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Ed Webb

Cagle Post » Brutal Government Crackdown Claims the Hands of Syrian Cartoonist - 0 views

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    Ferzat is featured extensively in Lisa Wedeen's Ambiguities of Domination
Ed Webb

Eyewitness Account of the Conditions in Evin and How Amir Javadifar Died - 0 views

  • They gave to all us a paper to write down our home addresses along with our emails and passwords.
  • Some times a guard would come in to the cell with his face covered and then would leave without saying a word.
  • The interrogator asked the question and we had to write down the answer on the paper. The questions included: what were you doing the day you were arrested; what do think of the election; what do you think of the protests and the demonstration?”
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  • here were some prisoners who were transferred from IRGC or Basij units and were in particullary bad shape. Following their arrests, they had been threatened to die with a gun on their heads. They were forced to repeat sit-ups until they fainted. Their condition had become so critical that some Basijis had protested their treatment.
  • I did not dare to call other prisoners after I was released. They said they would come after me if I tried to contact others. When I was walking out of gates a woman showed me a picture. I could not remember the face on the picture at the time because I was feeling very weak physically. A few days later I recalled seeing him in the Precinct 148. When I arrived in the UK I called them and was told that the person on that picture was Amir Javadifar and he had been martyred.”
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    Note the emphasis on communications - requirement to give up email addresses and passwords; being cut off from outside; false information.
Ed Webb

Huffington Post Op-Ed: Cairo Under Siege Ahead Of Obama's Speech at 3arabawy - 0 views

  • Republicans screw the Arabs. Democrats screw the Arabs, but with a smile,” is a popular saying among the dissidents’ circles in Egypt.
  • Even before his “historical speech” is delivered, Obama’s “mini-historical speeches” have been nothing but one slap after the other on the faces of human rights campaigners in the region. After conversing with the Saudi monarch, “yes we can” changed to “I’m struck by his majesty’s wisdom.” Will the next step be praising the public beheadings in the kingdom as an example of ideal justice?
  • Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt since 1981 with an iron fist, detention facilities, and a fearful security aparatus which is engaged in systematic torture of dissidents and ordinary Egyptian citizens, as documented by local and international rights watchdogs. He has always managed to get away with good coverage in the Western press, however, that tended to focus on his “moderate” (read: obedient to US foreign policy) role as “peacemaker” in the region, besides the archeological discoverings of the I-so-wanna-be-Indiana-Jones, also known as Mr. Zahi Hawas.
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  • the strongest wave of labor strike action since WWII.
  • the first free trade union in the history of Egypt was declared last December, by the property tax collectors who already went on a three month strike in 2007 bringing down tax collection by 90%. By the domino effect, a wave of free unions is brewing.
  • non-governmental actors like human rights NGOs, labor and trade unions, which we urge to extend their solidarity to their Egyptian brothers and sisters, and to pressure the US administration into severing all ties and funding to the Mubarak’s dictatorship, the second largest recipient of US foreign aid after Israel.
Ed Webb

Is the Egyptian media starting to hold Sisi to account? | Middle East Eye - 4 views

  • Since the 2013 coup, Egyptian news outlets have mostly served as pro-government propaganda tools, supporting the government right through its worst human rights violations.It may come as a surprise, then, that some Egyptian news coverage has started to take jabs at the government, including, at times, current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
  • Media personalities are beginning to hold Sisi’s government to account because government repression has started to hit closer to home.Most mainstream Egyptian media personalities are passionately anti-Islamist, and openly supported the 2013 coup that removed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi from office. For nearly three years, Egyptian journalists have been silent about human rights violations against Morsi’s Islamist supporters. At times, Egyptian media have openly supported mass killings, irregular trials and other transgressions.However, in recent weeks, the Sisi government has committed transgressions against non-Islamists, with whom Egyptian media personalities relate. Several prominent writers have been given jail sentences, the judiciary sentenced a toddler to life in prison, an Italian graduate student was tortured to death (most likely by Egyptian security forces), and doctors were roughed up by Egyptian police, among other disturbing violations.
  • For two years following the coup, both the Egyptian government and its obsequious media apparatus scapegoated the Brotherhood, blaming the group for myriad problems, including floods, power outages, and violence committed by ISIS.Given the time that has elapsed since the coup, and also the fact that the first several tiers of Brotherhood leadership are in jail, it is no longer plausible to blame the Brotherhood for many of the nation’s problems. As a natural course, Egyptians, including media figures, are beginning to turn their attention away from the Brotherhood and toward the government.
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  • Egypt’s political system is not, and has not been, absolutely authoritarian. In quasi-authoritarian states, journalists are often allotted some room to manoeuvre. Even under the Mubarak dictatorship, occasional criticism of the government was allowed, provided that certain “red lines” were not crossed
  • It remains highly unlikely, for instance, that journalists will attempt to critically examine the Egyptian military’s role in politics, or suggest that police should be held accountable for atrocities committed against the Muslim Brotherhood
  • the Sisi government is pushing back against the recent wave of criticism. In addition to the aforementioned arrests of writers, the government has arrested dozens of Facebook page administrators and, most recently, placed investigative journalist Hossam Bahgat on a no-fly list
  • n a reference to anti-government media coverage, Sisi condemned what he sees as attempts to bring down the government, saying he will “remove from the face of the earth” anyone who attempts to do so. In a direct reference to critical news coverage, Sisi instructed Egyptians to listen only to him, and avoid those who attack the government. Sisi shouted, “Please, do not listen to anyone but me! I am dead serious! Do not listen to anyone but me!”
Ed Webb

Denying the obvious in Egypt: Sisi regime fights back over Regeni's death - 0 views

  • The regime has also been engaging in some rather transparent diversionary tactics which, again, don't look like the actions of an innocent party. 
  • Apparently based on the time-honoured principle that nobody ever criticises Egypt unless paid to do so, claims also began circulating that the 588 MEPs who voted for the European parliament's resolution had been bribed to support it by the Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmed Moussa, the TV host who had earlier interviewed fake witness Mohammed Fawzi, suggested this on his show and others joined in – including Hamdy Bakhait (a prominent MP, conspiracy theorist and former army general). Egyptian blogger Zeinobia commmented: "I got tons of MPs' statements in my inbox full of similar claims." Meanwhile, the semi-official al-Ahram newspaper published an article telling readers how the European parliament had "fallen into the trap" of the Muslim Brotherhood.
  • Like social scientists, the Egyptian authorities developed theories for the explosion of popular unrest in 2011. While political scientists have emphasised the spontaneity, courage and agency of ordinary citizens ... Egyptian security forces believe that the unrest was steered by well-organized political forces capable of manipulating the average citizen for political ends ... In the United States, these views are often dismissed as classic authoritarian propaganda. However, my research suggests that such anxieties are real and inform the way the Egyptian regime perceives threats. In particular, they make security forces highly attentive to ties between “foreign elements” and “mobilisable” sectors of society. It is possible that Regeni’s research activities were misinterpreted as groundwork for preparing a new uprising. He had built ties with local actors, attended meetings with labour activists and spoke excellent Arabic — an essential skill for a researcher, yet one that unfortunately tends to raise suspicions. 
Ed Webb

Egypt calls for BBC boycott over 'biased coverage' - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

