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Journalists detained, barred from polling stations: Syndicate - Politics - Egypt - Ahra... - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...102343.aspx Egypt media journalists censorship election Sisi
shared by Ed Webb on 27 May 14 - No Cached
  • several journalists have been detained, arrested or obstructed from reporting at polling stations in several governorates.
  • On the first day of voting, the syndicate reported as many as 19 similar violations, most of which were identified in the last hours of the polling day, Al-Ahram's Arabic news website reported.
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From journalists to generals, Algeria cracks down on dissent | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...-media-and-activists-133082924 Algeria censorship propganda rights media activism activists journalists
shared by Ed Webb on 09 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • While the economic crisis related to the fall of oil revenues has caused political and social tensions, the Algerian authorities are showing increasing intolerance towards criticism, already under attack since the start of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s fourth term in April 2014.
  • Hassina Oussedik, director of Amnesty International’s chapter in Algeria, says the attacks on freedom of expression have been "constant". "In 2015, not a month has passed without witnessing cases of people being oppressed as they try to express themselves peacefully. The authorities rely on poorly formulated or ambiguous laws to arrest people," she told Middle East Eye. "They use provisions of the penal code that criminalise 'contempt', 'insult' or 'defamation' aimed against representatives of the state and other institutions in order to restrict freedom of expression, including humour, expression on the internet and on the street."
  • But an Algerian police officer, in charge of monitoring public demonstrations, said claims of repression were excessive and defended his activities."Repression? Dictatorship? Censorship? All of this is much exaggerated and is far from the truth," he told MEE. "If we did not do our job of monitoring and surveillance, Islamists and terrorists would feel omnipotent. In the 90s, this led us to chaos! Is it normal to insult the state, the president, the police or the army with impunity?"
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  • A former minister also defends the state’s repressive policy: "Newspapers, with their criticisms and caricatures that spare no one, even the president and the army chief, aren’t they free? But the law will remain strict against those who attack the institutions and the nation; we are not a gang of criminals who must be denounced all the time. We are servants of the state and those who criticise the government are attacking Algeria."
  • In the former minister's view, the majority of social opposition movements, jobless in the south, anti-shale gas activists, subversive artists and independent publishers, are simply “naive people manipulated by forces hostile to Algeria and its government’s patriotic choices".
  • Minister of Communications Hamid Grine, described by the Workers Party leader Louisa Hanoune as the “propaganda minister”.Regularly, the minister threatens journalists, independent media, foreign press correspondents and activists on social media in the name of "ethics". He imposed the closure of two private TV channels, Atlas TV and El Watan El Djazairia TV, and publicly refused to grant accreditation to foreign press correspondents, including a journalist from the London-based daily Asharq Al Awsat, demanding that they "toe the line".
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Egypt calls for BBC boycott over 'biased coverage' - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/c-boycott-over-biased-coverage Egypt media BBC censorship boycott rights abuse
shared by Ed Webb on 30 Mar 19 - Cached
  • Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) has called on Egyptian academics and intellectuals to boycott the BBC until the global broadcaster apologises for “biased coverage” against President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi. “The BBC promotes the lies of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group,” claimed the SIS
  • Officials at the SIS also claimed that the article was biased against the President of the Republic, citing the fact that details of the protests against him took up 16 lines of the article, while statements by his supporters were covered in only six lines.
  • In March 2018, the Egyptian authorities slammed the BBC for another damning report entitled “The Shadow Over Egypt” which included interviews with families of alleged victims of torture and enforced disappearances. The report highlighted the case of a young woman, Zubeida, whose mother told of her repeated abduction and rape by security forces.
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  • Her mother was subsequently arrested and charged with spreading false news; her two lawyers, including the head of the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms, were forcibly disappeared.
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Picking up the pieces - 0 views

www.synaps.network/picking-up-the-pieces Syria society identities war civil_war
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Syrians have shown relentless ingenuity in adapting to every stage of a horrendous conflict, salvaging remnants of dignity, solidarity and vitality amid nightmarish circumstances
  • The decimation of Syria’s male population represents, arguably, the most fundamental shift in the country’s social fabric. As a generation of men has been pared down by death, disability, forced displacement and disappearance, those who remain have largely been sucked into a violent and corrupting system centered around armed factions
  • 80 of the village’s men have been killed and 130 wounded—amounting to a third of the male population aged 18-50. The remaining two-thirds have overwhelmingly been absorbed into the army or militias
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  • “If you want to protect yourself and your family, you join a militia,” remarked a middle-aged man in the Jazmati neighborhood. “The area is infested with crime associated with the National Defense militias. Each group has control over a certain quarter, and they sometimes fight each other over the distribution of spoils. Shop owners must pay these militias protection. One owner refused, and they torched his store.”
