Sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better.
Iraqis have some freedoms that they once were not allowed. Cell phones. Satellite television. A free press.
But just how free is Iraq’s budding media?
Under a broad new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials, some resurrected verbatim from Saddam Hussein’s penal code, roughly a dozen Iraqi journalists have been charged with offending public officials in the past year.
Currently, three journalists for a small newspaper in southeastern Iraq are being tried here for articles last year that accused a provincial governor, local judges and police officials of corruption. The journalists are accused of violating Paragraph 226 of the penal code, which makes anyone who “publicly insults” the government or public officials subject to up to seven years in prison.
Problems you are not allowed to talk about are nearly impossible to solve. I know this from personal and recent experience.
If Iraq is going to move in positive directions, a free press is absolutely critical to the process. How can we claim we’ve liberated a country where the press cannot question the actions of government officials without fear of imprisonment? That’s a really tough sell…