The purpose of internet censorship is presumably to distract attention from certain issues. If so, Qatar censorship is currently failing miserably with a certain small and rather cute pig.
The issue arose with pictures in a Winnie the Pooh book. The images of poor piglet had been blocked out with a black marker. Images of the book were posted on Qatar Living several months ago.
The offending books were being sold in Saudi-owned Jareer book store, and it was widely assumed that the books had been censored in Saudi Arabia en-route to Qatar. The pictures aroused some rather light hearted banter, but few believed that moderate Qatar was the source of the censorship.
The matter had been forgotten. At least, until a few days ago, when Qtel decided to censor the images of the censorship of the images.
This was despite the fact that the page did not fall into any of Qtel's official censored sites' categories: "pornography, political criticism of Gulf countries and anti-Islamic sites”.
Far from drawing attention away from the story, Qtel seems to have put the spotlight on internet censorship, with the matter being reported and discussed on local websites and newspapers.
The story was initially reported on Qatar Journal, which reported the administrators of Qatar Living saying that they would not appeal the matter to Qtel as there was little chance of a change of mind.
Since then the issue has reached the Gulf Times, and continued yesterday with a letter from well known and long term resident Frances Gillespie. (Note - the letter has since been removed!)
While this current censorship is being viewed with amusement by many people here in Qatar, it could make Qatar a laughing stock if it got into the international press. The censorship also gives a false impression of Qatar, a country which is usually very moderate and tolerant.
Nor is the censorship consistent: in Virgin Megastore you can still buy children's books about pigs complete with authentic pig noises.
What's more, Qatar is not very good at internet censorship, and many seemingly innocent sites have been blocked. Q-tel suggests we email them if we think it has made a mistake. However, I know several people who have emailed the censor who have not had a reply or seen any change in censored sites.
Here are some listed more sites which have been blocked (listed by Nigel at Qatar Journal):
http://www.vkontakte.ru/ - Russian social networking site
http://www.yourfilehost.com/ - File hosting services
http://www.anonym.to/ - Link anonymizer
http://www.torrentspy.com/ - Bit Torrent search engine
http://www.flurl.com/ - Video sharing
http://www.o2.pl/ - Polish web portal
http://www.newgrounds.com/ - Flash gallery
http://www.wrzuta.pl/ - Polish video/image/audio sharing
http://www.broadcaster.com/ - Videos and webcams
You'll be sure to find many more as your surf round the internet in Qatar!
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