  • Another resident of the same area explained that he and his family could scrape by thanks to his two sons’ positioning in the Iran-backed Baqir Brigade—which provides not only monthly salaries, but also opportunities to procure household items through looting.
  • Most who can afford to leave the country do so; others benefit from an exemption afforded to university students, while another subset enjoys a reprieve due to their status as the sole male of their generation in their nuclear family. Others may pay exorbitant bribes to skirt the draft, or confine themselves within their homes to avoid being detected—making them invisible both to the army and to broader society. Some endure multiple such ordeals, only to remain in an indefinite state of limbo due to the contingent and precarious nature of these solutions
  • I returned to my apartment just to retrieve official documents and some hidden pieces of gold. I did so, and then destroyed my own furniture and appliances because I don’t want these people making money at my expense. I was ready to burn down my own apartment, but my wife stopped me—she didn’t want me to cause harm to other apartments in the building.
  • Although virtually every problem that sparked Syria’s 2011 uprising has been exacerbated, society has been beaten down to the point of almost ensuring that no broad-based reformist movement will be able to coalesce for a generation to come
  • the unraveling of Syria’s productive economy, and its replacement by an economy of systematic cannibalization in which impoverished segments of Syrian society increasingly survive by preying upon one another
  • a new term—taafeesh—to describe a practice that goes far beyond stealing furniture to include extremes such as stripping houses, streets and factories of plumbing and electrical wiring
  • “I watched uniformed soldiers using a Syrian army tank to rip out electrical cables from six meters underground,” remarked a fighter with a loyalist Palestinian faction, who was scrambling to retrieve belongings from his apartment before it could be pillaged. “I saw soldiers from elite units looting private hospitals and government offices. This isn’t just looting—it’s sabotage of essential infrastructure.”
  • An industrialist in Aleppo put it simply: “I talk with factory owners and they say they want to reopen their factories, but they can’t find male workers. When they do find them, security services or militiamen come and arrest those workers and extort money from the owners for having hired them in the first place.” With no large scale returns on the horizon for local industries, this economic impasse will take years to resolve.
  • Multiplying forms of predation have accelerated the outflow of Syria’s financial and human capital, leaving behind a country largely populated by an underclass that can aspire to little more than subsistence
  • Syrians also dip into precious resources to pay officials for information, for instance on disappeared relatives or their own status on Syria’s sprawling lists of “wanted” individuals. For those wishing to confirm that they won’t be detained upon crossing the border to Lebanon, the going rate is about 10 dollars—most often paid to an employee in the Department of Migration and Passports.
  • This cannibalistic economy, which encompasses all those who have come to rely on extortion for their own livelihoods, extends to the cohort of lawyers, security officials and civil servants who have positioned themselves as “brokers” in the market for official documents such as birth, marriage and death certificates
  • Today, even the most senior lawyers in our practice are working as document brokers. A well-connected broker makes 30 to 40,000 pounds [60 to 80 dollars] per day; this roughly equals the monthly salary of a university-educated civil servant. As a result, many government employees resign and work as brokers to make more money.And this truly is a business, not a charity: Every broker takes money, even from his own brothers and sisters. Last week a colleague brought me his brother-in-law. I asked him why he needed me, when he could make all the papers himself. He explained that he can’t take money from his own brother-in-law, but I can do so and then give him half.
  • micro-economies in their own right—from the recycling of rubble to the proliferation of taafeesh markets, where people buy second-hand goods stolen from fellow Syrians. Many have no choice but to use these markets in order to replace their own stolen belongings
  • Syria’s predatory wartime economy is slowly but surely turning into a predatory economy of peace
  • As some Syrians put it, Damascus has been particularly effective in reconstructing one thing amidst the immeasurable destruction: the “wall of fear” which characterized the regime before 2011 and which momentarily broke down at the outset of the uprising
  • active surveillance, intimidation and repression are not the only contributors to this leaden atmosphere. A pervasive exhaustion has settled over Syrians ground down and immiserated by war, disillusioned with all those who purport to lead or protect them, and largely reduced to striving for day-to-day subsistence
  • At one level, the war has wrenched open social and economic fractures that existed long before the conflict. The city of Homs stands as perhaps the starkest microcosm of this trend. A Sunni majority city with sizable Christian and Alawi minorities, Homs was the first major urban center to rise up and the first to devolve into bitter sectarian bloodletting
  • While vast swathes of Syria’s Sunni population feel silenced and brutalized, Alawi communities often carry their own narrative of victimhood, which blends legitimate grievances with vindictive impulses vis-à-vis Sunnis whom they regard as having betrayed the country
  • crude divisions based on sect or class fail to describe a complex and fluid landscape. Some fault lines are less dramatic, all but imperceptible except to those who experience them first-hand. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and kin may have come down on opposing sides, despite having every social marker in common. Each part of the country has its own web of tragic events to untangle.
