Iraqi government seeks to block pornographic websites

Aug 3, 2009, 8:56 GMT

Baghdad - The Iraqi government on Monday said it had appointed a general to oversee efforts to prevent internet users from accessing pornographic websites.

The Iraqi cabinet decided that blocking such sites would be consistent with the Iraqi constitution and the country's laws, and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had appointed General Ali al-Saadi to head a committee to look into means of identifying and blocking the sites, according to a statement.

Officials from the ministries of communications, higher education, and science and technology would seek to block pornographic sites, 'which are incompatible with the values of the Islamic religion, and the customs, traditions, and norms of our (Iraqi) society, and with the cohesion of families,' the interior ministry said.

The ministry insisted it would not be blocking sites with 'cultural, scientific, technical, social, economic, artistic or touristic value,' and said that 'many other countries' had benefited from similar online blocking.

The committee would also prepare a draft law to combat 'cyber-crime after thorough legal, technical and professional study,' the ministry said.

Saddam Hussein placed tight restrictions on the internet. According to the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, which specializes in freedom of speech online, there were only 45,000 internet users in Iraq - many of them government officials - in 2002.

But that number had increased ten-fold by November 2008, according to the Open Net Initiative, a joint project of the University of Toronto and Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford universities.