  • 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.
Ed Webb

The battle over the memory of Egypt's revolution | openDemocracy - 0 views

  • The once-embattled ancien regime is back with full force. Not only to consolidate its power in the present, but also to control the past. Yet, since the outbreak of the January 25 Revolution, besides the Islamists, two distinct communities were – and still are – in conflict, among other things, over the revolution’s nature and principles: the regime and the revolutionary activists. What follows is an exploration of these communities’ strategies to permeate the people’s collective consciousness and to enforce their own narratives of the revolution and its memory, across three different domains: Egypt’s public space; Egypt’s online sphere; and outside Egypt.
  • in the revolution’s early years, Egypt’s public space was representative of the young activists’ creativity and rebellion
  • Through graffiti on walls, images, texts and structures, the activists created from the country’s streets and squares memorials to keep the memory of the brave martyrs as well as the revolution’s ideals alive. Walls of Freedom, a 2014 book by Hamdy and Stone, offers thorough insights into the revolution and its artistic works. Young Egyptians’ independent cultural activities, including concerts and exhibitions, played a role in enhancing the historical narrative of the pro-revolution community.
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  • the activists’ 2012 campaign: Askar Kazeebon (Lying Military) whose modus operandi was to broadcast videos and documentaries to pedestrians that falsify the military’s accounts of various events and expose the soldiers’ crimes and human rights violations that official and regime-friendly media ignored
  • the military, Egypt’s central power, endeavoured to restrict the public space and erase the memory of the January 25 revolution. For this power knows that while memories are linked to the past, they determine how many Egyptians will perceive the future. The military pursued 1984’s Orwellian prophecy: ‘he who controls the past controls the future’.
  • the walls of revolutionary graffiti were repainted, CCTV cameras were installed in central spaces, and governmental offices were relocated away from the heart of Cairo
  • in dismantling the revolutionary symbols, the regime intended to construct a collective memory that excludes rival interpretations of events to its own. That is reminiscent to the Bahraini government’s destruction of Pearl Roundabout, the rallying point of the 2011 mass anti-government protests.
  • In November 2013, a few hours after Prime Minister Beblawi inaugurated it, protesters vandalised a memorial that the government built for ‘the martyrs of the revolution’. In his inaugurating speech, Beblawi referred to January 25 and June 30 ‘revolutions’ as well as the martyrs of the police and the army. That was interpreted by the protesters as another attempt to conflate the meanings and disrupt the image and the perceptions of the January 25 Revolution in the Egyptians’ collective consciousness
  • The unprecedented crackdown on dissent and the draconian laws that reportedly imprisoned tens of thousands of activists had prompted many to surrender the public space. Some are silent out of fear or disappointment. Others tried to put the memory of the revolution aside, so that they can go on with their own personal lives
  • Since the 2013 military coup, state and private media outlets – mostly controlled by the regime’s clientele – have kept glorifying the military’s role in recent years as well as defaming the revolution and activists as tools of the west to destroy Egypt
  • tech-savvy young activists already utilised memorialisation to foment the democratic uprising. We Are All Khalid Said, a Facebook page created to commemorate the 28-year old Khalid Said who was brutally tortured and killed by police, in 2010, became the January 25 protests’ virtual rallying point and main coordinator.
  • there are many initiatives to resist forgetting the revolution and silencing its voices. The most recent of which is Mosireen Collective’s 858 archive of resistance. In the Collective’s own words, the archive includes raw photographs, videos and documents that ‘present thousands of histories of revolt told from hundreds of perspectives. While the regime is using every resource to clamp down on public space and public memory the time has come to excavate and remember and re-present our histories.’
  • Wiki-Thawra whose slogan is ‘so we don’t forget’; UCLA’s Tahrir Documents; AUC’s University on the Square; and MIT’s 18 Days in Egypt.
  • After the 2013 military takeover, thousands involuntarily left the country to live in exile abroad. A minority among the exiled are still engaged in telling stories of the revolution and protesting al-Sisi government’s human rights violations and destruction of Egypt’s democratic hopes. Using art and satire, they continue to disturb the regime’s hegemonic revolution-defaming narratives.
  • it is still uncertain whether the regime has successfully dominated the Egyptian collective memory of the January 25 Revolution. That is because collective memory is not a static realm but rather a fluid construct that shapes – and is shaped by – current conditions and future aspirations.
Ed Webb

McGill Medal for journalistic courage awarded to AP reporting team for coverage in Yeme... - 0 views

  • A reporting team who shed light on the civil war in Yemen will receive the 2019 McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. Associated Press investigative reporter Maggie Michael, along with visual journalists Maad al-Zikry and Nariman el-Mofty, traveled across Yemen to cover the war, resulting in a series of stories that have shaped the world’s image of the war and the role of America’s allies in it. Many of the stories broke new revelations, such as torture in prisons run by U.S.-ally United Arab Emirates and the secret deals struck between the Saudi-led coalition and al-Qaida. Many of these deals have led to hundreds of militants incorporating into coalition forces to fight the rebels. Other stories brought home the personal struggles of Yemenis to survive.
  • “Journalism’s first loyalty is to citizens. In the face of militias and international powerhouses, these brave journalists were committed to citizens the rest of the world turned a blind eye to”
Ed Webb

Reuters article highlights ethical issues with native advertising - Columbia Journalism... - 0 views