  • Many Islamic State fighters swapped clothes and joined the [Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces to protect themselves and their families. But they haven’t changed; those people are bad, and will always be bad. There will be vengeance. Not now, while everyone is busy putting their lives together. But eventually, everyone who suffered under ISIS, whose brother was killed by ISIS, will take revenge.
  • A native of a Damascus suburb remarked: “Charities typically want to help those who fled from elsewhere. So, when I go to a charity, I say I’m displaced.”
  • The divide between conservative and more secular Sunnis has calcified, manifesting itself even in differential treatment at checkpoints. “I have an easier time driving around because I don’t wear the hijab,” remarked a woman from the Damascus suburbs. “If you veil, security assumes you’re with the opposition.”
  • While dialogue is sorely needed, some Syrians warn against emphasising dialogue for its own sake—even at the cost of burying the most substantive issues at stake. A businessman from Damascus described his own abortive experience with talks proposing to link disparate elements of Syria’s private sector: “There’s this whole industry around ‘mediation,’ including between sides that don’t actually disagree on anything. Meanwhile, all the problems that caused the uprising have gotten worse.”
  • Just as Syrians are forced to be more self-reliant, they have also come to depend evermore on vital social support structures. Indeed, extreme circumstances have created a paradox: Even as society has splintered in countless ways, the scale of deprivation arguably renders Syrians more closely interdependent than ever before.
  • remittances from relatives who live abroad
  • The country’s middle and upper classes have long extended vital forms of solidarity to their needier compatriots, with Syria’s merchant and religious networks playing a leading role. What is unique, today, is the scale of hardship across the country, which is so vast as to have changed the way that Syrians conceptualize the act of receiving charity. A businessman from central Syria noted the extent to which dependency, which once demanded some degree of discretion, has become a straightforward fact of life. “People used to hide it when they were reliant on charity. Not anymore. Today you might hear workers in a factory wondering, ‘Where is the manager?’ And someone will say that he’s out waiting for his food basket. The whole country is living on handouts.”
  • People still do charity the Islamic way, based on the premise that you must assist those closest to you. If there’s someone you should help—say, a neighbor—but you’re unable, then it’s your responsibility to find someone else who can. These circles remain very much intact, and the entire society lives on this. Seven years of war didn’t destroy that aspect of Syrian culture, and that’s something Syrians are proud of.
  • There will be no nationwide recovery, no serious reform, no meaningful reconciliation for the foreseeable future.
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Briton held in UAE 'after wearing Qatar football shirt' - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...uk-47135629 UAE Qatar GCC football soccer censorship
shared by Ed Webb on 05 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • A British football fan has been arrested and detained in the United Arab Emirates after reportedly wearing a Qatar team shirt to a match.
  • said to have been unaware of a law against "showing sympathy" for Qatar
  • The UAE and other countries in the region are currently engaged in a political and diplomatic stand-off with Qatar after they accused the state of supporting radical and Islamist groups. On its website, the Foreign Office warns travellers to the UAE of a June 2017 announcement "that showing sympathy for Qatar on social media or by any other means of communication is an offence. Offenders could be imprisoned and subject to a substantial fine".
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  • According to a friend, quoted by the Guardian, he was assaulted by security officials after being released. He then reportedly went to a police station to report the incident and was accused of telling lies and detained.
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Gaza: Journalist facing prison term for exposing corruption in Hamas-controll... - 0 views

www.amnesty.org/...n-in-hamas-controlled-ministry Palestine Hamas PLO Palestinians media journalist corruption censorship
shared by Ed Webb on 26 Feb 19 - Cached
  • An investigative journalist who published a report revealing corruption within the ministry of health in Gaza is facing up to six months in jail, said Amnesty International, ahead of her appeal hearing tomorrow. 
  • Hajar Harb, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, released an investigative report on al-Araby TV  on 25 June 2016 highlighting that the ministry, which is run by the Hamas de-facto administration, was profiting by arranging illegal medical transfers out of the Gaza Strip for people who did not need treatment.
