An Iraqi Pop video maker on Tiktok has been sentenced to prison for half a year for the light-hearted video clips that show her in tight-fitting clothes.
The lady going by the pseudonym Om Fahad was caught up after the country launched a ‘decadent content’ campaign aimed to cleanse social media platforms of content that breaches Iraqi ‘morals and traditions.
A specialized committee now scours TikTok, YouTube and other popular platforms for clips deemed offensive by many in the largely conservative and patriarchal society.
“This type of content is no less dangerous than organized crime,” the ministry declared in a promotional video that asked the public to help by reporting such content.
“It is one of the causes of the destruction of the Iraqi family and society.”
Six verdicts have so far been handed down, according to a judge working on such cases quoted by the Iraqi news agency INA.
An investigative judge in the southern city of Amarah recently dealt with the cases of four minor social media celebrities accused of “offending public morals and indecent exposure”, said the judiciary’s Supreme Council.
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Om Fahad has tens of thousands of followers, Aboud Skeeba, with over 160,000 TikTok followers and known for humorous videos in which he makes incomprehensible remarks employing a pseudo-American accent was also arrested.
Also arrested but since released was Hassan al-Shamri, whose skits see him play the female character Madiha, who is of humble origins and has a strong temper, and which has earned him three million fans on the online platform.
The Iraqi state bases its campaign on penal code articles “with vague and elastic terminology, such as public morals and indecent exposure”, said Mustafa Saadun, of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights.