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What it's like to be a foreign journalist in Turkey - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Midd... - 1 views

www.al-monitor.com/...sidency-becomes-difficult.html Turkey media journalists propaganda censorship
shared by Ed Webb on 18 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A male journalist from Europe who has lived in Ankara for the last five years told Al-Monitor, “In the beginning, the toughest challenge was to survive the amount of food I was forced to eat because of the Turkish hospitality. In 2012 and 2013, the situation changed drastically and more and more often I had to cover street demonstrations and violent protests. Until that time the biggest danger I faced was being trampled by wrestling camels. After that it became normal to deal with tear gas, water cannons, plastic bullets and stones hurled by protesters. Nowadays, the biggest challenge is to be able to report in an environment where self-censorship is a constant danger and whoever disagrees with what you write or objects to the photos you take thinks you are against them. It is also very hard to obtain interviews, especially from ordinary people who seem to be afraid of talking with a foreigner.”
  • “Writing about Turkish politics is becoming increasingly a dangerous occupation. Several government officials who agree to talk demand they would like to preview the piece prior to publication. One MHP [Nationalist Action Party] official asked me to kill a piece because it included a section on the HDP [Peoples' Democratic Party]. He said his name could not appear in the international press with the names of the terrorists. There are plenty of capricious examples that turn proper reporting into an impasse.”
  • There is an increasingly sophisticated government propaganda apparatus — directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP — and they often point their guns at anyone even nominally critical of the AKP or [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan. Sometimes they are nice — always looking for gullible foreigners to convert to the cause, but they can also be incredibly vicious
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  • it seems like certain sources, namely academics, are a bit less likely to talk lately, which, if true, means the government has successfully accomplished its goal of silencing some of its most credible critics. More generally, the political situation has gotten much, much worse, and most of my Turkish and Kurdish friends have either been further radicalized or have simply given up and withdrawn from politics and following the news. There's a great feeling of helplessness. It's an exciting life for a journalist, but it's also just incredibly sad and often seemingly hopeless
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The Syrians are watching - Features - Al Jazeera English - 2 views

english.aljazeera.net/...2011129132243891877.html Syria Egypt protests #jan25 internet socialmedia facebook censorship
shared by Ed Webb on 03 Feb 11 - No Cached
  •  text messages buzzed between mobiles in quick succession, drawing woops of joy and thumbs up from astonished Syrians
  • "Perhaps the Saudis will have to build a whole village for Arab presidents once they run out of villas," joked a taxi driver
  • the usual babble of conversation was subdued as customers sat quietly but intently watching the TV broadcasting images of flames pouring from Egypt's ruling party's head office, a Soviet-era building much like many of those that house the state institutions in their own capital
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  • now people are simply looking for their personal freedom, for food, education, a good life. The days of ideology are over
  • Syria's state-run media quoted some news reports from Cairo, but offered no comment or analysis on the situation. By Saturday morning life had returned to normal with few signs, on the surface at least, that the authorities were concerned about potential unrest. Socialising by proxy Online, however, it was a different story. Internet users reported a significant slowdown in the web, with searches for news on Egypt often crashing browsers. Heavy user traffic could be an explanation but in Syria, where thousands of websites deemed opposed to state interests are blocked and where Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media are banned, authorities denied accusations they had restricted the service to prevent citizens hearing about events in Cairo.
  • authorities banned programmes that allow access to Facebook Chat from mobile phones, a cheap and easy means of staying in touch that had exploded in popularity among young Syrians
  • surfing the web at an internet cafe
  • thousands of young Syrians adept at using proxy servers to get around the official ban on Faceboo
  • President Bashar al-Assad, who opened Syria up to the internet when he succeeded his late father in 2000, has his own Facebook page
  • All across Damascus, symbols of a burgeoning middle class are spreading, from a sleek sandstone shopping mall, home to Costa Coffee and a bright new art gallery, to the Lebanese banks opening sparkling new branches for the first time. But as the young doctor put it, looking up at the cameras inside the internet cafe: "Everything here is under control, even if it looks open."