  • “I was cursed with bad words, threatened with physical harm and even accused of being a collaborator with Israel by spreading rumours on Facebook by some doctors in Gaza,” she told Amnesty International.
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  • Hajar Harb was tried in her absence, while she was in Jordan receiving treatment for breast cancer. On 4 June 2017 she was convicted and sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of 1,000 ILS (276 USD). She appealed against the court’s decision.
  • As political in-fighting between Fatah and Hamas continues, authorities in the West Bank and Gaza have used threats and intimidation against activists and journalists to suppress peaceful expression, including reporting and criticism. 
  • According to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, a Ramallah-based NGO, in 2018 the Palestinian authorities in the West Bank were responsible for 77 attacks on media freedom during the year. These included arbitrary arrests, ill-treatment during interrogation, confiscation of equipment, physical assaults and bans on reporting. The Hamas authorities in Gaza were responsible for 37 such attacks.
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Egypt: Forcibly disappeared transgender woman at risk of sexual violence and torture | ... - 0 views

www.amnesty.org/...of-sexual-violence-and-torture Egypt LGBT LGBTQ policing police rights abuse abuses authoritarianism
shared by Ed Webb on 08 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Fears are growing for the safety and wellbeing of Malak al-Kashef, a transgender woman seized during a police raid from her home in Giza in the early hours of 6 March and who has not been heard from since, Amnesty International said. Malak al-Kashef was taken by police to an undisclosed location. Her lawyers have not been able to locate her and police stations have denied she is in their custody.
  • Egyptian authorities have a horrific track record of persecuting people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity
  • Amnesty International believes that Malak’s arrest relates to her calls for peaceful protests following a major train crash in Cairo’s central train station on 27 February that killed at least 25 people. “Malak al-Kashef appears to have been detained solely for peacefully exercising her rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly
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  • Due to her gender identity, Malak is at increased risk of torture by the police, including rape and sexual violence, as well as assault by other detainees
  • Malak al-Kashef is a transgender woman who is undergoing gender affirming surgery. However, she has not yet managed to have her gender identity officially recognized and is therefore registered as male in official documents
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Beirut's draq queen scene is starting to flourish, inspired by Ru Paul - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-a17e-162b712e8fc2_story.html Beirut Lebanon drag LGBT LGBTQ
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Jan 19 - Cached
  • Beirut’s drag-queen scene
  • The Middle East is known for its conservatism, but with its febrile nightlife and more liberal mores, Beirut has long been hailed as a relative haven for the region’s LGBTQ community, though not without challenges.
  • Performers usually turn up in their street clothes, transform into a whole new character, then shed their costumes again before slipping back outside. Anissa, though, will be making an entrance tonight. A car to the venue has been organized, and she wants to enjoy the reactions of her fellow passengers. 
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  • Many here who became drag performers grew up watching Bassem Feghali, a comedian who gained popularity in the early 2000s by impersonating female singers. In 2015, Evita Kedavra, a Palestinian Armenian drag queen, took the stage, and one by one, the circle grew. 
  • With dozens having taken the plunge since last year’s Grand Ball, the artists credit one celebrity above all: RuPaul and his wildly successful talent show “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” “That made a huge difference,” said Narcissa, another drag queen, of the Emmy-winning U.S. television series. “Suddenly everyone was watching it, and you just thought, ‘Wow, I could do that, too.’ Those artists taught us a lot.”
  • a scene that blends an homage to American drag culture with something distinctively, and irreverently, Lebanese. Anissa Krana and Narcissa exude Hollywood glamour, all tumbling curls and dresses with jewels. Performers like Kawkab Zuhal set kohl liner on dramatic lashes for acts lip-syncing to Arabic music or telling sharp jokes about Lebanon’s crumbling political system. 
  • The Grand Ball earlier this month was to be at one of the biggest, with some 30 contestants competing in front of an exuberant, tightly packed crowd
  • In October, to almost everyone’s surprise, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Sasha Velour strode through one of Beirut’s most famous civil war landmarks, a brutalist-style cinema still riddled with bullets known as the Egg
  • “My drag is what I couldn’t be when I was young,” said one performer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. He said he had started trying on his mother’s heels and makeup in secret, years before coming out as gay. When his parents found out, they barred him from their house and his friends turned on him. He lives with other drag queens now. “They’re like my family,” he said. “We help each other with food, with makeup, money — everything.”
  • Although the Lebanese state is more tolerant of homosexuality than other Arab governments, the penal code can still be invoked to make arrests
  • “We don’t have stable laws here,” said Narcissa. “One minute, the state is looking one way; the next, it’s staring right at us.”
