Kuwait proposes restrictions on social networks “to safeguard the cohesion”

The Government of Kuwait plans to adopt this year a law to regulate the use of social networks in order to “safeguard the cohesion of the population and society”, after several complaints of blasphemy and sectarianism after published comments on the Internet.

The main objective of this new standard is to control the content of Twitter , popular in the country and used even by political leaders. Unlike what happens in the case of print media, television or books, the State lacks control over social networks . Kuwaiti Information Minister, Mohammad al-Mubarak al Sabah, has advanced on Tuesday that “the Government is in the process of establishing laws that will regulate the use of different sites like Twitter, in order to safeguard the cohesion of the population and society.


” A court sentenced this month to a Sunni writer to seven years’ imprisonment and payment of a fine of $ 18,000 (13,577 euros) for insulting the Shiites through Twitter, the same network that allegedly used a Shiite who was arrested in March for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. Both cases have generated small protests in Kuwait.

Although the information minister has clarified that there is still no date for the possible entry into force of new legislation, it has warned that the government has ordered the legislators to give “priority” . In this regard, he hoped that the measures take effect before the end of 2012. The Islamist MP Mohammad al-Dallal, specializing in legal issues related to communication media, stated that given the support that exists among parliamentarians to new law, it could be approved in June. “Twitter is an open area, everyone can talk. But Kuwait is not always used as a social network, for friendship or personal matters, but politically, to attack,” he justified Al Dallal.