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Exporting Jihad - The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...the-fall-after-the-arab-spring Tunisia jihad Salafism Salafists ennahda politics youth generations policing police authoritarianism transition
shared by Ed Webb on 28 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • A friend of Mohamed’s, an unemployed telecommunications engineer named Nabil Selliti, left Douar Hicher to fight in Syria. Oussama Romdhani, who edits the Arab Weekly in Tunis, told me that in the Arab world the most likely radicals are people in technical or scientific fields who lack the kind of humanities education that fosters critical thought. Before Selliti left, Mohamed asked him why he was going off to fight. Selliti replied, “I can’t build anything in this country. But the Islamic State gives us the chance to create, to build bombs, to use technology.” In July, 2013, Selliti blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Iraq.
  • Tourism, one of Tunisia’s major industries, dropped by nearly fifty per cent after June 26th last year, when, on a beach near the resort town of Sousse, a twenty-three-year-old student and break-dancing enthusiast pulled an automatic weapon out of his umbrella and began shooting foreigners; he spared Tunisian workers, who tried to stop him. The terrorist, who had trained at an Islamic State camp in Libya, killed thirty-eight people, thirty of them British tourists, before being shot dead by police.
  • “The youth are lost,” Kamal told me. “There’s no justice.” Douar Hicher, he said, “is the key to Tunisia.” He continued, “If you want to stop terrorism, then bring good schools, bring transportation—because the roads are terrible—and bring jobs for young people, so that Douar Hicher becomes like the parts of Tunisia where you Westerners come to have fun.”
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  • he condemned the Sousse massacre and a terrorist attack in March, 2015, at Tunisia’s national museum, the Bardo, where three gunmen killed two dozen people. The victims were innocents, he said. Kamal still entertained a fantasy of joining a reformed police force. His knowledge of Islam was crude, and his allegiance to isis seemed confused and provisional—an expression of rage, not of ideology. But in Douar Hicher anger was often enough to send young people off to fight
  • “Maybe it’s the Tunisian nature—we like risk,” a former jihadi told me. A million Tunisians live and work in Europe. “A lot of drug dealers are Tunisian; many smugglers of goods between Turkey and Greece are Tunisian; a lot of human traffickers in Belgrade are Tunisian. Online hackers—be careful of the Tunisians, there’s a whole network of them.”
  • “The radical narrative tells you that whatever you’ve learned about Islam is wrong, you have to discard it—we have the new stuff. The old, traditional, moderate Islam doesn’t offer you the adventure of the isis narrative. It doesn’t offer you the temptation to enjoy, maybe, your inner savagery. isis offers a false heaven for sick minds.”
  • Democracy didn’t turn Tunisian youths into jihadis, but it gave them the freedom to act on their unhappiness. By raising and then frustrating expectations, the revolution created conditions for radicalization to thrive. New liberties clashed with the old habits of a police state—young Tunisians were suddenly permitted to join civic and political groups, but the cops harassed them for expressing dissent. Educated Tunisians are twice as likely to be unemployed as uneducated ones, because the economy creates so few professional jobs. A third of recent college graduates can’t find work. Frustration led young people to take to the streets in 2011; a similar desperate impulse is now driving other young people toward jihad.
  • the factors that drive young men and women to adopt Salafi jihadism are diverse and hard to parse: militants reach an overwhelmingly reductive idea by complex and twisted paths. A son of Riyadh grows up hearing Salafi preaching in a state-sanctioned mosque and goes to Syria with the financial aid of a Saudi businessman. A young Sunni in Falluja joins his neighbors in fighting American occupation and “Persian”—Shiite—domination. A Muslim teen-ager in a Paris banlieue finds an antidote to her sense of exclusion and spiritual emptiness in a jihadi online community. Part of the success of isis consists in its ability to attract a wide array of people and make them all look, sound, and think alike.
