Promoters Of Rumours, False News Are Trying To Destabilize The Society

Much false news and information have spread recently, on social media, from medical rumours to political and economic rumours that would destabilize society and its tranquillity, in light of the state and society’s fight against the Covid19, which mobilized electronic security services to address the phenomenon.

Some people took advantage of the preoccupation of power and society to fight against the Coronavirus and spread various rumours in all areas. They published false statistics about the Coronavirus in Algeria, as they claimed the death of prisoners due to the pandemic, and the flight of immigrants from the quarantine places.

They also talked about the hospitals ’refusal to receive people with coronavirus, leaving them on the streets, and they published pictures of people who fell on the street as having corona, and they claimed the closure of oil stations.

A video was also published of a house explosion in the municipality of Gué de Constantine and the death of its owners in Algiers, but the civil protection services refuted the news, and some others promoted a video of a fight between young men and workers in a supermarket in the capital, claiming that the latter was stormed by citizens, due to fear of food shortages, so that it became clear later that the assailants are delinquent youths who tried to create an illegal “parking” near the commercial space, then, the workers confronted and stopped them.

The latest rumours are the promotion of a fake draft constitution while giving false information about new appointments in the authority, and the various security services are deployed to refute the rumours and punish the people who publish them.

In this regard, the expert in the constitutional law, Rachid Lourari, said in a phone interview with Echorouk, Wednesday, that these electronic crimes are newly created by society, which makes the existing legal texts on them as public legal texts.

“According to the penal code, which is subject to such rumours, which affect public order, and a set of basic individual and collective rights and freedoms, and with the development of technology, publishers and promoters of rumours can be reached, after obtaining permission from legally and constitutionally authorized bodies, and those involved will be followed by the justicial authorities under the valid legal texts”.

“The penalties differ from one activity to another, as the judicial authority is the one that adapts the actions and imposes the appropriate penalties, especially as we live in an exceptional emergency, to face the COVID19 pandemic”.