28 Jun 13 | Middle East and North Africa
European ministers and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members will meet on Sunday in Bahrain to discuss the future of their political and economic relations from 2013-2016. Bahrain’s free speech violations in recent weeks should also be up for discussion, says Sara Yasin
Bahrain is introducing new regulations on Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications that could mean a ban on programmes like Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, and Tango.
Minister of State for Communication Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa cited “security considerations” for the new regulations, according to Gulf News. He also said that it was part of “efforts exerted by the GCC to ensure the existence of regulations that preserve the rights of operators and that there is no abuse of communication applications”. Saudi Arabia, also a member of the GCC, blocked Viber earlier this month. The country has also threatened to ban Skype and WhatsApp after the companies refused to comply with the country’s monitoring requests.
The UK National Contact Point (NCP) for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has announced that it will consider a case brought against a UK-based surveillance company for selling technology that was used to spy on Bahraini dissidents. Five organisations filed formal complaints against Gamma International with the OECD, arguing that the company has been in violation of the OECD guidelines by selling its technology to repressive governments. The company has claimed that it “would not supply the product identified in the complaint in a situation where it believed it would be used for the purpose of repressing civil rights”. Last year suspicious e-mails were sent to Bahraini dissidents, including London-based activist Ala’a Shehabi. The e-mails were eventually linked to Gamma International’s FinFisher Suite, which infects email accounts and electronic devices using Trojans. Privacy International, along with the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Reporters Without Borders, Bahrain Watch, and European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights brought the complaints against the security company in February this year.
Bahraini journalist Nazeeha Saeed
Manama’s Court of Appeal this week upheld the acquittal of Sarah Al-Moosa, a policewoman charged with torturing France 24 journalist Nazeeha Saeed. Al-Moosa was acquitted October last year, after a Manama Court decided that Saeed’s evidence was “contradictory” and “not consistent” with the forensic report. Saeed presented three medical reports confirming her account of torture while in police custody, after her arrest in May 2011. She was detained while covering a crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
The jail sentence of human rights defender Zainab Alkhawaja has been extended by two months for allegedly assaulting two policewomen. Alkhawaja has been in jail since 27 February this year, serving on charges of “taking part in illegal gathering, unlawful entry to Pearl Roundabout, and insulting a police officer.” The activist’s sentence means that she will be held until February next year. Alkhawaja has been active in documenting and speaking out against human rights violations since the start of unrest in the country in February 2011.
Human rights defender Mohammad Al-Maskati
The head of Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), Mohamed Al-Maskati, is currently facing charges for “participation in illegal protest.” The activist appeared before Manama’s Lower Criminal Court on 19 June, but the hearing was then postponed until July. If convicted, Al-Maskati faces up to six months jail time. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) believes that Al-Maskati has been targeted for condemning the regime’s human rights violations at the Human Rights Council in Geneva last September. The activist reportedly received threatening phone calls for his participation, and was targeted by pro-government newspapers following his return. Index has previously condemned Bahrain’s treatment of human rights defenders, including BCHR head Nabeel Rajab, who is serving a two-year jail sentence for “organising illegal gatherings.”
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
05 Jun 13 | News and features
Index on Censorship has joined Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda (HRNJ-Uganda) in writing a letter of protest to the country’s president President Yoweri Museveni, after the network’s national coordinator, Geoffrey Wokulira Ssebaggala was attacked and arrested by police, Padraig Reidy reports.
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03 Jun 13 | Campaigns, Europe and Central Asia, Turkey Statements
As protests continue in many cities across Turkey, the reactions of government, police and media have shown up only too clearly to a wider audience – domestic and international – the increasingly problematic nature of Turkish democracy, and its growing authoritarian tendencies. Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes writes
Police brutality in response to the mainly peaceful protesters has been rightly criticised. The failure of mainstream Turkish media to cover the protests from the start – choosing instead cooking programmes and other non-contentious fare – has surprised some, and also being strongly criticised. If anyone inside or outside Turkey had not paid attention to growing censorship, including self-censorship, of Turkish media, it has now been widely exposed for all to see. Yet comments from some, including the European Union, have been surprisingly limited – focusing mainly on police brutality and not the wider human rights and democracy issues.