  • Souli wasn’t sure what should be done with returned jihadis, but, like nearly everyone I met, he spoke of the need for a program of rehabilitation for those who come back. No such program exists
  • In its eagerness to modernize, the Ben Ali regime encouraged widespread access to satellite television and the Internet. The sermons of Islamist firebrands from the Gulf, such as the Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, entered the homes of Tunisians who felt smothered by official secularism. Oussama Romdhani, who was a senior official under Ben Ali—he was referred to as the “propaganda minister”—told me, “Radicals were able to use these tools of communication to recruit and disseminate the narrative, and they did it quite efficiently.”
  • Around 2000, the Tunisian Combat Group, an Al Qaeda affiliate, emerged in Afghanistan, dedicating itself to the overthrow of the Tunisian government. One of its founders, Tarek Maaroufi, provided false passports to two Tunisians who, allegedly on instructions from Osama bin Laden, travelled to northern Afghanistan posing as television journalists and assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Afghan mujahideen commander, on September 9, 2001. The Combat Group’s other leader, known as Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, was an Al Qaeda commander; when the Americans overthrew the Taliban, in late 2001, he escaped from Tora Bora with bin Laden, only to be arrested in Turkey, in 2003, and extradited to Tunisia. (Sentenced to forty-three years in prison, he seized the chance to radicalize his fellow-prisoners.)
  • Why can’t the police do their job and stop the terrorists but let the smugglers go with a bribe?
  • revolution opened up a space that Salafis rushed to fill. There were a lot more of them than anyone had realized—eventually, tens of thousands. In February, 2011, Tunisia’s interim government declared an amnesty and freed thousands of prisoners, including many jihadis. Among them was Abu Iyadh al-Tunisi, the co-founder of the Tunisian Combat Group. Within two months, he had started Ansar al-Sharia.
  • Walid was vague about his reasons for returning to Tunisia. He mentioned a traumatic incident in which he had seen scores of comrades mowed down by regime soldiers outside Aleppo. He also pointed to the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in April, 2013, which soon engaged in bitter infighting with the Nusra Front. Walid spoke of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the Islamic State, with the personal hatred that Trotskyists once expressed for Stalin. He accused isis of destroying the Syrian resistance and helping the Assad regime. He believed that isis was created by Western powers to undermine Al Qaeda and other true jihadi groups.
  • these aged men from the two Tunisias—Essebsi a haughty remnant of the Francophile élite, Ghannouchi the son of a devout farmer from the provinces—began a series of largely secret conversations, and set Tunisia on a new path. In January, 2014, Ennahdha voluntarily handed over the government to a regime of technocrats. Ghannouchi had put his party’s long-term interests ahead of immediate power. A peaceful compromise like this had never happened in the region. Both old men had to talk their followers back from the brink of confrontation, and some Ennahdha activists regarded Ghannouchi’s strategy as a betrayal.
  • To many Tunisians, Nidaa Tounes feels like the return of the old regime: some of the same politicians, the same business cronies, the same police practices. The Interior Ministry is a hideous seven-story concrete structure that squats in the middle of downtown Tunis, its roof bristling with antennas and satellite dishes, coils of barbed wire barring access from the street. The ministry employs eighty thousand people. There is much talk of reforming Tunisia’s security sector, with the help of Western money and training. (The U.S., seeing a glimmer of hope in a dark region, recently doubled its aid to Tunisia.) But the old habits of a police state persist—during my time in Tunis, I was watched at my hotel, and my interpreter was interrogated on the street.
  • The inhabitants of Kasserine, however neglected by the state, were passionate advocates for their own rights. They had played a central role in the overthrow of the dictatorship, staging some of the earliest protests after Bouazizi’s self-immolation. In every coffee shop, I was told, half the conversations were about politics. Although Kasserine is a recruiting area for jihadis, Tunisia’s wealthy areas are so remote that the town felt less alienated than Douar Hicher and Ben Gardane.
  • “You feel no interest from the post-revolutionary governments in us here. People feel that the coastal areas, with twenty per cent of the people, are still getting eighty per cent of the wealth. That brings a lot of psychological pressure, to feel that you’re left alone, that there’s no horizon, no hope.”
