Preliminary research from a survey of nearly 10,000 Arab respondents has found that while most support the right to free expression online, they are apt to believe that the internet should be regulated, according to the researchers.
The survey — a joint effort between researchers at the Qatar campus of the US-based Northwestern University and the World Internet Project — explored media usage in the Arab world. Participants were drawn from eight Arab nations: Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey questioned participants’ perceptions of the news media, finding that 61 per cent thought the “quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved over the past two years.” Media credibility declined in countries that experienced revolutions during the Arab Spring. The Saudi Arabian respondents gave their media outlets high marks with 71 [per cent agreeing with the statement, “The media in your country can report the news independently without interference from officials”.
Overall, the survey found high Facebook penetration among respondents who used social media. Ninety-four percent of the social media users had Facebook accounts, 47 per cent used Twitter and 40 per cent used Facebook. Among the Bahrain social media users, 92 per cent had a Facebook account, while just 29 per cent of the Egyptian respondents did.
The survey aimed to assess the use of media — TV, radio, newspapers, books, web — and levels of trust respondents had toward the sources. It also sought to guage how the respondents used the internet to communicate and conduct transactions like banking or purchases.
Preliminary research from a survey of nearly 10,000 Arab respondents has found that while most support the right to free expression online, they are apt to believe that the internet should be regulated, according to the researchers.
The survey — a joint effort between researchers at the Qatar campus of the US-based Northwestern University and the World Internet Project — explored media usage in the Arab world. Participants were drawn from eight Arab nations: Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.
The survey questioned participants’ perceptions of the news media, finding that 61 per cent thought the “quality of news reporting in the Arab world has improved over the past two years.” Media credibility declined in countries that experienced revolutions during the Arab Spring. The Saudi Arabian respondents gave their media outlets high marks with 71 [per cent agreeing with the statement, “The media in your country can report the news independently without interference from officials”.
Overall, the survey found high Facebook penetration among respondents who used social media. Ninety-four percent of the social media users had Facebook accounts, 47 per cent used Twitter and 40 per cent used Facebook. Among the Bahrain social media users, 92 per cent had a Facebook account, while just 29 per cent of the Egyptian respondents did.
The survey aimed to assess the use of media — TV, radio, newspapers, books, web — and levels of trust respondents had toward the sources. It also sought to guage how the respondents used the internet to communicate and conduct transactions like banking or purchases.
Tunisia’s Court of Cassation yesterday failed to review the seven-and-a-half year sentence of Jabeur Mejri, who was convicted last year of publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad on Facebook. Mejri’s lawyer, Mohammed Mselmi, told AFP that the demand for an appeal “was mysteriously withdrawn”, even though a hearing had been scheduled on 25 April. The defence team will now seek a presidential pardon for their client.
Last March, a primary court in Mahdia (eastern Tunisia) sentenced Mejri and his friend Ghazi Beji to seven and half years in prison. Beji, who published a satirical book entitled “the illusion of Islam” online, fled Tunisia. Mejir, however, has been in prison since he was arrested on 5 March 2012.
Both men were fined 1,200 dinars (GBP £480) and sentenced to five years in prison for publishing content “liable to cause harm to the public order” under article 121 (3) of the Tunisian Penal Code. They each received a two-year jail term for “offending others through public communication networks” (article 86 of the Telecommunications Code), and another six months for “moral transgression.”
On 23 April 2013, a committee supporting the two young men published a letter from Mejri, written in his prison cell in Mahdia, in which he claims he has been subject to torture. Mejri wrote:
There’s no freedom of expression here in Tunisia, it is dead…I am forbidden from medicines to cure my illness and from other rights. Seven years and six months is a long period to spend within a dark and gloomy small place. Officers find pleasure to torture me [sic]”
On 21 March, a Tunisian court sentenced rapper Ala Yacoubi (aka Weld El15) to two years in prison in absentia, over an anti-police song and video, Boulicia Kleb published on YouTube. In the song, Weld El15 describes police officers as “dogs” and says “he would like to slaughter a police officer instead of sheep at Eid al-Adha”. Four other rappers, to whom Weld El15 dedicated the song, were also sentenced to two years in prison in absentia. Actress Sabrine Klibi, who appears in the video, and cameraman Mohamed Hedi Belgueyed, were arrested on 10 March. They each received a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Yacoubi, who is in hiding, told award-winning blog Nawaat:
There are those who accuse me of inciting violence against police. I was only using their language…I was subject to all forms of police violence: physical and verbal. As an artist, I can only answer them through my art: aggressive art…I expressed myself in a country, where I thought freedom of expression exists. It turned out that I was wrong.
To bring charges against Weld El15 and his associates, prosecutors applied anti-free speech laws inherited from the dictatorship era. Among these laws are articles 128 and 226 of the Penal Code. The latter carries a penalty of a six-month jail term for “affronting public decency”; while article 128 states that anyone found guilty of “accusing without proof a public official” could face a two-year jail term.
Weld El15 is not the only victim of these liberticidal laws. Blogger Olfa Rihai could face imprisonment over criminal defamation charges [articles 128 and 245 of the Tunisian Penal Code. Last December, Riahi posted on her blog an article alleging that the then foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem “misused public money” by spending several nights at the luxurious Sheraton hotel in Tunis. She went on to claime that the minister might have been involved in an extra-marital affair. Riahi is also accused of “harming others or disrupting their lives through public communication networks,” under article 86 of the Telecommunication code (Law no.1-2001 of 15 January 2001). If convicted under this article, she could spend up to two years in prison and pay a fine of up to 1,000 Tunisian dinars.
Article 86 of the Telecommunication Code highlights Tunisia’s vulnerable internet freedom. Despite, positive steps taken by the Tunisian authorities in favour of free speech online, freedom of the internet remains under threat due to Ben Ali’s ICT laws. Last September, Mongi Marzoug minister of Information and Communications Technology, officially announced “the death of Ammar404” [slang for Tunisian internet censorship]. In January, the ICT ministry cancelled a number of regulatory provisions in the licenses previously awarded to privately-owned telecom operators Tunisiana and Orange Tunisie.
The two ISPs are now able to bypass the Tunisian Internet Agency (ATI), for incoming and outgoing international Internet traffic. The former regime obliged ISPs to route their internet traffic via the ATI to facilitate internet filtering and surveillance.
Yet these guarantees remain insufficient, as long as repressive ICT and internet laws remain on the books. For instance, article 9 of Internet Regulations (dated 22 March, 1997) obliges ISPs to monitor and take down content contrary to public order and “good morals”. No one can stand in the way of prosecutors and judges who wish to apply these laws.
The National Constituent Assembly (NCA) is scheduled to adopt a new constitution by next summer. A second draft of the constitution, released last December, enshrines the right to free expression and prohibits “prior censorship”. However, unless anti free speech laws are revised or abolished, the future constitution will in no way be enough to guarantee free expression.
