Austin Bencini failed to put forward a coherent reasoning on obscenity laws (January 13) and merged the debate about the young editor Mark Camilleri's ordeal with censorship, child pornography, sexual harassment, extreme pornography, erotic websites and the like.

His article was published only one day after Justice and Interior Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici told Parliament that my proposal to throw censorship in the arts out of the window would open the door to pornographic material which abuses of children, people with disability and other vulnerable persons.

Censorship by definition is a mechanism whereby a state-owned entity curbs and suppresses, partially or in toto, a communicative effort from being transmitted before that effort is actually transmitted. Therefore the Camilleri case has nothing to do with censorship since he at no time was held from publishing and distributing his newspaper, but with another issue (that of the application of anti-obscenity laws).

In our country, censorship is obtained under the so-called Cinema and Stage Regulations whereby, as the Stitching promoters know well enough, a government authority has the obscene power to censor a film or play in part or in whole.

As MPs from both sides of the House, the President of the Chamber of Advocates and a long list of authors and artists have claimed, the concept of censorship is anathema to a healthy democracy based on freedom of speech, belief in the arts and the natural right to make use of our pens as of our tongue, at our peril, risk and hazard.

Really and truly, censorship reflects the state's lack of confidence in society.

A 2002 Council of Europe report compiled by a group of experts led by Anthony Everitt stated in no uncertain terms that "stage censorship, being a control over the freedom of expression, is inconsistent with the principles of the Council of Europe and the European Union and should be abolished. (B 6.17)"

Since I believe in a true, healthy democracy I am calling for the total abolishment of censorship from our laws obtaining under the Cinema and Stage Regulations and the introduction, instead, of an age rating mechanism similar to that found in cinemas and some TV programmes.

Should the present-day conservative government keep on dragging its feet on this issue, Labour will propose its own fully-fledged private members Bill by the end of next May to throw censorship out of the window completely and replace it with an age-classification mechanism.

Even without the archaic institute of censorship, society would still be protected from grave abuses involving child pornography, extreme pornography and serious harassment to vulnerable sectors of society through anti-obscenity laws.

However, the application (or non-application) of anti-obscenity laws should always be made in a way in which to favour the liberty of freedom of expression and artistic freedom.

To take the Camilleri case, there is absolutely no way where a sensible and progressive democracy can ever accept that a young University student be accused of a crime which carries the maximum penalty of six months imprisonment just because he happened to publish an article or short story in a University newspaper on an anti-hero who attracts disgust on his views about women, be it with or without any literary value!

We need both a modernisation and revamp of article 208 of the Criminal Code and the anti-obscenity laws and, most importantly, a revamp in the conservative mentality of this government and all the other authorities which were involved in this tragi-comedy of errors.

In discussing what is obscene, we should keep in mind that the European Court of Human Rights has stated that the values of pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no democratic society demand a freedom of expression not only of ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb.

Labour will do everything that is in its power to put some sense and instil in Malta a breath of fresh air in line with the contemporary reasoning in Europe.

In saying this, Labour is not putting undue pressures on the serenity and the independence which the courts must enjoy at all times as it has been suggested, but is putting pen to paper what it believes in, what it stands for, and where it wants the Maltese society to go.

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