Death Penalty for Blogging!!

Blogging is cool, Right? Well, the answer to this question would depend on which geography you are at.

I came across this article that I found very disturbing. It talked about Iranian government’s intent to ‘award’ death penalty for bloogers who ‘disturb the mental security of the society’.

Some excerpts:

“On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death.

In recent years, some Iranian bloggers have been sent to jail and many have had their sites filtered. If the Iranian parliament approves this draft bill, bloggers fear they could be legally executed as criminals. No one has defined what it means to “disturb mental security in society”.

Such discussion concerning blogs has not been unique to Iran. It shows that many authorities do not only wish to filter blogs, but also to eliminate bloggers!”

Human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty but Teheran insists it is an effective deterrent that is carried out only after an exhaustive judicial process. So they now propose this system for bringing about death penalty for blogging.

All this is wishful thinking as this only serves to increase the curiosity of the learned ear. He’ll find alternate ways. But, even then the very thought of an action like this brings bile to my ears. It is an act of curbing freedom of thought and expression.