  • Only a small number of venues are recognized as “safe spaces” for the drag and broader LGBTQ community, and owners must have strong ties to local authorities to ensure the police won’t turn up and harass attendees
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Fewer Germans plan to visit Turkey after minister's threats - Turkish Minute - 0 views

www.turkishminute.com/...turkey-after-ministers-threats Turkey censorship Germany Russia tourism
shared by Ed Webb on 17 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • The number of Germans buying holiday packages in Turkey dropped significantly after Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu vowed to detain and deport tourists at airports if they are suspected of links to terrorism
  • in Berlin, the daily number of holiday purchases has fallen from around 1,000 to between 300 and 500.
  • Germany on Saturday changed its travel advice for visitors to Turkey, warning its citizens that they risked arrest for expressing opinions that would be tolerated at home but may not be by Turkish authorities.
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  • In 2018 some 4.5 million Germans visited Turkey, making it the second largest group of tourists after Russians.
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Fox: Middle East streaming service launched with Saudi media group - CNN - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html KSA Saudi media television satellite MBC TV politics
shared by Ed Webb on 22 Nov 18 - No Cached
  • Fox Networks has struck a deal with a Saudi media group to launch a new TV streaming service in the Middle East and North Africa. The subsidiary of 21st Century Fox (FOX) said in a statement that it was partnering with the region's biggest broadcaster, MBC, to bring Fox Plus to viewers. Fox's streaming service, which is already available in southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, will be offered in 24 countries on MBC's Shahid Plus platform.
  • Fox's deal follows a chill in relations between international media companies and Saudi Arabia after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
  • The Saudi government took control of MBC earlier this year following a crackdown on corruption that saw the arrest of hundreds of businessmen including MBC Chairman Waleed Al Ibrahim, according to a source familiar with the matter. Al Ibrahim was later released and retains a 40% stake, management control and his title as chairman.
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  • Competition for the regional market of 300 million people is heating up. Netflix (NFLX), Malaysia's Iflix, and Dubai's Starz Play are all vying for dominance
  • Raina said better broadband capabilities in the region has helped streaming services grow, but payment systems remain a challenge. Credit card use in some parts is still "near zero," he told CNN Business.
  • The move by Fox comes just over a year after it added 3 new TV channels to its existing line up, including the first Fox-branded channel to broadcast in Arabic.
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New Satirical Film's Absurd FBI Stings Draw From Real Cases - 0 views

theintercept.com/...film-review-day-shall-come-fbi GWOT FBI US USA politics film satire
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 19 - Cached
  • To date, more than 300 defendants have been prosecuted following FBI terrorism stings. These stings are often preposterous when examined closely. Derrick Shareef was arrested after buying grenades from an undercover agent; since Shareef didn’t have any money and was living with the government’s informant, the FBI set it up so that the undercover agent, posing as an arms dealer, would accept ratty old stereo speakers as payment. Emanuel L. Lutchman, a mentally ill and broke homeless man, planned to attack a New Year’s Eve celebration with a machete — a weapon he was able to buy only because the FBI gave him $40. The absurdities go on and on and on. Human Rights Watch criticized these types of FBI stings in a 2014 report for having “created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by conducting sting operations that facilitated or invented the target’s willingness to act.”
  • For “The Day Shall Come,” Morris spent years researching FBI stings and talking to terrorism defendants, federal prosecutors, and FBI agents
  • Looming over Miami in “The Day Shall Come” is the real-life FBI office building, which is actually in Miramar, just north of Miami. A $194 million structure that opened in 2015, the enormous glass building with sharp lines and curved walls houses the FBI’s South Florida office. Simultaneously assuring and foreboding, the building looks like a police headquarters in a dystopian comic book. Morris delights in using the building as a way of showing how the FBI has benefited financially from, and been changed by, the endless search for terrorists since 9/11.
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  • “You know, bin Laden got you this. You should put a big picture of him on the building, like the Colonel Sanders logo.” That’s the joke underpinning “The Day Shall Come”: Far from being enemies, the FBI has benefited from its biggest bogeymen, developing a symbiotic relationship with Islamist extremists while pursuing hundreds of targets who never posed much of a threat at all.
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Egypt forces Guardian journalist to leave after coronavirus story | Egypt | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...onavirus-story-ruth-michaelson Egypt politics authoritarianism military censorship media pandemics UK Britain guardian journalist Germany
shared by Ed Webb on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Egyptian authorities have forced a Guardian journalist to leave the country after she reported on a scientific study that said Egypt was likely to have many more coronavirus cases than have been officially confirmed.
