GENEVA -Geneva Council for Human Rights and Justice (GCHRJ ) called on Jordan to back down from its intention to pass the amended cybercrime law for its violations of public freedoms.
GCHRJ, an international human rights organization, said in a press statement that the law, which the Jordanian parliament is considering, is silencing people and putting tough penalties for activists and journalists. It is a monitoring tool, despite the importance of some of its provisions in preventing cybercrime spread across social media platforms.
The Council warned of the dangers of the official trend in Jordan to apply the law abusively under the slogan of fighting aggression and defamation, and hatred on the social media platforms.
It stressed the government’s justification under the pretext of dealing with important issues such as extortion, fraud, publication of pornographic pictures and incitement to hatred, should not be a sign to pass a law that restricts freedom of opinion and expression and violates public freedoms.
It pointed out to Article 11 of the draft o Cybercrimes’ Law amended as stating that ” anyone who has published or republished a hatred letter on the Internet shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one year and not more than three years with a fine not less than 5000 and not more than 10,000 dinars. “
GCHR stated that the punishment threatens activists, bloggers and opponents of social media with heavy penalties on loose charges, in which allows the official authorities to exploit them in pursuing anyone who can be criticized.
The definition of hate speech contained in the article is loose, containing words based on doubt and (or), which meant multiple forms of faults. If the person was not actually punished, the second would be punished.
Geneva Council for Human Rights and Justice called on Jordan to reverse the adoption of the law for constituting a serious threat on freedom of expression and and the need to respect Oman’s obligations under international laws and conventions on public freedoms.