  • The old methods of surveillance are returning. In the center of Kasserine, I met an imam named Mahfoud Ben Deraa behind the counter of the hardware store he owns. He had just come back from afternoon prayers, but he was dressed like a man who sold paint. “I might get kicked out of the mosque, because last Friday’s sermon was something the government might not like,” the imam told me. He had preached that, since the government had closed mosques after terror attacks, “why, after an alcoholic killed two people, didn’t they close all the bars?” To some, this sounded like a call for Sharia, and after informers reported him to the police the governor’s office sent him a warning: “In the course of monitoring the religious activities and the religious institutions of the region, I hereby inform you that several violations have been reported.” The imam was ordered to open the mosque only during hours of prayer and to change the locks on the main doors to prevent unsupervised use. The warning seemed like overreach on the part of the state—the twitching of an old impulse from the Ben Ali years.
  • “I never thought I would repeat the same demands as five years ago. The old regime has robbed our dreams.”
  • According to the Tunisian Interior Ministry, a hundred thousand Tunisians—one per cent of the population—were arrested in the first half of 2015. Jihadi groups intend their atrocities to provoke an overreaction, and very few governments can resist falling into the trap.
  • New democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe and Asia have had to struggle with fragile institutions, corruption, and social inequity. Tunisia has all this, plus terrorism and a failed state next door.
  • Ahmed told himself, “If I pray and ask for divine intervention, maybe things will get better.” Praying did not lead him to the moderate democratic Islam of Ennahdha. His thoughts turned more and more extreme, and he became a Salafi. He quit smoking marijuana and grew his beard long and adopted the ankle-length robe called a qamis. He un-friended all his female friends on Facebook, stopped listening to music, and thought about jihad. On Internet forums, he met jihadis who had been in Iraq and gave him suggestions for reading. Ahmed downloaded a book with instructions for making bombs. In the period of lax security under Ennahdha, he fell in with a radical mosque in Tunis. He was corresponding with so many friends who’d gone to Syria that Facebook deactivated his account. Some of them became leaders in the Islamic State, and they wrote of making thirty-five thousand dollars a year and having a gorgeous European wife or two. Ahmed couldn’t get a girlfriend or buy a pack of cigarettes.
  • “Dude, don’t go!” Walid said when they met on the street. “It’s just a trap for young people to die.” To Walid, Ahmed was exactly the type of young person isis exploited—naïve, lost, looking for the shortest path to Heaven. Al Qaeda had comparatively higher standards: some of its recruits had to fill out lengthy application forms in which they were asked to name their favorite Islamic scholars. Walid could answer such questions, but they would stump Ahmed and most other Tunisian jihadis.
  • “We need to reform our country and learn how to make it civilized,” he said. “In Tunisia, when you finish your pack of cigarettes, you’ll throw it on the ground. What we need is an intellectual revolution, a revolution of minds, and that will take not one, not two, but three generations.”
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How a diplomatic crisis among Gulf nations led to fake news campaign in the United States - 0 views

www.pri.org/...ke-news-campaign-united-states GCC KSA Saudi UAE Bahrain Qatar US USA Trump propaganda media
shared by Ed Webb on 30 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • it’s not just Kremlin-produced disinformation that Americans may have stumbled upon recently. Browsing Facebook and Twitter — and even just perusing the magazine rack at their local Walmart — they may have also been exposed to propaganda supporting the ambitious goals of two oil-rich Arab Gulf countries
  • when Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched a boycott and blockade of the tiny peninsula state of Qatar last year, organizations with ties to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi tried something new: They worked to sway American public opinion through online and social media campaigns, bringing a complicated, distant conflict among three Washington allies to US shores
  • As they took steps against Doha, Saudi Arabia and the UAE also initiated propaganda efforts in the US aimed at weakening Washington’s alliance with Qatar — which hosts the largest American military base in the Middle East — while also enhancing their own images.
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  • The Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC), a pro-Saudi lobby group not officially tied to the Saudi government, paid $2.6 million last year to the now-defunct, Washington-based lobbying firm the Podesta Group for public affairs services that included running the anti-Qatar website and its associated social media properties
  • Along with painting Qatar as a terror-friendly nation, The Qatar Insider encouraged the US to remove its Al Udeid Air Base, which is home to the forward headquarters of the US Central Command, from Qatar and lobbied against Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup.
