We, the organizations listed below, would want to express our sincere concern on the current crackdown on “indecent content” online by the Iraqi government. This campaign will limit free expression in the nation and have a chilling effect. The judge at the Third Investigative Court in Al-Karkh who specializes in media and publishing issues announced that between 10 January of this year, when the authorities announced the start of this campaign, and 13 February, the courts had charged 14 people for posting “indecent” or “immoral” content on social media and had already sentenced six of those people to prison terms ranging from six months to two years.
The defendants were accused under Article 403 of the Iraqi Criminal Code, which makes it illegal to disseminate content that “violates public dignity or decency,” according to the judge in Al-Karkh. According to Agence France-Presse, some of the people who were prosecuted were known for producing comedy- and music-related content. A new committee established by the Ministry of Interior to monitor “indecent” or “immoral” content on social media platforms, as well as complaints submitted on the Balgh (‘report’ in Arabic) platform, which the Ministry of Interior launched on January 10, 2023, to report social media content that “violates public morals, contains negative and indecent messages, and undermines” society, were the bases for the prosecutions, the judge continued.
Under international human rights law, including Article 19 of the The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Iraq has ratified, the right to freedom of expression is recognised as a fundamental human right, and this right, according to the UN Human Rights Committee, ‘embraces even expression that may be regarded as deeply offensive’. Article 19 only permits restrictions on free speech under the test of legality, legitimacy, necessity and proportionality. Legitimate aims include the protection of national security, public order, public health or the rights of others. But those restrictions must be ‘clearly and narrowly defined and respond to a pressing social need; are the least intrusive measures available; are not overly broad, in that they do not restrict speech in a wide or untargeted way; and are proportionate in the sense that the benefit to the protected interest outweighs the harm to freedom of expression’. Restrictions based on ambiguous, overly broad terms such ‘violating public integrity or decency’ fail to meet those requirements. The vagueness of these terms opens the doors to rampant abuses, including the suppression of peaceful dissent.