  • native advertising—paid stories that look and feel like a publication’s own journalism
  • News providers got 20 percent of their ad revenues from native content in 2017, according to a global study of 148 publishers by the Native Advertising Institute and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. By 2021 executives expect that to increase to 36 percent
  • The piece is marked “sponsored” at the top, followed by a line identifying the content as “provided by” Thailand’s foreign ministry. A line at the end in smaller, fainter font states that the article was not produced by Reuters journalists. Reuters has a section on the homepage dedicated to sponsored content, and stories sponsored by the Thai government are mingled with news stories in Google search results about the topic. But research suggests that many are either oblivious to these disclaimers or do not know what they mean.
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  • “Typically somewhere between a tenth and a quarter of readers get that what they read was actually an advertisement.”
  • “the reason these advertorials exist is to fool at least some readers into thinking they are legitimate editorial content, or at least imbued with the rigor of Reuters reporting.”
  • “All Reuters Plus content on Reuters.com is clearly labeled to differentiate it from editorial content,”
  • One potential benefit of publishing a counter message on the same platform where the bad publicity originated, Wojdynski says, is having positive content appear alongside negative stories in search results.
  • the fact that Reuters itself has covered this issue makes the ad even more noteworthy than other paid stories. He notes that early last year the agency’s charitable arm, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, published pieces pointing out that traffickers were still forcing people into the seafood industry despite reforms. “Publishing this sponsored content without the conflicting context provided by Reuters’s own reporting on this issue seems pretty unethical to me,”
  • The commotion over the sponsored piece raises questions not just about the ethics of native advertising, but about news providers’ broader relationships with governments. Where and how should publications draw the line when taking money from governments? Should certain clients be completely off limits, and if so how does one decide which ones?
  • deciding which messages are harmful requires making political and moral judgements, even if they’re unacknowledged
Ed Webb

POMED Statement: Egypt Unjustly Detains Journalist in Another Example of Crackdown on F... - 0 views

  • POMED is increasingly concerned about the detention of Ahmed Gamal Ziada, and calls for his immediate and unconditional release. He was originally detained on January 29, 2019, after traveling from Tunis to Cairo in order to complete his membership in the Egyptian Press Syndicate. Upon arrival at the Cairo International Airport, Ziada was detained for two weeks without charge. He has since been accepted by the Syndicate as an official member.
  • If convicted, Ziada could face up to a year in prison.
  • yet another example of the Egyptian government’s ongoing crackdown on a free press, behavior that has earned it a Freedom House ranking of “Not Free” each year since 2013. Most recently, Egypt denied entry to New York Times correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick when he tried to enter the country on February 18. Prior to Ziada's detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists identified at least 25 journalists who were in prison as of December 2018, 19 on charges of “false news”—more than any other country in the world.
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  • Ziada was previously arrested by Egyptian authorities in December 2013 while filming arbitrary arrests prior to protests at al-Azhar University in Cairo. He was held in pre-trial detention for 16 months, where he was subjected to physical violence and torture. He was finally released in May 2015 after being acquitted of all charges. Later that year, Ziada was severely wounded when two unidentified individuals stabbed him repeatedly near the Cairo University metro station in an attack that Egyptian human rights groups widely believe was connected to his journalism.
Ed Webb

Why is the Egyptian state monopolizing the entertainment industry? | openDemocracy - 0 views

