Since the American invasion of Iraq, more than 5 million Iraqis have been driven from their homes by violence and terror. One of these Iraqis is Ahlam Ahmed. This is her story.
Since the American invasion in Iraq in 2003, Iraqis have enjoyed many of the same freedoms from censorship that Americans have. Uncensored media from scandalous Egyptian soap operas to romance novels to pornography have been widely available. But now, the Iraqi government is imposing new censorship laws to crack down on this behavior deemed improper by the standards of Islamic law.
The new censorship policy will require Internet cafes to register with the government and publishers to censor content in new books. The laws are a continuation of Prime Minister al-Maliki’s attempts to censor sexual material coming into the country beginning in May.
Government officials say these uncensored materials are corrupting the minds of young Iraqis and encouraging sectarian violence. Iraq’s cultural minister Mufid Al-Jazairi told the New York Times, “Our constitution respects freedom of thought and freedom of expression, but that should come with respect for society as a whole, and for moral behavior. It is not easy to balance security and democracy. It is like being a tightrope walker.”