  • She cited a study accepted for publication in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, which had analysed flight records, traveller data and infection rates to estimate that Egypt could have had 19,310 coronavirus cases by early March, with the lower end of the range about 6,000 cases. The Egyptian government’s official count at the time period covered by the data was that three people were infected.
  • On 17 March, Michaelson’s press accreditation was revoked. The Guardian offered the Egyptian authorities the chance to write a letter for publication rebutting its report or the Canadian study, but received no response to the offer.
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  • British diplomatic officials and the SIS passed on the message to Michaelson that she needed to meet Egypt’s visa issuance authority.Michaelson, who is also a German citizen, said she was advised by German diplomatic officials in Cairo that she should not attend the meeting under any circumstances. “They said, ‘We do not believe it’s safe for you to go to this meeting. You’re at high risk of arrest and you should get on a plane,’”
  • “The national security agency told British diplomats that there was a plane one evening and they ‘wanted me on it’,”
  • Michaelson’s departure leaves the north African country with no full-time British newspaper correspondents. Bel Trew, a correspondent for the Times, was threatened with a military trial and expelled from Egypt in March 2018.
  • A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: “The UK supports media freedom around the world. We have urged Egypt to guarantee freedom of expression. UK ministers have raised this case with the Egyptian authorities.”
  • Egypt had 366 confirmed cases of the virus by Monday with 19 deaths, according to the country’s health ministry.
  • Press freedom in Egypt has severely deteriorated since the military took power in 2013 and the former commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, became president the following year.
  • Domestic media has gradually come to be dominated by the state, which exercises widespread censorship. The office of the country’s last major independent news outlet, Mada Masr, was raided late last year. Access to its website from inside Egypt has been blocked.
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Tunisia: End prosecution of bloggers for criticizing government's response to COVID-19 ... - 0 views

www.amnesty.org/...overnments-response-to-covid19 Tunisia authoritarianism politics media censorship bloggers rights pandemics
shared by Ed Webb on 23 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Last week, two bloggers were detained and are facing several criminal charges of "insulting state officials", "causing disturbances to the public" and defamation. They have been charged for posting videos on social media alleging that the government has failed to provide adequate compensation to people struggling financially and address shortage of basic food supplies in the market amid COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Within the region, Tunisia enjoys a relatively high degree of political freedom. However, the past two years have seen a number of criminal prosecutions related to freedom of expression – many of which have used outdated laws from the era of ousted President Ben-Ali to prosecute critics for defamation and insulting state officials and institutions.
  • On 13 April, blogger Anis Mabrouki posted a video on his Facebook page showing a crowd of people standing in front of the building of the closed mayor's office in Tebourba (a town 30 km from the capital Tunis), demanding financial aid which had been promised by the government amid the COVID-19 lockdown. The next day he received a summons letter from the authorities after the mayor pressed charges against him.
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  • charged with "causing noises and disturbances to the public" and "accusing public officials of crimes related to their jobs without furnishing proof of guilt" under Articles 316 and 128 respectively of the Penal Code
  • Another female blogger and political activist, Hajer Awadi, posted a video on her Facebook page on 12 April where she spoke about her documentation of the government's corruption and poor distribution of basic foodstuff in her region, Le Kef, in the North West of Tunisia. In the video, she also alleges that the local police assaulted and threatened to arrest her and her uncle when they went to complain about corruption.
  • charged them with “insulting a civil servant” under article 125 of the penal code and “causing noises and disturbances to the public” under article 316 of the penal code. They face up to a year in prison and a fine
  • Tunisia's 2014 Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression under Article 31.  Tunisia is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which also guarantees the right to freedom of expression
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Egyptian intelligence services extend control over media | RSF - 0 views

rsf.org/...ices-extend-control-over-media Egypt media TV newspapers censorship ownership Sisi
shared by Ed Webb on 06 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is worried about the way Egyptian media outlets are being taken over by businessmen linked to the government and intelligence services. The regime’s domination of the media continues to grow and is even affecting pro-government media.
  • Al Hayat was quietly taken over at the end of August. The new owner’s identity has not yet been officially announced but several Egyptian media outlets have reported that it was acquired by Falcon, a successful Egyptian security company whose CEO is a former senior military intelligence officer and a former head of the radio and TV regulatory agency.
  • the financial pressure came shortly after Al Wafd’s representatives in parliament expressed their opposition to the government’s controversial plan to hand over two strategic islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabia
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  • A former military intelligence officer, who was also an armed forces spokesman, took charge of Al Asema TV in January.
