[Under pressure, the government went back to a tactic it had tried years ago but then abandoned: It banned pornography. This time, it added harsh fines or prison sentences for internet service providers who refuse to comply.]
By Bhadra Sharma and Kai Schultz
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A protest in Kathmandu, Nepal, in August demanding justice after the rape and murder
of a young girl. The government’s decision to ban pornography is a response to
public pressure to address a rise in reported sex assaults. Creditv Dipen
Shrestha/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
|
Over the summer, a tipping point was reached
after the rape and killing of a 13-year-old girl in western Nepal. Across the
country, thousands of people demonstrated in the streets and accused the police
of tampering with evidence to protect the attacker.
Under pressure, the government went back to a
tactic it had tried years ago but then abandoned: It banned pornography. This
time, it added harsh fines or prison sentences for internet service providers
who refuse to comply.
“Pulling down such websites inside Nepal has
become necessary,” read an official statement about the ban.
Many in Nepal thought otherwise.
Nearly as quickly as the ban was announced,
news outlets ran blistering editorials that characterized the measure as “a
diversionary tactic to hide the government’s incompetence in prosecuting
rapists” and a “misguided attempt at vilifying and scapegoating sex.”
Critics of the ban questioned whether there
was any link between pornography and Nepal’s sexual assault numbers, and if it
was even possible to prevent people from accessing the websites with the
profusion of firewall-evading software.
Several years ago, a smaller-scale
pornography ban in Nepal faded out amid a lack of enforcement. Last week, data
released from a popular pornographic site that was blocked under the new ban
already showed a rebound in traffic.
Binay Bohra, the managing director of Vianet
Communications, a large internet service provider in Nepal, said the ban was an
impossible ask, but there was little choice except to comply. Some 20,000
websites have already been blocked, he said, and there are still “millions”
more to go.
“The sword of Damocles is hanging over our
heads,” he said.
Mahendra Man Gurung, the secretary of Nepal’s
Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, which announced the
pornography ban, acknowledged in an interview that the measure “may not resolve
all problems.”
But he argued the ban was simply one of
several steps that have been taken to curb increasing cases of sexual crimes.
Earlier this year, the government set up an office to address concerns about
women’s safety. Staffs’ duties include helping to expedite court proceedings
for rape cases and monitoring the investigation of sexual assaults.
“Ninety-nine percent of people have welcomed
the decision,” Mr. Gurung said of the pornography ban.
Pornography is banned or heavily filtered in
many countries, especially in stretches of North Africa and the Middle East,
where conversations about limiting online access are often framed around
religion.
Resistance to these restrictions is also
common. When the Indian government instructed service providers in 2015 to
block more than 800 pornographic websites, the ban drew pointed rebukes from
free-speech advocates, some of whom argued that the order violated parts of the
Indian Constitution. Days after the ban was announced, the government relaxed
it.
There is a growing body of research that
suggests a connection between pornography consumption and sexual violence,
though studies are divergent.
Julia Long, the author of “Anti-Porn: The
Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism,” wrote in a 2016 editorial in The
Washington Post that “what would be seen as sexual violence and brutality in
other contexts is par for the course in pornography.”
Blocking pornographic websites does not
necessarily translate into lower rates of consumption, though. With the development
of software like virtual private networks or Tor, users can more easily
circumvent firewalls.
“Anytime you push a legal industry
underground — one with billions of users — you push legal users into those
underground spaces as well,” said Alex Hawkins, a spokesman for the pornography
website xHamster, which was blocked in Nepal under the ban.
Mr. Hawkins said that millions of users in
countries where the site is technically blocked, including Thailand, Turkey and
the United Arab Emirates, still find ways to visit. In 2013, when Britain
mandated a so-called opt-in measure, which required users to obtain access to
pornographic material from their internet providers, traffic to xHamster from
British users increased, he said.
In the days after Nepal’s ban was announced,
Mr. Hawkins said his team had observed a temporary dip in traffic, but by last
week, the numbers had largely rebounded.
The Nepali government first try at banning
pornography came in 2010, when officials said the capital’s many cybercafes had
become illicit meeting spots for packs of bored men to watch lewd videos and
plan crimes. Some 200 pornographic websites were subsequently blocked.
Bijaya Kumar Roy, a director of Nepal’s
government telecommunications authority, said the 2010 ban had worked for a
while, but that, eventually, the police had shifted priorities and internet
providers relaxed their filters.
This time around, Mr. Roy said, internet
providers who did not follow the order would be fined and face possible
penalties under an internet law that carries up to a five-year jail sentence.
All 115 internet service providers in Nepal have been individually contacted
about the ban, he said, and reminders were on the way.
Around Kathmandu, however, reaction on the
street seemed mixed.
Sunita Ghimire, a street food vendor, thought
the ban was a good move, saying that more children were becoming addicted to
“dirty things” as smartphone use in Nepal shot up. Balram Shrestha, the owner
of a cybercafe, was less convinced, calling the ban “another populist
announcement” from a corrupt government looking to make money through fines and
bribes.
“Politicians have a single throat despite
having different two different mouths,” he said.
Amrita Lamsal, a women’s rights activist in
Kathmandu, said the ban failed to address the problems of a culture where women
were increasingly coming forward to report sexual assaults, which may help
explain the rising numbers, but were still met with nonchalance, suspicion or
hostility.
In the case of the 13-year-old girl who was
raped and killed in western Nepal, Ms. Lamsal questioned why local law
enforcement had washed the girl’s clothing, which may have contained DNA
evidence from the attacker, who has still not been caught. In August, when
residents in the area gathered to protest the killing, the police fired into
the crowd, killing a teenage boy and injuring a few others.
Ms. Lamsal said the pornography ban was not
so much a solution as it was a deflection from graver issues.
“Police, police, police. The problem is with
the police,” she said. “Half of the rape cases could be eliminated if they
acted with sincerity.”
