the parliament voted on a resolution obliging the Ministry of Communications to block pornography sites. However, the Ministry did not apply the parliamentary law for reasons that are still unknown.
According to the latest statistics of the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, the unemployment rate in the country reached to 22.6%, while the graduates of Iraqi universities and institutes are protesting in front of the concerned institutions and demanding the provision of employment opportunities
Baghdad – Ziad Ismail – NPA