  • Last fall, a film billed as an “educational documentary” called “Qatar: A Dangerous Alliance” appeared online and was distributed to guests at an event hosted by the conservative Hudson Institute that featured Steve Bannon, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump and the ex-chairman of Breitbart News
  • when Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, visited the US in March, a magazine bearing his face and celebrating his reign appeared at 200,000 outlets across the country. The Saudi Embassy denied knowledge of the magazine, and the company that published it, National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., denied receiving guidance from the Saudis. Citing employees of American Media Inc, The New York Times later reported that the magazine was an attempt by the publisher’s CEO to win business in Saudi Arabia. Still, there was evidence that the Saudi Embassy and advisers to the Saudi royal family had received advanced copies of the publication, hinting that they were involved in its creation and fawning tone
  • Seeing Trump’s hostility toward Iran mirroring their own, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were eager to strengthen their relationship with the former reality TV host when he took office, despite his harsh campaign-trail criticisms of Islam and Saudis (who, he once said, “want women as slaves and to kill gays”). In May, The New York Times reported that an emissary of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, held a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. ahead of the 2016 elections offering their support to Trump as well as social media help in winning the election.
  • “If you asked the average American about the Gulf and they see these commercials, they will not be able to tell the difference,” he said. “And for those who do know the difference, they will remember that Saudi Arabia, not Qatar, had its citizens participating in the 9/11 attacks.”
  • Qatar — or, at best, its friends — has been involved in the hacking and leaking of emails designed to embarrass the UAE and reveal its role in trying to influence the Trump campaign. Qatar has increased its spending on lobbyists while also trying to soften its image by wooing American Jewish groups, including the Zionist Organization of America, which previously called for Qatar to be listed as a state sponsor of terrorism. And in May, Qatar flexed its soft power muscles when it offered to pay to keep the Washington, DC, metro open after a Capitals playoff game.
  • “Instead of saying one country is better than the other, everyone looks really, really horrible,” he said. “It really raises questions about what kind of partners these countries are for the United States.”
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Turkey escalates crackdown on dissent six years after Gezi protests | Reuters - 0 views

af.reuters.com/...idAFKCN1R00DL Turkey authoritarianism occupygezi Erdogan protests law
shared by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • the people originally prosecuted over the 2013 protests - which began against the redevelopment of central Istanbul’s Gezi Park and grew into nationwide anti-government unrest - were acquitted.
  • But in November, Yigit Aksakoglu was detained and is now facing trial with 15 other civil society figures, writers and actors. For a while Aksakoglu’s family hoped he would soon be released, but then on March 4, a 657-page indictment was released saying they had masterminded an attempt to overthrow Erdogan’s government.
  • Supporters of the detainees say the indictment contains no evidence and many bizarre accusations, and marks a new low for a country where 77,000 people already been jailed in a crackdown following a failed military coup in 2016.
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  • assertions that rights groups have dismissed as fanciful conspiracies. It says the protests were organised by local extensions of “forces which control global capital”, singling out billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Erdogan has vilified Soros as “the famous Hungarian Jew ... who assigns people to divide nations”. The indictment says the “Gezi Uprising” was fuelled by Osman Kavala, a well-known civil society leader and businessman who has been in jail since October 2017. A picture from Kavala’s phone taken from an academic book showing how different types of bees are distributed across the Middle East was described in the indictment as showing Turkey’s borders violated and redrawn. It said the fact that defendants discussed bringing milk, juice and pastries to Gezi, as well as gasmasks to counter the effects of tear gas, showed they were financing the protests.
  • The demonstrations, the indictment says, were inspired by the worldwide “Occupy” protests and Arab uprisings starting in 2011 and a book by Boston-based academic Gene Sharp called ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’. The indictment cites Gezi protest acts that matched Sharp’s non-violent protest methods, such as Roger Waters’ “The Wall” concert in Istanbul in August 2013 when photos of people killed in the protests were displayed on a huge stage backdrop.
