The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Postview

November 22nd, 2008

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A weak excuse for legislative foot-dragging
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September 12th, 2007 issue

Around the world, child pornography is considered an insidious evil, a mostly hidden crime that hurts the children involved most of all.

But possessing child pornography is not a crime in the Czech Republic. While producing or distributing child porn is illegal, the customer seems to have been overlooked in the Criminal Code.

As a result, 63 Czech consumers of child pornography were not prosecuted in February when Austrian police busted a Europe-wide child porn ring.

Does this make the Czech Republic a haven for pedophiles? Since most pornography is now distributed through the Internet, would it be a stretch to think that people set up shop here to avoid legal restrictions that are common throughout the rest of Europe?

Obviously, there’s no way to tell. And anyone with an e-mail account knows how quickly it fills up with spam, often sexually explicit. Even with filters in place, there is no way to control everything that shows up on your computer.

But it requires a great leap of imagination to think that scheming politicians would use that to smear their enemies. That’s essentially the argument being offered by Senate Chairman Přemysl Sobotka, a Civic Democrat, to oppose a law banning the possession of child pornography.

We just don’t buy it.

Which is not to say we don’t understand Sobotka’s thinking. Under the communist regime, political enemies were known to accuse each other of raping students or colleagues or worse. Even now, political infighting is often designed to destroy people’s reputations.

But that’s hardly an argument against the possession of kiddie porn.

Advocates for the law say it will be very clear in defining what possession means. If there is a question about particular circumstances, that’s what judges and the courts are for. A couple legal decisions and conscientious media reporting on them will keep the issue transparent and open to public dialogue.

Czech politicians signed on to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child in 2005, a document that requires signatories to have laws banning possession of child pornography. But it still has not been ratified here because of the government’s inability or unwillingness to pass such laws.

It’s time to do that.

In the debate sure to continue over this issue, it’s important to keep balance in mind. No one wants laws so restrictive that police are in people’s homes, peering at their computers upon the slightest whiff of suspicion. Personal freedoms should not be eroded in the name of legal reform.

But the current hands-off attitude is clearly unacceptable, and runs the risk of turning the country into a haven for child pornographers.

Partly because of its location at the crossroads of Europe, and on the border between East and West, the Czech Republic already has a reputation as a place where drugs, weapons and other illegal contraband pass through with alarming regularity. Adding child pornography to that list further erodes the country’s international standing.

With a president who is rapidly becoming a poster boy for the narrow interest groups trying to deny the reality and effects of climate change, the country doesn’t need any more backward thinking. That’s not why the government should ban the possession of child pornography, which is simply a matter of doing the right thing.

But it’s worth keeping in mind.

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