  • Egyptian television series that aired during the peak Ramadan season this year dramatically decreased by half from previous production volumes. Production restrictions and censorship in the most populous Arab country are on the rise, tough circumstances for the entertainment industry, exacerbated by a military-linked production company’s recent monopoly of soap operas. The move also raises concerns about whether a similar fate might be in the works for the film industry.
  • In late 2018, a memo circulated to industry professionals by state affiliate Egyptian Media Company (EMC) laid out a set of regulations making it virtually impossible for almost any production company asides from EMC sub arm Synergy Production to produce soap operas in the 2019 Ramadan season
  • “We have to understand why Synergy is gaining this much control…it’s also very clear that some series [this year] have an almost didactic direction, promoting particular ideas such as improving the image of police officers. Mandating which themes are to be discussed and which won’t be is not censorship, its indoctrination,” Aly Mourad, the CEO of Al Shorouk for Media Productions, tells Open Democracy. “I don’t think we’ve heard of this level of censorship since the time of [Former President] Nasser; it’s like we are going back 60 years in time.”
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  • “What I fear is that this pool of currently unemployed talent will switch careers, which will come at the longtime expense of the industry since these are trained professionals. I do not believe that the military [Synergy] sees this; they simply have one clear goal: to control the industry. The government has effectively, through the institutions it runs, carried out the first monopolization process in the history of neoliberalism.”
  • In June 2018, the authorities banned a film examining a love affair between a Muslim man and a Christian woman before it hit the cinemas, although director Khaled Youssef said he obtained the necessary licenses. The decision was later revoked, but was alarming to many given rising censorship levels
  • While over fifty shows typically aired during the peak Ramadan season, even during economically turbulent years as in 2017 and 2018, only twenty-four shows aired last Ramadan, and over two-thirds of them are produced by Synergy. Production powerhouses like El Adl Group and Beelink Productions were notably absent this season from their regular Ramadan run, while regionally acclaimed megastars like Yossra, Adel Imam and Laila Elwy uncharacteristically did not star in any shows during the peak season either, likely due to the dramatic, forced budget cuts which make casting an A-lister virtually impossible. Compensation levels for many of these lead faces could often be as high as EGP 50 million (~USD 3 million), the currently imposed budget cap for aggregate production costs of a Ramadan soap opera’s full season
  • “For a producer, the direct client of drama series is television channels, and several factors have negatively impacted their purchasing power. The GCC-owned channels are struggling in light of the economic difficulties there, primarily due to the war in Yemen, so the main overseas market for selling television series is not that great. Add to this that privately owned channels in Egypt were never highly profitable, and media budgets generally were slashed with Egypt’s high inflation levels [during the past couple of years], and you have a situation where many production companies are struggling to stay afloat.”
  • Over the course of the past year, EMC CEO Tamer Morsy also gradually gained majority ownership of key television networks such as CBC, ONTV, DMC and Al-Hayat, a move facilitated through the recent launch of EMC affiliate United Group for Media Services. Moreover, state-owned entities effectively gained control of both the production and purchasing sides of the business as these unprecedented levels of regulation and government ownership were put in place.
  • in early May United Group for Media Services launched paid streaming app WatchiT and prohibited the longtime convention of shows airing online on YouTube for those who couldn’t catch them on satellite television channels. Widely accessed streaming app EgyBest, among other free online streaming services, were also blocked to allegedly mitigate “piracy”, granting government intelligence-affiliated WatchiT a monopoly over streaming services. Since digital finance and financial inclusion levels are low in the most populous Arab country, the decision came to the dismay of throes of viewers regardless of political affiliations or regulation concerns. For those following television series on satellite channels, short broadcast announcements interrupt episodes to denounce a May 28 Human Rights Watch report on enforced disappearances, killings and torture in North Sinai. Other broadcasts order audiences to pay heed to “threats to terrorism and national security.”
  • “Because these people [Synergy and EMC] are military men, their mentality is to cut off what doesn’t work, with little concern for the consequences. The military don’t understand or love the arts; they see it as just another industry they can profit off by minimizing losses.”
  • “It’s understandable that they [the military] would be more concerned with penetrating television production as opposed to the cinema industry, because viewership numbers are higher for television series in comparison to films. Not everyone can afford a cinema ticket, but most Egyptians, be they rich or poor, have access to a television set. There’s nothing to stop them from gaining as much control of the film industry as they have with television, but I believe they’re not investing in it [as much] because it isn’t as lucrative,”
  • Saudi Arabia is once again opening cinema theaters following a 35-year ban, creating a significant potential box office market for Egyptian films, particularly since plans for the inauguration of 2,000 theatres in the kingdom before 2020 are in the works
  • our country was once the Hollywood of the Middle East,”
  • There was a time when everyone in the Arab world recognized Umm Kalthoum and Ismail Yassin, even more so than [our own president] Nasser. We need to work towards reestablishing that, and understanding how entertainment can be used as a tool for soft power
Ed Webb

China Expands Media Dominance in Africa - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