  • ONTV, a popular TV channel that supported the government while occasionally broadcasting critical comments, was taken over in May 2016 by Ahmed Abu Hashima, a powerful multi-millionaire steel magnate said to be close to military intelligence and to President Abdel- Fattah al-Sisi. A month after the acquisition, the authorities expelled Liliane Daoud, a well-known ONTV programme presenter with a reputation for journalistic integrity. She was deportable because she has British and Lebanese dual nationality.
  • Hashima bought two other TV channels, Al Nahar and CBC, and four newspapers, Sout Al Omma, Ain, Dot Masr and Al Youm al Sabea, in 2016.
  • the editor had told that that “President Sisi is the newspaper’s new owner” and that it could therefore not continue to employ critical journalists
  • the government’s influence over the broadcast media landscape was also significantly enhanced in 2016 by the creation of a DMC, a major new TV network with a range of news, sports and entertainment channels. Dubbed “the mouthpiece of the intelligence services” by some journalists and launched with a patriotic anthem and Koranic chants, DMC gets permission to film where other privately-owned TV channels are denied access. It is also known to broadcast interviews that are presented as exclusives but just reiterate the regime’s pro-security, anti-Muslim Brotherhood dogma
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The Death of the Palestinian Cause Has Been Greatly Exaggerated | Newlines Magazine - 0 views

newlinesmag.com/...e-has-been-greatly-exaggerated Israel Palestine israelpalestine KSA Saudi UAE Morocco Sudan Egypt Jordan Syria media diplomacy analysis nationalism
shared by Ed Webb on 22 May 21 - No Cached
  • For the last 10 years, Western (and even Arab) pundits have repeatedly questioned the place of Palestine in the pan-Arab psyche. They surmised that the Arab Spring had refocused Arab minds on their problems at home. They assumed that battling tyrannical regimes and their security apparatuses, reforming corrupt polities and decrepit health care and education systems, combating terrorism and religious extremism, whittling back the power of the military, and overcoming economic challenges like corruption and unemployment would take precedence over an unsolved and apparently unsolvable cause.
  • reforming the Arab world’s political systems and the security and patronage networks that keep them in power and allow them to dominate their populations appears to be just as arduous a task as resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
  • The difference now is not that Arab populaces have abandoned Palestine. Western and regional observers say the muted outrage over affronts like American support for the annexation of the Golan Heights or recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, or even the Abraham Accords and the subsequent sycophantic embrace of Israel in the Gulf is an indicator of Arab public opinion, that it signals a loss of interest in the cause.It is not. Arabs are of course not of a single mind on any particular issue, nor is it possible to gauge public opinion under tyrannical regimes. But it is indicative of the fact that these authoritarians no longer see the pan-Arab Palestinian cause and supporting it as vital to their survival. They have discovered that inward-looking, nationalistic pride is the key to enduring in perpetuity. It is the final step in the dismantling of pan-Arabism as a political force, one that will shape the region’s fortunes and its states’ alliances in the years and decades to come.
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  • Nowhere is this shift in attitude more abjectly transparent than in the Gulf states’ media outlets, which hew closely to the state line and even go beyond it in an attempt to out-hawk official policy, which by comparison appears reasonable and measured.
  • an obvious and transparent outgrowth of the Gulf states’ normalization deals with Israel, though it is curious to me why they feel the need to amplify Israel’s narrative of the conflict if they did not think public opinion was already on the side of normalization
  • Jordan violently suppressed demonstrators protesting the attacks on Gaza, who apparently did not receive the memo that 27 years should have been enough time to accept Israel’s position on the conflict. In Egypt, despite its testy relationship with Hamas and its participation in the blockade of Gaza, it is still political and social suicide to publicly embrace normalization as a concept.
  • There was great presumption and folly in the grandiose naming of a convenient political deal between unelected monarchs and a premier accused of bribery and corruption, which was brokered by an American president who paid hush money to a porn star, after the patriarch of the prophets of Israel and Islam.
  • few Arab leaders have ever actually done anything for the Palestinians beyond rhetorical support for the cause, but they were happy to use the prospect of Palestine to keep their populations in check. The late former President Hafez al-Assad imposed a multi-decade state of emergency and mobilization to justify his tyrannical hold over Syria while awaiting the mother of all battles with the enemy, all without firing a single shot across the border since 1973. The leader of the beating heart of Arabism intervened in Lebanon’s civil war and had no qualms massacring pan-Arab nationalists and their Palestinian allies, or to recruit his Amal militia allies to starve Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. His son and successor, President Bashar al-Assad, negotiated with Israel via intermediaries, ready to sell out his allies in Iran and Hezbollah, even as he declared his fealty to the resistance.