  • the request for life sentences without parole represented a “massive escalation” in Turkey’s crackdown on civil society. “What we are facing is an existential crisis for independent civil society in Turkey,” he said. “It is a blatant attempt to scare and pursue critics on completely trumped-up, fanciful conspiracy theories.”
  • “You hold these people responsible for all the windows that were broken in June 2013... but provide no evidence. This is not something that can be done legally,”
  • Istanbul Bilgi University law professor Yaman Akdeniz said the indictment lacked legal detail and reasoning, with only 1-1/2 pages of legal issues in the 657-page document. “Basically, it is shambolic and if it was written by one of my law students, he or she would get a clear F mark,” he said.
  • investigation was originally launched by prosecutor Muammer Akkas, himself now a fugitive accused of membership of what Ankara terms a terrorist group led by U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, which Ankara blames for the failed 2016 coup.
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Egypt tightens restrictions on media, social networks - 0 views

apnews.com/40f1133267485db356db1e58db985b Egypt censorship internet media publishers journalists syndicate
shared by Ed Webb on 20 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Egypt’s top media regulator on Tuesday put into effect tighter restrictions that allow the state to block websites and even social media accounts with over 5,000 followers if they are deemed a threat to national security.The move is the latest step by the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to suppress dissent. In recent years, Egypt has launched an unprecedented crackdown on reporters and the media, imprisoning dozens and occasionally expelling some foreign journalists.The new regulations, published in the official gazette late Monday, allow the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block websites and accounts for “fake news,” and impose stiff penalties of up to 250,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,400), all without having to obtain a court order.
  • Mohamed Abdel-Hafiz, a board member of the journalists’ union, said the government is threatening journalists with “vaguely defined national security violations, as well as vaguely defined political, social or religious norms.”
  • a broad list of prohibited topics, including “anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred.”
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  • Since late 2017, some 500 websites including news outlets and rights groups have been blocked, according to a recent report by an Egyptian watchdog group, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.
  • Egypt remains among the world’s worst jailers of journalists, behind China and Turkey, according to the press freedom group the Committee to Protect Journalists.
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Egypt Update: New Media Regulations Enforced Within Days - 0 views

mailchi.mp/...egypt-daily-update-845281 Egypt media censorship newspaper Sisi constitution
shared by Ed Webb on 25 Mar 19 - Cached
  • New Media Regulations Enforced Within Days: On March 21, the Supreme Media Regulatory Council issued its first penalty for violating the new bylaws regulating the media that were introduced last week against Al-Mashhad newspaper. According to Al-Mashhad’s Editor in Chief Magdy Shendy, the newspaper was fined 50,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,890) and will be blocked by Egyptian internet providers for six months for “violations of ‘public morals,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘written traditions’” for a “pornographic picture” and “offensive comments” related to coverage of a female TV presenter. Shendy argues, however, that “the only reason for the decision is our [Al-Mashhad’s] stance on the constitutional amendments,” which would allow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to stay in power until at least 2034. According to Mada Masr, Al-Mashhad published [Ar] a report documenting police officers bribing Egyptians with Ramadan meals in exchange for votes in the expected referendum on the amendments. The new media regulations enable the Supreme Media Regulatory Council to block and fine websites and social media accounts it believes has published “offending material” including “anything inciting violating the law, public morals, racism, intolerance, violence, discrimination between citizens or hatred.”
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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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In pictures: Uncovering the art from Syria's war | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...emory-of-the-syrian-revolution Syria war civil_war art archive
shared by Ed Webb on 30 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • In 2013 Sana Yazigi, a Syrian graphic designer from Damascus, launched the online archive The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, consisting of works created by Syrian artists during the uprising
  • "From the early days of the revolution," Yazigi says, "I was amazed to witness an incredible outpouring of artworks. I didn’t want them all to disappear, to be forgotten. I wanted to keep a record. There was a sense of urgency, a need to document what was going on."
  • The website documents paintings, music, graffiti, videos and cartoons among others, constituting an exceptional wartime archive. 
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  • Even today, we are still discovering works which were never made public at the time, for fear of reprisals
  • “Ultimately, we’d like to see our archive enter the national archives, because once the war is over, the history of the revolution must be given back to the people of Syria. The archive is part of our collective memory. The revolution has brought about clear social and historical changes”.