  • Liao Liang's mission in the Kenyan capital is hardly confidential: As a senior editor of the China Global Television Network (CGTN), a subsidiary of Chinese state television, his task is that of shining a positive light on his country's ambitious activities -- particularly those in Africa, where China's reputation has suffered as its footprint has grown.
  • "It's an apartheid system," he says, with the Chinese at the top, then the whites, then the blacks and at the very bottom are the Kenyans. "We have to let the Chinese go first in the restrooms and we're only allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 1 p.m., after they have eaten. They treat us like their inferiors." Sometimes, James M. says, he only receives half of his contractual editor's salary of 2,000 euros per month. He says he is penalized 2,000 shillings - around 17 euros - for every mistake in his stories, including typos.
  • CGTN journalists aren't just there to ward off criticism of China's expansion in Africa but also to break the West's media dominance. The broadcaster has a similar mission in Africa as Russia's state broadcaster RT does in Europe.
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  • According to one survey, the majority of Africans welcome the Chinese involvement, but critics, such as the Senegalese author Adama Gaye, have warned of a new form of colonialism
  • China has thrown its support behind diplomatic initiatives and has contributed around 2,500 troops to UN peacekeeping missions in Congo, South Sudan and Mali. China is also helping with efforts to combat the Ebola epidemic and it even funded the construction of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa. The country has also established 49 Confucius Institutes across the continent, which promote the Chinese language and culture. At the heart of China's Going Out policy is a media offensive launched in March 2018, an initiative coordinated by the broadcast group Voice of China and carefully monitored by Communist Party censors. In addition, the state-run news agency Xinhua was expanded and now claims to be the largest news wire in the world.
  • Every year, 1,000 African journalists take part in training programs in China and Chinese investors have been investing heavily in African media outlets. The TV station StarTimes now broadcasts its paid offerings in 30 African countries and declares itself to be the most influential digital channel on the continent.
  • it is the only television station in the world that broadcasts in all six official UN languages. It has 79 million Facebook followers, which is roughly as many as the BBC and CNN combined
  • CGTN employs around 150 people, including journalists from China, South Africa, Britain, Nigeria and Kenya, yet even when promised anonymity, nobody initially agreed to speak with DER SPIEGEL. "They're afraid of Liao," an employee would later say.
  • "We don't produce independent journalism, but pure propaganda by order of the Communist Party." He says the goal is that of presenting the most harmonious image possible of China's activities in Africa, including construction sites full of smiling workers and positive coverage of massive endeavors like dams and other mega-projects along with humanitarian aid contributions.
  • He shows a text message that he recently received from the boss: "No reports on the chaos!" The reference was to political disturbances in a country in Africa.
  • particularly sensitive texts have to be reviewed in Beijing and if the censors disapprove, the stories are killed. "Criticism of the government, human rights issues or analysis of the growing amount of African debt held by the Chinese are all taboo,"
  • In September, the journalist Azad Essa reported on China's oppression of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China, and was fired afterward. His employer, Independent Media, is the second-largest media outlet in South Africa. And since 2013, a Chinese investor has held a 20-percent stake
  • "We have good relations with the Chinese, even if they would rather stick to themselves." Mwaura is a 40-year-old Kenyan reporter who works for the Xinhua news agency and his view of the situation is much less dark. He believes that local media outlets poison relations with the Chinese because they don't understand Chinese culture and are still under the influence of British colonial attitudes. Mwaura says China's involvement in Africa is a win-win scenario that helps bring the continent forward. Claims that China is conquering Africa, he says, are just "stupid chatter" from bloggers who are on the payroll of Western embassies. He views his task as that of providing more optimistic coverage to counter such "negativity."
  • Mwaura says he can write about whatever he wants, but adds that his supervisors ensure that reports are "politically correct," meaning that they reflect the communist worldview. After all, he says, "we are working on behalf of the geopolitical interests of the Chinese state."
Ed Webb

Syrian Kurdish journalist killed in Turkish airstrike on civilian convoy - Committee to... - 0 views

  • The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the Turkish air strike on a civilian convoy that killed journalist Saad Ahmed and injured at least four other reporters.
  • According to a report by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, five other civilians were killed in the strike.
  • Assad’s government has been responsible for the deaths of numerous journalists by torture, missile strikes, and targeted assassinations, according to CPJ reporting. Turkey is the world’s worst jailer of journalists, according to CPJ’s 2018 prison census.
Ed Webb

Egypt: Open letter to President-elect Biden and Vice-President-elect Harris - Cairo Ins... - 0 views

