The Australian Defence Force has banned soldiers from writing online journals and has deleted blogs from troops serving in Iraq.

Critics say the soldiers are being denied the very freedoms they are fighting for.

The blogs were destroyed in September, hours after pictures of Australian soldiers playing with guns surfaced on the internet in the days before the inquiry into Private Jake Kovco’s death in Baghdad.

Australia’s leading defence think-tank, a civil libertarian and an internet expert have blasted the move as heavy-handed, saying it denied freedom of speech and destroyed Australian history.

“This shows how far behind the times the ADF is,” Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O’Gorman said.

“If the American army allows blogs, why doesn’t the Australian army? If it does not pose a security threat, why are these soldiers being denied the rights of democracy that they are fighting for?”

The true story behind this is we see democracy crumbling like the Berlin Wall in many ‘democratic countries’.

Source: Courier Mail

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