  • there is also a book and a travelling exhibition. The Story of a Place, the Story of a People, 2011-2015 is a collection of words and images retracing the uprising in each of 50 locations. The text describes the early days of the revolutionary movement, as well as the dynamic forces that would see it spread.
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Turkish media divided on elections: A 'yellow card' for Erdogan or a victory? | Middle ... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...yellow-card-erdogan-or-victory Turkey media AKP Erdogan TV television newspapers politics
shared by Ed Webb on 01 Apr 19 - Cached
  • Turkey's media appears to be as divided as the wider country by the outcome of Sunday's local elections, with pro-government newspapers claiming victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even as opposition commentators said that the electorate had handed him a "yellow card".
  • the opposition’s “Nation Alliance”, made up of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and the nationalist IYI party, proved resilient against the government's candidates and reclaimed key territories that have been under the control of Erdogan-affiliated parties for more than two decades
  • Sabah, which is owned by an Erdogan supporter and considered to be close to the government, described the election results as “Erdogan’s 15th victory,” referring to the president's string of election victories over the course of three decades in which the AKP has established itself as the dominant force in Turkish politics.
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  • Sozcu, Turkey’s bestselling opposition paper with a secularist and nationalist outlook, hailed the opposition winning control of Ankara for the first time in 25 years, and called the contested results in Istanbul “like an April Fools’ Day joke".
  • A notable analysis by the newspaper was the CHP’s success in moving beyond coastal areas and winning provinces in heartland Anatolia, once considered the AKP's powerbase.
  • Leftist daily Birgun had a bold front page headline, saying “People said 'halt' to pressure, violence and threats” by the government.
  • The paper also featured a story on the victory of Turkey’s first-ever communist city mayor in Tunceli. Interestingly, the conservative Star daily’s columnist Ardan Zenturk also hailed communist mayor Fatih Mehmet Macoglu for his courage.
  • television viewing figures suggested that many viewers had turned to Fox TV, one of the few private news channels to take a critical stance towards the government, for their election night coverage, with six of the night's most watched programmes screening on the network.
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Netanyahu launches own TV channel to bypass mainstream media - Middle East Monitor - 0 views

www.middleeastmonitor.com/nel-to-bypass-mainstream-media Israel politics elections Netanyahu Likud media Facebook TV television
shared by Ed Webb on 04 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • Benjamin Netanyahu has launched his own TV channel to bypass mainstream media and ensure positive coverage ahead of the upcoming General Election. “Likud TV” was launched yesterday on the Israeli Prime Minister’s official Facebook page and will air every evening at 19:00 local time (17:00 GMT) until the election on 9 April. Sporting the slogan “we’re throwing the ‘fake’ out of the news,” the channel has been interpreted as a bid by Netanyahu to bypass traditional media outlets which he claims have engaged in a coordinated attack against him.
  • The channel’s launch was coordinated with the unveiling of Netanyahu’s campaign video this weekend. In the video, he appears alongside Israeli TV presenter Eliraz Sade in a mock secret meeting to arrange positive media coverage. Sitting in a high-backed office chair with his back to Netanyahu.“You’re asking me for positive coverage?” Sade asks the Prime Minister.“Truthful coverage,” he replies.“But if I present truthful coverage, it might come out positive.”“Walla [‘really’],” says Netanyahu before winking at the camera.This was a not-so-subtle nod to Case 4000 in which Netanyahu is accused of providing regulatory benefits to Shaul Elovitch, the owner of telecom giant Bezeq, in return for favourable coverage on Elovitch’s Walla news site.
  • Commentators have been quick to point out the similarity between Netanyahu’s campaign and that of US President Donald Trump. The Jerusalem Post noted that Likud TV “seems to follow the model of [Trump’s] Real News Update, a weekly webcast meant to back Trump’s re-election campaign” ahead of the US elections due to be held in 2020. Trump has championed the “fake news” narrative, labelling journalists the “enemy of the people” and taking aim at some of America’s biggest news outlets.
