Operatie Pedopriester: geband

Operatie Pedopriester: banned

Few days ago, the italian collective Molleindustria decided to remove from its website its last videogame, Operation: Pedopriest, “in order to not worsen the situation of our webspace provider that is legally responsable for all the content“.

This decision was taken after a point of order in the Italian Parliament called “Countermeasures to the religions’ offenses”, in which the leader of the Christian Democratic Party Luca Volontè asked to shut down this website appealing to a 2006 law about child abuse and pornography.

The law includes a chapter about “virtual pedo-pornography” that consider illegal to publish “pictures whose quality of representation makes unreal situations appear real“. So the picture you see above (a screenshot from the game) is ILLEGAL according to the Italian Parliament. If you want to support Molleindustria, spread it over the web (or, if you prefer, take another screenshot from the game, that can be played here.

Paradoxically the christians politicians are exploiting a law against pedophilia to ban a satirical game that point the finger to child abuses committed within the clergy.
Luca @ July 2, 2007

Zolang diezelfde parlementariers zich, gezamelijk met het Vaticaan, lenen tot het trachten te verhinderen van de BBC uitzending: SEX CRIMES AND THE VATICAN ( inmiddels on youtube beschikbaar met de italiaanse vertaling) blijft het kennelijk meer dan noodzakelijk dat dergelijk materiaal de eigen stempels van gelovigen krijgen!

't Is maar waar je bezwaar tegen hebt

toegevoegd 4-7:

Zoals te verwachten: het spel verspreidt zich!

The furore exploded after an Italian MP, Luca Volonte, submitted an emergency parliamentary question on June 26th regarding both the ‘Operation Pedopriest’ game, and a performance, ‘Messiah Game’ (part of the Venice Biennial Art show). The former was accused of being pedophile pornography and he demanded it be shut down:

“The government should act urgently to close the site which allows the download of Operation pedoporiest, a flash game containing simulations of the rape of children by priests, unimpeded by parents who are intimidated and gripped by a mafia-like silence.”

The government took the bait and the security services were wheeled into action.

Molleindustria had already made clear the political intention behind the piece and explained where the inspiration emanated from:

“Inspired by the controversial BB documentary “Sex crimes and Vatican”,
Operation Pedopriest is a strategy game which introduces you to the fascinating emergency management procedures constantly put into practice by the church. It is not recommended to minors and lay-people.”

Obviously this clumsy and ill-advised act of censorship will end up having the very opposite effect to that intended: molleindustria will receive huge amounts of publicity and the game will receive an international audience. Volonte is the parliamentary leader of the Christian Democrats which governed Italy for nearly fifty years until its collapse as part of the anti-corruption investigation known as Tangentopoli. His reasoning as to why the game should be supressed is illuminating:

“Law 38/2006 (dealing with exploitation of minors and paedophile pornography,
trans. note) should be applied: even where virtual… the reproduction and showing
of scnes that represent such abominable events are forbidden. Let no-one seek an alibi in the excuse of freedom of expression for socalled artists thereby offending human and religous sensitivieties. It is necessary that the government take such steps as to avoid that similar cases occur in the future, offensive to religious feeling, confessional religion in general and the catholic faith in particular.”

Inderdaad! Kerkelijk seksueel misbruik is bijzonder crimineel en een belediging van de religie(use gevoelens) en het katholicisme in het bijzonder.
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uit de verklaring van

In the meantime, we would like to stress that in our opinion Pretofilia has nothing to do with pedopornography and that we deem it a very good satire against children abuses. It could at worst wake up some criticism on how much priest’s abuses are hidden and silenced, but lately satire on the matter has been far from random.

That is why we ask anyone caring for the freedom of speech and satire to mirror the game, knowing that it could imply a fair degree of legal issues and attacks by the Italian government, the Vatican, and their lot. We ask anyone to publish a link to these mirrors in the comments to our blog. de rest van dit artikel staat hier

Informatie over kerkelijk seksueel misbruik o.a. hier en hier en hier natuurlijk ook. En een keuze maken over kinderporno op het internet kun je o.a. hier

En dat er echt niet alleen in Italie geprobeerd om hierover het zwijgen op te leggen, ook via het internet blijkt hier en hier en hier en natuurlijk hier zeker ook! Maar daarover is op dit blog meer dan genoeg te vinden.