An interesting read: World’s ‘insult laws’ ensure that mum’s still the word.

Excerpt:

A report by the World Press Freedom Committee out today indicates that in spite of strides toward democracy and freedom worldwide, “insult laws” are still widespread. These laws make it a crime to insult public officials, or in some cases, to insult any individual, group or religion — a chilling influence on discourse worldwide.

The study was funded by Danish media leaders who know a thing or two about the virulence of insult and religious blasphemy laws. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a group of editorial cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in 2005, worldwide protests ensued. You might not have known that Danish Muslim groups also went to court, invoking blasphemy laws to punish the newspaper’s editors. The lawsuit failed, but publishers elsewhere were not so lucky. And the mere existence of these laws gave unfortunate legitimacy to the violent reaction against the cartoons.

Other recent examples:

*In Egypt, blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and for “contempt of religion.”

*The Philippines’ “first gentleman” Jose Miguel Arroyo, husband of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has sued more than 40 Philippine journalists under insult laws for reporting on allegations of corruption against him. Arroyo even sued one columnist for describing him as “the fat spouse,” which Arroyo said was “obviously meant to denigrate me for my rotundity.”

*In Russia, insult laws are a powerful tool for silencing dissent. When Kursiv, an Internet publication, joked that President Vladimir Putin was “Russia’s phallic symbol” because of his campaign to boost the birth rate, investigators raided its offices and shut it down, fining the editor under Russia’s insult law.

*Laws that make defamation and insult a crime persist in France, Germany and Austria. French media critic Philippe Karsenty was fined last year for defaming the honor of a state-owned TV station.

*Journalist Hrant Dink was murdered in Istanbul in January after being prosecuted repeatedly under a Turkish law that makes it a crime to insult “Turkishness.”

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