Group items tagged

"Stop screaming or we'll take your kid,"

In a videotaped confession that was played during the trial, defendant Ali Isa Saqer said that Mattar had encouraged the protesters to run over police. Saqer's "confession," which later was aired on Bahrain's government-controlled television, was delivered in a flat monotone, and he appeared to be under duress. Saqer died April 9 while in detention, one of four detainees who've died while incarcerated. A video of his corpse at the ritual washing ceremony showed signs of severe beatings. The Bahraini government has acknowledged that he died of torture.

It was a full week before he was allowed to contact his wife, and the call was cut seconds after it began. Later the family learned that he'd suffered continuous and severe beatings during the first two weeks he was held, and had lost 45 pounds. On May 2, Sharif's wife issued a cry for help, saying he'd spent 47 days "in a notorious prison, suffering under brutal and continuous torture." She said he'd been taken to the military hospital twice, but that his family hadn't been allowed to see him. "We do not know whether he will be able to further tolerate daily beatings and torture and pray he survives this unspeakable treatment," she said. Between May 8 and May 22, Sharif had four hearings before a military tribunal, but his lawyer was able to attend only one session. He's been charged with conspiring to overthrow the monarchy.

Fairooz, Mattar and Sharif are all known as moderate reformers who advocate a constitutional monarchy with an elected government in place of the royal regime.

No Arab country could match Iran’s Shi’a foreign legions, with sectarian legions of their own. Mohammed Bin Salman is very aware of this predicament, and of the embarrassing limits of Saudi military power.

The Qatar crisis demonstrated clearly that the new younger leaders in the Gulf see politics as a zero sum game, that they  are more willing  than their more measured and cautious fathers, to double down and burn the last bridge.

Saudi Arabia has had border disputes with Yemen and most of her smaller Gulf neighbors for many years. On occasions it tried to use coercive methods mostly employing tribes to settle these disputes the most famous of which was the Buraimi Oasis dispute of the 1940’s and 50’s, involving Saudi Arabia, Oman and what is now the UAE. But ever since the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council in 1981 to coordinate economic, political and potentially military policies, disputes were expected to be resolved amicably among member states; Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. The grouping never amounted to an alliance and now it is in tatters because of political, personal and ideological tensions involving mainly Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE vs. Qatar.

Mohammed Bin Salman has trapped himself in a war in Yemen that he cannot win, but he has already lost his campaign against Qatar.

the case can be made that Mohammed Bin Salman’s war in Yemen made the Houthis more dependent on Iran and gave Iran and Hezbollah a military foothold on the Arabian Peninsula that did not exist before the war. The blockade of Qatar led to improved political, economic and trade relations between Doha and Tehran, and increased Turkey’s military profile in the Gulf for the first time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.

Much has been written about Mohammed Bin Salman as a ‘reformer’, but most of the focus was on the ‘historic’ decision to allow women to drive, (a decision any new ruler was expected to take) to open up movie theatres, and to allow men and women for the first time to watch together sport competitions. The crown prince was praised because he wanted to diversify the ‘one crop economy’ and make it less dependent on hydrocarbon production, through greater foreign investment, an issue the Saudi elites have been discussing for years. At best these measures are necessary for any nation to survive let alone thrive in the modern world. But there was not a single serious decision to politically empower the population, or to open the public sphere even very slightly

the short reign of Mohammed Bin Salman has been more despotic than previous rulers. No former Saudi Monarch has amassed the executive powers, political, military and economic that the crown prince has concentrated in his hands except for the founder of the ruling dynasty King Abdul-Aziz  Al Saud. His brief tenure has been marked by periodic campaigns of repression. Long before the murder of Khashoggi, scores of writers, intellectuals and clerics were arrested for daring to object to the crown prince’s decisions. Many are still languishing in jails with no formal charges. Even some of the women activists who pushed hard for years to lift the ban on women driving, were incarcerated on trumped up charges of ‘treason’. Women are allowed to drive now – but the crown prince would like them to think that this is because of his magnanimity, and not their struggle- but they are still subject to the misogynistic and atavistic female guardianship system, which treat adult women regardless of their high education and accomplishments as legal minors.

