Bloggers and Social Media users threatened for sharing details of assassination and suicide incidents

Shafaq News/ Bloggers and social media users said they had been threatened for sharing reports about assassinations and suicide in the governorate on social media.

Bloggers and social media users, who preferred to remain anonymous for their safety, told Shafaq News Agency that they were threatened with death, legal and tribal prosecution, for posting details of assassination and suicide incidents.

They added that they were forced to delete or edit what they published to match the parties' desires, threatening them to protect the perpetrators or change the course of the investigations.

The Activists said they were verbally abused by the families of victims as well. Some families refuse to bring up the cases of their descendants who commit suicide for regional, tribal, and cultural considerations. Some activists said that some criminal cases are filed as suicide to evade prosecution of the culprit, who is usually a relative.

The director of the High Commission for Human Rights' office in Diyala, Salah Mahdi al-Majmaei, undermined the risk of those threats, "these cases are few, and zero complaints were reported to the office or the security source."

"Some misinformation and inaccuracies by some bloggers or social media users might spark some controversy in a conservative community like Diyala."

He added, "reporting suicide cases is refused by some families because they feel ashamed of it. They deem reporting such news as defamation," calling for refraining from sharing personal information of the deceased on social media.