Let's reason on obscenity laws

The press and political campaign in regard to the prosecution of a student under obscenity laws risks harming more than helping the country to stop, think and reason how best to face the extremely serious threat which technology is presenting to both our freedom of expression and the freedom from the increasing threats the same technology is presenting.

Statements such as that by Labour MP Owen Bonnici of wishing that "censorship should be thrown out of the window completely" represents a dangerous simplification of what is in reality a very complex issue.

First of all, let us be clear, the debate is not one limited to our country only and much less is it in the direction of complete removal of censorship. Secondly, we must avoid at all costs that undue pressures be exercised by the political class on the serenity and the independence which the courts must enjoy at all times however much controversial and strongly felt be the issues underlying the trial before the judiciary.

We are fortunately living in an age of protection of our fundamental human rights unparalleled in history. The Constitution, the Human Rights Act and the European Convention all protect freedom of expression, not to mention the ultimate protection provided by the European Court of Human Rights.

All this is being said because I do not wish that politicians and public opinion pundits be one-sided and not tackle the harm that pornography, especially via the internet, causes.

The United Kingdom has only last year given life to a new crime of being in possession of "extreme pornographic images" with an increase in the maximum sentence for offences under the Obscene Publications Act.

So, in the UK, as from this year, any person caught in possession of pornographic material with images that are grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character and which may portray a range of "explicit and realistic" acts such as "threatening a person's life" or "sexual assault involving a threat with a weapon" would qualify as "extreme" situation. This measure was prompted by the campaigning of a mother after her daughter was strangled by a person fixated with asphyxiation porn and necrophilia.

The nature of what "extreme pornography" means is wisely left for "the magistrate or the jury to determine" in terms of the image itself and not in terms of the intention the person caught with them might have had.

The law clearly is not intended to hit artistic expressions, such as the viewing of films in the cinema, and the law is careful, at least in its intentions, to cover extreme por-nography such that "few images" would fall under the definition of extreme.

It is worth noting, however, that the legislation is considered to cover extreme pornographic material held on mobile phones, the distribution of which would be considered, if distributed among young people, to also breach the British Obscene Publications Act.

Neither do prosecutions under obscenity laws take place only in Malta. A case that caused much controversy in the UK last year was that against a certain Darryn Walker for publishing obscene material in the "Girls Aloud" case and posting it on erotic websites. The local prosecutors had better note that the accused had been cleared.

According to The Guardian: "had the trial succeeded, we would be looking forward to a world in which bookshops were stripped of titles deemed obscene by the police and the prosecuting authorities and in which anyone based in the UK and seeking to publish an erotic story on the internet would now be doing so in a state of considerable anxiety."

In the interests of justice, of the accused and, above all, of our judicial system let this be an appeal to our politicians to moderate their campaign involving one particular case, while, at the same time, to double their efforts to cater against the grave abuses involving child pornography, extreme pornography and the increasingly serious sexual harassment, which mobile telephony is becoming among the very young, in the full respect of freedom of expression.