Jamal Khashoggi is the last of a long trail of Arab journalists and men of letters murdered by their governments at home and abroad. But he was the first one to have a reputable, international medium, the Washington Post that published his columns in English and Arabic, which was one of the reasons that enraged the crown prince. Jamal, was the first journalist millions of people all over the world watched walking his last steps toward his violent death

socioeconomic reforms to lower youth unemployment and ease the rising cost of living, but also structural reforms to benefit sectors such as education and health, both of which are neglected by the state budget

The protests that spread throughout the country to denounce Fikri’s killing were the largest coordinated protests to take place in the kingdom since 2011

Clashes between the riot police and protesters have led to the arrest of a growing number of demonstrators, as well as journalists, activists, and community leaders. Demonstrators claim that riot police forces received direct orders to assault protesters who did not comply, while the defense attorneys of those incarcerated by the authorities allege that their clients were subjected to torture and abuse while in police custody. Pictures and video recordings circulating on social media show the serious injuries that protesters continue to suffer

media, civil society organizations, and online activities fall under the scrutiny of the Penal Code and the broadly defined notion of national security, all of which pose serious concerns for civil liberties and freedoms. Morocco’s highly repressive Penal Code, promulgated in 1963, is in fact a revised version of the Napoleonic Code of 1810, which was extended in 1953 by the French colonial apparatus to severely crush the “terrorist nationalist movement” and to punish the resistance of local populations against their oppressive rulers

King Mohamed VI has been in charge of reforming the Penal Code, in partnership with the government. This façade of reform aims to bolster the state apparatus while simultaneously narrowing the spectrum of civil liberties in the name of national security

methods inherited from colonization and currently used by the government are doing little to appease the basic demands of a population hungry for equal opportunities and social justice

role that the diaspora could play in these protests

the waving of the Rifan and Amazigh flags during the protests is also seen by the state as a direct attack on Morocco’s territorial integrity and as a clear, separatist message. This sentiment is nurtured by pro-palace media platforms designed to spread fear, deter solidarity and isolate the protests from the wider population

the media has charged the Rifan movement with receiving foreign support from separatist entities such as the Polisario and Algeria. This is a common strategy of the Makhzen to stigmatize any kind of antagonism against the official discourse

the government continues to dismiss the grievances of its citizens and has failed to take concrete reform measures to address underlying inequalities. It has written off these protests as isolated events instigated by malign foreign influence or disloyal domestic actors bent on the overthrow of the state. As long as this continues, the situation has the potential to degenerate into  a full-blown crisis

Syrians who directly opposed the Assad regime, often at great cost, did not do so because of some Western imperialist plot, but because decades of abuse, brutality, and corruption were and remain intolerable. To insist otherwise, and support Assad, is to attempt to strip Syrians of all political agency and endorse the Assads’ longstanding policy of domestic politicide, which has deprived Syrians of any meaningful say in their government and circumstances.

the “anti-imperialism” and “leftism” of the unprincipled, of the lazy, and of fools

reinforces the dysfunctional international gridlock exhibited in the UN Security Council

Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Social Limited, worked with the UAE to create a social media advertising campaign attacking Qatar, a Gulf rival that’s home of the largest U.S. military base in the region. Though better known its use of “soft power” through projects like Al Jazeera, Qatar has also been reported to use disinformation, as well as allegedly hacking the email of the Emirates’ powerful ambassador to Washington.

the Emiratis worked with ex-NSA spies to hack the devices of U.S. citizens. And both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are among the biggest customers of NSO, the Israeli firm that sells the spyware Pegasus, which they have used to target dozens of activists, journalists and academics

In 2011, during the heady days of the Arab Spring, social media and digital technology was touted as the force that would help liberate the region from authoritarian rule and bring democracy. Now, authoritarian regimes in the Gulf, along with Western companies and expertise, are using digital technology and social media to try and hack democracy wherever they find it, including in the U.S. The effect is clearest, however, in the Middle East. With critics silenced through incarceration, surveillance, torture, or death, opposition voices are increasingly fearful of self-expression, meaning that the digital public sphere is simply a space to praise the regime or engage in banal platitudes.