  • Referring to President Sisi as “my favorite dictator,” President Trump and his administration have condoned the Egyptian government’s persistent and grave violations of human rights.  The tragedy for Egyptians is that President Sisi has taken these patronizing and demeaning words as a compliment, and has spent the last four years living up to his reputation as a dictator.
  • your pledge that there will be “no more blank checks for Trump’s ‘favorite dictator’.”
  • should release the tens of thousands of prisoners held after grossly unfair trials, or without adequate procedural safeguards
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  • we advise you to set specific benchmarks for a drastic improvement in the Sisi government’s human rights practices according to Egypt’s international obligations, and according to the fundamental standards and principles to which you will expect a partner adheres
  • should end its sustained crackdown on independent civil society organizations, including human rights organizations.
  • should end institutional discrimination against religious minorities
  • should stop using the pretext of combatting terrorism to justify and legitimize grave violations of human rights including disappearances, extrajudicial killing and widespread torture
  • must enable local and international journalists to conduct their journalistic work freely and publish freely on its counterterrorism operations in parts of the country, like Sinai, that have become information black holes
  • should end its restrictions on media freedoms that have resulted in the closure of independent news outlets, the jailing and prosecution of journalists, and the banning of websites
Ed Webb

U.S. Needs to Look Beyond Russia for Disinformation Culprits | Time - 0 views

  • Russian disinformation may come first to mind for interfering in U.S. politics, but some of the most damning evidence of efforts to influence the American public leads to Washington’s allies in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are at the forefront of undermining democratic deliberation–from manipulating the impact of Donald Trump’s tweets, to tricking editors across the world into publishing propaganda.
  • The FBI in 2019 found evidence that employees at Twitter’s San Fransciso headquarters, groomed with bribes such as luxury watches, were co-ordinating with members of the Saudi royal family to obtain private information from Twitter users. In August 2022, a jury found one of these men guilty. Two others couldn’t be tried because they were in Saudi Arabia.
  • 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.
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  • One of the most audacious deception operations appeared to be connected to the UAE. Between 2019 and 2021, op-eds that supported the foreign policy position of the UAE, Saudi, and the U.S. administration under Trump began appearing in numerous well-known U.S. outlets, such as Newsmax, The National Interest, The Post Millennial and the Washington Examiner. The catch: The journalists writing them did not actually exist.
  • 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.
Ed Webb

Opinion | Ghada Oueiss: I won't be silenced by online attacks and trolling - The Washin... - 0 views

  • Although I was the target of this latest assault — no doubt because I regularly present critical reporting about Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the message to journalists across the Middle East is very clear: Don’t criticize the crown princes.
    • Ed Webb
       
      Intimidation to induce self-censorship
  • There has been a disturbing rise in gender-related harassment and threats against female public figures. The movement for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia has terrified the government, which has insisted on doling out reforms on its own terms while detaining the female activists behind the movement. Loujain al-Hathloul, the most prominent of the Saudi women campaigners, and several others remain behind bars.
  • Last Friday, a Turkish court began hearings on Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder — a stark reminder that justice has still not been served two years on. Jamal himself once warned me to ignore and block these Twitter accounts. Even though the man widely believed to be responsible for Jamal’s murder may never be held to account, we must not let him and those who work for him imperil one of the fundamental pillars of a free society — a free press.
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  • Twitter and other social media sites must take action to protect journalists such as myself and ensure that its platform is no longer misused by authoritarian regimes.
Ed Webb

Tunisia's first LGBTQ play lifts curtain on hidden violence - 0 views

  • It's the first queer play to be staged in Tunisia -- director Essia Jaibi's latest work aims to challenge conservative attitudes in a country where same-sex acts are punishable by prison terms.
  • The work, co-produced by LGBTQ rights group Mawjoudin (translating to "we exist"), is played by six mostly amateur actors aged between 23 and 71, reflecting a decades-long struggle for gay rights in the North African country
  • Tunisia is seen as relatively liberal on social issues compared with other Arab countries, but nevertheless imposes sentences of up to three years in prison for "sodomy" for both men and women
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  • rights groups say the community is still vulnerable, with as little as a photo on a telephone potentially leading to arrest, physical violence and anal examinations.
  • The NGO also organised Tunisia's first queer cinema festival in 2018.
  • other problems facing all Tunisians: police and judicial corruption, impunity and the brain drain as people leave to seek better economic prospects in Europe and elsewhere.
  • Rights groups are continuing to campaign for an end to Article 230, first introduced by French colonial administrators in 1913.
  • United Nations Committee Against Torture has condemned Tunisia's use of anal tests
  • The country in 2017 committed to ending the practice, but it has continued nonetheless.In December, two men were found guilty of same-sex acts after they refused to undergo such examinations -- seen by judges as proof of their guilt.
  • The Tunisian president, whose July power grab allowed him to issue laws and seize control of the judiciary, has said he is opposed to jail terms based on sexual orientation -- but also to the full decriminalisation of homosexuality.
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