While some commentators rashly labelled the protests a ‘Turkish spring’, those who have followed Erdogan’s AKP government in its move from promoting a number of key democratic reforms ten years ago to showing a more authoritarian side in the last few years were clear that these authoritarian tendencies are underpinning this outburst of discontent. As Amberin Zaman writes: “My overall impression, and it’s commonly shared, is that the Taksim Park project has morphed into a vehicle for popular resentment against Erdogan’s increasingly dismissive and authoritarian ways”.
As she concisely puts it: “He is a democratically elected leader who has been acting in an increasingly undemocratic way.”
While Erdogan successfully stood up to ‘soft’ and anti-democratic attempts to undermine his government – the ‘e-coup’ in 2007, the attempted ‘ judicial coup’ in 2008 – subsequent years have seen increasing numbers of journalists jailed, considerable political pressure on media outlets, with journalists and editors widely self-censoring, and many being dismissed for expressing opinions freely in their writing.
Index highlighted this censorship in shortlisting Turkish journalists for its media freedom award this year. The Turkish media themselves have now highlighted it in their failure to fully cover these widespread protests.
Those who have been promoting Turkey as a role model for ‘Arab Spring’ countries like Egypt and Tunisia, or who have been holding back on criticising Turkey’s increasing attacks on free speech for reasons of diplomacy and real politik, now must surely face up to the more difficult reality that Turkey is a country that imprisons more journalists today than Iran or China. The European Union’s foreign policy supremo Cathy Ashton did, with a delay, come out to condemn disproportionate use of force by the police.
Related: “There is now a menace which is called Twitter”
Index Events
Join Index on Censorship and a panel of Turkish and British writers to discuss free speech in Turkey, 22 June, Arcola Theatre London
But the EU should have addressed sooner and more strongly the clear and growing attacks on media freedom in Turkey – and Ashton has, even now, yet to come out strongly on this in the context of the protests. The EU has rather little influence in Turkey compared to a decade ago when membership talks were about to start – these talks have now faltered and slowed. But the EU does insist all candidate countries meet its ‘Copenhagen Criteria’ that say candidates must be democracies who respect the rule of law and human rights. Back in 2004, when the Union’s leaders agreed to start talks Turkey was said to “sufficiently meet” those criteria.
It is no longer clear, given its deliberate creation of media censorship, and the brutality of police in the face of mass protests, that Turkey does meet those criteria. If the EU stands for human rights in its neighbourhood, surely it should make a much stronger, robust condemnation of Turkey’s growing anti-democratic tendencies and its attacks on freedom of expression.
17 May 13 | Middle East and North Africa
Five members of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) are scheduled to appear before the country’s Anti-Terrorism court in Damascus on 19 May. Three of the activists, SCM’s head Mazen Darwish, blogger Hussein Gharir, and activist Hani Zaitani have been held in prison since February 2012, when Syrian security forces attacked and raided the organisation’s offices. Abdel Rahman Hamada and Mansour Omari were conditionally released earlier this year. Syria’s Air Force Intelligence has accused the five activists of “publicising terrorist acts”, under the country’s Anti-Terrorism law.
A group of 19 international organisations today called for the release of Zaitani, Gharir, and Darwish, and for the charges against all five to be dropped. If convicted, they face up to 15 years in prison. According to a statement released today, Syria’s Justice Minister earlier this month promised the release of SCM’s three jailed members — in addition to 69 other jailed activists.
SCM member Maha Assabalani, who was avoided being imprisoned during the raid, wrote about her colleagues for Index last year. She said that her colleagues are in prison for fighting for freedom of expression — and that they “risked their life fighting for real change.” She also said that Darwish regularly told the organisation’s staff that “there are not enough prisons for the free word.”
