ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi parliament on Wednesday voted to ask the government to ban all video games that “threaten social, moral, and educational security.” Social media erupted, largely directing outrage at a government the public complains is failing to address the country’s most urgent issues.
“Given that some video games have a negative impact on the health, culture, and security of Iraqi society as well as posing social and moral threats against many children, boys, girls, and students of school and university… we demand the government ban and block whatever is related to playing and selling these video games,” read a proposal from the parliament’s cultural and media committee.
It names PUBG, Fortnite, Blue Whale and “other games that threaten the social, moral, and educational security.”
The Iraqi parliament passed the proposal with a large majority vote on Wednesday.
“It’s like Iraq doesn’t have any other problems,” said Facebook user Ibrahim Agha’e Rawandz’e. Go build roads, provide electricity and healthcare, form a national army, create jobs, and abolish corruption, he said as part of a long list of other things the parliament could be doing.
“It’s just embarrassing,” said Lee Thurman on Twitter, predicting the ban will just make the games more popular and pointing to the generational gap between the ruling elite and Iraq’s large youth population. “It’s just stupid old people doing the things stupid old people do.”
“It’s not up to the government to regulate how our brains develop. This is just politicians enforcing their will, nothing lawful here,” said Facebook user Twana Rasheed.
Many people shrugged off the ruling, saying they’ll just use a VPN – a Virtual Private Network that allows web users to rout their internet connection through a server, hiding their online activities. This raises the point that a ban or block of the websites of these games would be extremely difficult to enforce. The proposal adopted by parliament directs the Ministry of Communication and the Media and Communication Commission to “take whatever technical steps are needed to implement the decision.”
Some people supported the decision. It’s a good move because “parents in Iraq are not able to raise and teach their children in a proper way,” Mehemed Saleh said on Facebook, adding he has never played the games.
“It’s a good quality control but we need that in other sectors as well,” said Facebook user Rawaz. M. Qader. “But they need to do the same thing with drugs and other poisonous products.”
Legislation adopted in Baghdad is not automatically applied in the Kurdistan Region. Under the constitution, the regional parliament has the power to amend or reject laws from the central government on matters that do not come under federal authority.
It is not immediately clear whether the Kurdistan Region will follow Baghdad’s lead.
In October, the Islamic religious authority in Sulaimani issued a fatwa against PUBG. PUBG stands for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. It is an online multiplayer game, one of the genre known as Battle Royale. In it, 100 players drop into an abandoned map. Upon landing, they have to find gear and supplies to kill other players in order to be the last man standing in the zone as the map shrinks. Last year, the game’s developers announced they had 400 million players worldwide.
Influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last week urged youth to avoid video games.