[Via Boing Boing] Iran is contemplating legislation which would make blogging a capital offence - if it “disturbs mental security in society”.
16 Responses to “Blogs of death”
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Oh, great. No one tell Morris Iemma.
But surely Adrew Bolt disturbs mental sewcurity in OZ.
Seriously,
Is there anything we can do to help these fellow-bloggers?
Ha. Nice one Zarquon.
Still, it definitely a backward step for any hope of reform in Iran.
The place is a shithole as it is for anyone even remotely different to the Shia paradigm. God help you if you’re christian, female or gay. And now, apparently, political bloggers are on the hit-list.
Problem is the actual legislation - under discussion, not yet promulgated - doesn’t say that at all. It proposes sanctions against ‘Establishment and operation of weblogs and websites promoting corruption, pornography, and atheism’. There’s a link to the English translation on the Boing Boing post. It’s completely objectionable but by no stretch of the imagination does it make ‘blogging a capital offence - if it “disturbs mental security in society”.’
Ken: maybe I’m not interpreting it right, but this is the death penalty bit.
Article 3- The punishment for persons committing the above crimes, if not determined elsewhere, are to be as enemies of the state (Mohareb) and enemies of God on Earth (Mofsed fe-al-arz) [Punishable by death penalty under Islamic Penal Code]
The bold face is not part of the legislation - the translator implies it is the same thing. Someone seen as both an enemy of State and God would have a short life expectancy.
I’m a little concerned about two other things - the legislation also states the death sentence for “wickedness” (2.6) It’s a term so vague that it could be anything the judge doesn’t like, like playing music too loud upstairs. In practice, I see it applied to people who say bad things about government officials, even if they are true.
Oh and the other bit? Take a squizz at article 7:
Temporary detention of suspects accused of these crimes must be for a minimum of one month.
A lot of thing can happen in one month, especially if you are in an Iranian prison.
I’d like someone like Juan Cole to give his viewpoint. He has no love for the that government - he had some friends killed by Khomeini and crew - but he can be trusted to do a reliable translation.
‘God help you if you’re christian, female or gay. And now, apparently, political bloggers are on the hit-list.”
or christian, female and gay.
What if those blogs are just “annoying”?
Jihad good - Sharia very, very bad.
Well worth comparing the rights now enjoyed by the peoples right next door in Iraq and defended by the growing might of the Iraqi armed forces!
Iranians in less than eighteen months time will look across the border and ask themselves why can’t they have meeningful free and fair elections.
Who can deny that the bourgeois democratic revolution is off and running and the corrupt governments in Iran and Egypt won’t be able to stand up to their peoples demands once a Palestinian State is established and Iraq continues to lead the way forward. This is all so reminiscent of the collapse of the police states of Eastern Europe, and we can expect the next decade to speed it all up. Revolution is the usual response to increasing repression from tyrants.
oops. That is, meaningful free and fair elections.
Down and Out the death penalty is for the crimes stipulated in Article 2 (’the above crimes’). I assume ‘wickedness’ has a delimited meaning under case law, or is defined elsewhere (many Australian statutes make no sense without reading the ‘definitions’ section), but maybe not.
Thanks patrickm for a moment of light relief. Personally I believe the Iranians will be more influenced by the fairies at the bottom of the garden. I do have one question though: if ‘revolution is the usual response to increasing repression from tyrants’, why didn’t we just wait for the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow ol’ Saddam? It would have saved such a lot of argument.
But I guess your theory explains why tyrants like Mugabe, Castro, Stalin, Bjelke-Petersen and the like had such short tenures and were overthrown so dramatically.
well said patrick @ 9. The naysayers will increasingly look like fools.
Sorry that should be:
Wouldn’t surprise me if some of the top Iranians were really working for Multinational Corporations and selling their people down the drain…as some of the American Congress has done to their country:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/This-pathetic-U-S–Congres-by-michael-payne-080703-406.html
Way to go, patrickm, to take a serious human rights issue and transform it into a platform for your usual Iraq War cheering.
Human rights issue …
I once heard someone utter something rather insightful on human rights that stuck with me, “The only right we have is the right to fight for our rights”. Here we post, outraged at the loss of a ‘fundamental’ right to communicate dissent with government, but at the end of the day it’s not a right we actually have, it’s an earned freedom that we will spend the rest of our lives defending.
We cannot as a society expect our leaders to do the right thing out of respect for human rights, it doesn’t work. We must be ready to take the necessary steps to ensure our freedoms, whether it be Iemma’s continuing security tightening efforts in NSW or the loss of voices in Iran at the hands of Ahmadinejad.
PinkyOz