  • The Gulf states have long had backchannels and secret dealings with the Israelis and developed a penchant for Israeli digital surveillance tools. Egypt needed Israel to destroy extremist militants in Sinai. And Morocco, Oman, and Qatar all had different levels of diplomatic ties.
  • We don’t know broadly whether a majority of Arabs care about Palestine or not, though every indicator points to the fact that they still do
  • Riyadh’s media outlets have taken on a prominent role in expressing public sympathy for Israel and its positions
  • In Saudi Arabia, a monumental shift is underway to neuter the power of the clerical establishment in favor of a more nationalistic vision of progress that gives primacy to Saudi identity. According to Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, in a recent interview, this identity derives from religious heritage but also from cultural and historic traditions. MBS has defanged the hated Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, introduced social reforms that dismantle some of the restrictions on women, detained numerous clerics who criticized his policies, both foreign and domestic, and has been elevated by his surrogates into an almost messianic figure sent to renew the faith and empower Saudi identity through KPI-infused economic progress initiatives like Vision 2030. He has also, of course, arrested those who sought to pursue activism and reform and those who criticized the pace and manner of his revolution.
  • where nationalist pride is intermingled with the quality of life and performance metrics of a technocratic capitalist state, albeit one where the reins are held by only a handful of families
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Kuwait: Lawyer files lawsuit to block Twitter - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/files-lawsuit-to-block-twitter Kuwait censorship twitter
shared by Ed Webb on 20 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • A lawyer filed a lawsuit at a Kuwaiti court demanding the closure of the social networking site Twitter.
  • Authorities in the Gulf state have repeatedly cracked down on social media users, arresting those deemed to have “insulted” the state or its officials or “harmed” relations with other countries. In May the Kuwaiti Criminal Court sentenced activist Mosaed Al-Moseilem to five years in prison and a fine of 10,000 dinars ($32,856) after finding him guilty of criticising the UAE on Twitter.
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Egypt's Ministry of Religious Endowments boosts its imams' media skills - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...ing-media-skills-of-imams.html Egypt Islam religion politics awqaf Al-Azhar azhar sermons fatwas media rhetoric training
shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • Will a one-week training enable Egypt’s imams to sound more reassuring, more emphatic and appear more camera-friendly on television? The Ministry of Religious Endowments certainly hopes so.
  • Courses include teaching the imams how to speak in talk shows, telephone interviews and TV debates. It also teaches them body language for interviews on TV as well as writing sound bites for various types of televised interviews. 
  • the course aims to develop the media skills of the imams so that they can “dominate the religious discourse,” counter extremist views expressed by the Salafists and efficiently debunk false interpretations on religion in TV programs.
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  • In 2017, the parliamentary Committee on Religious Affairs approved a draft law that banned issuing fatwas through the media unless prior authorization had been obtained from Al-Azhar, the country’s top religious institution. The draft still has to go through the General Assembly to become law.
  • The Ministry of Religious Endowments — known locally as Awqaf — objected that the right of authorizations should rest with Al-Azhar, saying that this bypasses the ministry, which should be the appropriate authority to grant permissions. The ministry argued that as all of its imams are graduates of Al-Azhar, they were fully equipped to give this permission.
  • Parliament has shelved the draft law until an agreement is reached between Al-Azhar and Awqaf, which has so far failed to materialize. 
  • According to Hosni Hassan, media professor at Helwan University, the main purpose of the trainings is to ensure that the Friday sermons — delivered by imams of Awqaf — are efficient tools to spread the Egyptian state’s version of Islam and to persuade the public.
  • The state — represented by the Ministry of Religious Endowments — is paying close attention to Friday sermons and religious lessons in mosques so they can become tools of improving social and religious behavior
  • “The rate of extremist fatwas has declined since 2013 after the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, after the group was designated as a terrorist organization and its sheikhs were arrested,”
  • The ministry announced in 2014 that only preachers licensed by the ministry were allowed to deliver the Friday sermons or teach religious classes in mosques.The ministry organizes a number of exams every year for those wishing to obtain such licenses. In 2015, a new law stipulated that unlicensed preachers who deliver the Friday sermons or teach religious courses in mosques shall be sentenced to imprisonment from three months to a year or pay a fine of 20,000-50,000 pounds ($1,238-3,097).
  • The Ministry of Religious Endowments also issued in 2016 a decision that the imams in the mosques deliver a unified Friday sermon.
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