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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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The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer: Harsh Turkish condemnation of Xinjiang crack... - 0 views

mideastsoccer.blogspot.com/...-condemnation-of-xinjiang.html Turkey China uighurs Islam Turks xinjiang Kazakhstan Indonesia Malaysia Iran KSA Saudi foreignpolicy rights humanrights
shared by Ed Webb on 10 Feb 19 - No Cached
  • Ed Webb on 10 Feb 19
     
    Note how competing identity questions linger from the 19th century ferment in the Ottoman world and beyond: Turkey aspires to leadership in the Islamic world, particularly the Sunni world, but also in the pan-Turkic cultural space. Nation-state interests, such as economic ties to China or geopolitical rivalry with Iran and Saudi Arabia are also part of the picture.
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Dinner with the enemy: How Egyptian drama El-Daif sparked a row over Islam and the hija... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...brahim-eissa-khalid-el-bagoury Egypt film media religion Islam censorship hijab
shared by Ed Webb on 21 Feb 19 - Cached
  • El-Daif (The Guest), a new drama written by journalist Ibrahim Eissa and directed by Khalid El-Bagoury that has become both a box office and a critical hit in Egypt, while at the same time attracting controversy.
  • a heated discussion about religious discourse between the younger and older man. The suitor, who appears to be highly influenced by Islamic fundamentalists, keeps engaging in arguments with Yahia, which are mostly won by the wit of the latter.
  • El-Daif is set mainly in the house of Yahia, who in many ways echoes the character of writer Eissa, a journalist and intellectual known for his outspoken writings on religion.
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  • Eissa is no stranger to controversy. Before El-Daif, he caused a stir with his first screenplay, for Mawlana (Our Grand Sheikh), about modern Muslim televangelists as well as the relationship between religion and the state.
  • "El-Daif has very well depicted taboos never discussed before in Egyptian cinema, showing how Islam is misinterpreted as a religion that forces a woman to cover herself from head to toe," said Nagwa Ali, 40, an accountant, as she was leaving a Cairo cinema.
  • other critics say the film is long-winded and static, although praising it for tackling taboo subjects otherwise ignored in Egyptian cinema
  • In the film, Yahia faces blasphemy charges due to his views about his interpretation of Islam and its teachings that have appeared in his books and articles. His life is at risk, which leads the government to assign policemen to protect him and his family against extremists. Ironically, the fierce debates and controversy portrayed in El-Daif are mirrored in real-life arguments around the film, leading to calls for it to be banned.
  • it also angered Islamic scholars, including Khalid El-Gindi, a prominent preacher and member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. "Six religious institutions including Al-Azhar [the highest Islamic authority in Egypt and the region] have stipulated that hijab is a heavenly order. Nevertheless, Eissa comes with his film to simply try to convince people otherwise," El-Gindi said angrily in a telephone interview with TV host Sayed Ali broadcast on Egyptian Al-Hadath Al-Youm satellite channel.
  • El Gindi also upbraided the Egyptian censorship authority which, although it took a few months to approve the film, surprisingly did not cut any scenes.
  • El-Daif avoids the stereotypical image of a religious fanatic, introducing a handsome light-bearded young man dressed in an elegant outfit who comes from a well-bred family and who has studied engineering in the USA.  He has managed to influence the intellectual's daughter to the extent that she agrees to wear the hijab despite her liberal upbringing. Many women in Egypt wear the hijab for social rather than religious reasons, submitting to social and family pressures while also seeking to avoid sexual harassment. However, the attire does not protect women from unwanted attention and abuse, as women who have spoken to MEE confirm.
  • Egyptian feminists and liberal thinkers have their own explanation of the hijab as being often associated with the rise of the conservative Saudi Wahhabi doctrine that emerged in Egyptian society in the mid-1970s.
  • In the first six weeks of screening, El Daif took around seven million Egyptian pounds (about $400,000) and remained in third place at the Egyptian box office. It is still showing at most Egyptian cinemas. "Deals are underway to screen the film in a number of Arab and European countries," said an official at the film's production company, iProduction.
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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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