18 Nov 13 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Arab Emirates
Waleed al-Shehhi (Image @uae_detainees)
Waleed al-Shehhi, an activist from the United Arab Emirates, was today sentenced to two years in prison and fined 500,000 Dirhams (£84,500) for tweeting about the trial of a group of human rights defenders known as the “UEA 94”.
The 94 activists, many of which were arrested in September 2012, were charged in January for “seeking to seize power.” Al-Shehhi tweeted about the authorities failure to investigate alleged torture against political prisoners, and called for the release of activists he believed had been detained for taking part in the pro-democracy movement.
Al-Shehhi, who was arrested on 11 May 2012, was sentenced on Articles 28 and 29 of the Cybercrimes Decree. This bans the use of information technology to “endanger state security” and “harm the reputation of the state.”
“Authorities are using the veil of national security to target peaceful political activists and it is having a chilling effect on free speech in the country,” Rori Donaghy, Director of the Emirates Centre for Human Rights said in a statement.
This article was originally published on 18 Nov 2013 at indexoncensorship.org
13 Aug 13 | News and features, United Arab Emirates
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are making transnational attempts to shut down a site belonging to the United States’ largest Arab-American newspaper, al-Watan.
The UAE’s Telecom Regularity Authority has sent a letter to watan.com’s German hosting company demanding the site be shut down, alleging that it is owned by the ‘Global Muslim Brotherhood Union’. The site’s founder Nezam Mahdawi denies this, claiming that they are being targeted due to reporting of human rights violations in the UAE.
Al-Watan is a popular news site in the Arab world, receiving over 120,000 pageviews per day, and is known for its liberal secular stance when reporting on political developments in the Middle East from its base in the United States. The site, which is banned in the UAE and other Gulf states, reports freely on sensitive political issues that domestic media are unable to broach due to censorship laws.
The UAE is ranked 114th for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders. Political parties are banned in the UAE and when a forum discussing political reform became popular in 2011 it was swiftly shut down along with the site’s owner put in prison for insulting the president. Social media sites have seen much criticism of the authorities, which led to a new Cybercrimes Decree being passed in September 2012 outlawing the use of information technology to criticize the government.
The increased chill on free speech stems from a March 2011 petition calling for democratic reform in the shape of a wholly elected parliament with full legislative powers. Those supporting reform are smeared as Muslim Brotherhood conspirators in a crude attempt by authorities to turn the public against anyone who questions their autocratic powers.
As al-Watan’s founder Nezam Mahdawi says: “if you criticize human rights violations in the UAE the authorities label you Muslim Brotherhood”. Mahdawi has also been personally targeted, with Emirati authorities hacking his personal email account and threatening to publish photos of his daughter should he refuse to close his news site. These attempts to shut down watan.com contradict the image of a country whose rulers try very hard to project as liberal and progressive.
It is worth noting that authorities have not blocked any English language news sites that criticize the government yet have aggressively pursued the Arabic al-Watan. Dr. Matt J Duffy, an expert on media law in the Middle East, believes this “allows the government to feign the appearance of plurality of opinion to the English-speaking audience”. The reality of the situation is that the UAE is neither liberal nor progressive when it comes to dealing with those who wish to criticize human rights violations or call for democratic reforms.
The attacks on al-Watan are a clear attempt to take the UAE’s free speech restrictions beyond its own borders. Thankfully the site is still running although the German hosting company, Hetzner Online AG, has yet to respond to al-Watan’s letter asking for the site not to be shut down.
Al-Watan provides a crucial platform for news to be reported in Arabic to a Middle East audience bereft of newspapers. It is easy to see why the UAE, with one of the highest per capita rates of political prisoners in the region, would want to shutdown a website that exposes their abuses.
The UAE enjoys an international image of being seen as liberal and progressive, belying the reality of a country becoming a police state. This is why it is so important that the hosting company of watan.com resist pressure from authorities to shut it down and why international media should highlight the plight of the United States’ largest Arab-American newspaper.
This article was originally published on 13 Aug, 2013 at indexoncensorship.org. Index on Censorship: The voice of free expression.
01 May 13 | Newswire
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.
The results can be accessed at Arab Media Use Study.
01 May 13 | Uncategorized
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.
The results can be accessed at Arab Media Use Study.
