FOCUS ON THE AMERICAS - International Press Institute

Above: A man wears tape over his mouth to protest the killing of 23-yearold
journalist Sardasht Othman in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of
Baghdad, Iraq, May 12, 2010. (AP)
led invasion, it is two more than last year,
and six too many.
Since the crackdown that followed presidential
elections in June 2009, the media in
Iran remain not free. Many journalists have
been forced to flee the country. While some
journalists were released, others were jailed
without charge and dozens remained behind
bars. In 2010, several bloggers and reporters
who were tried in court received
years-long sentences for “propaganda” or
“insults”. Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari,
who was incarcerated for four months in
2009 and later wrote about conditions in the
prison, was sentenced in absentia to 13
years in prison and 74 lashes on national security
and insult charges. Blogger Hossein
Derakhshan, originally detained in 2008, received
a prison sentence of over 19 years, in
September. News media reportedly receive
regular warnings about their work, and
have been ordered not to cover certain opposition
figures. Certain political websites
are blocked or hacked. In an interesting
twist, according to an anecdote in a WikiLeaks
diplomatic cable that was published
toward the end of 2010, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was slapped by the
Revolutionary Guard’s chief of staff, Mohammed
Ali Jafari, for suggesting in February
that to diffuse tension it might be necessary
to allow greater freedoms, including
press freedom.
Media remained tightly controlled in Saudi
Arabia. Over the past few years, journalists
have enjoyed slightly more freedom to report
on formerly taboo subjects including
crime, drug trafficking, employment,
human rights and religious extremism.
Nonetheless, criticism of the royal family or
government policy is generally prohibited,
and even foreign Arab-language news
sources have been censored or taken off the
air in the past, probably in connection to
their reporting. The Internet is filtered for
social and political content, according to
the watchdog Opennet Initiative, and In-
ternet use is closely monitored.
In April, the website of
an Egyptian rights group was
blocked only 15 hours after it
launched, Arabic Network for
Human Rights Information
(ANHRI) reported, and in October
the website of one newspaper
was blocked and its editor
arrested over a misprint
that was promptly corrected.
Thousands of Saudis have
turned to blogs and other online
forums to express themselves,
but bloggers and online
journalists face the threat
of arrest and imprisonment.
The media environment in Yemen worsened
in 2010; President Abdullah Saleh’s
government continued to struggle with a
secessionist movement in the south, an insurgency
in the north, as well as the threat
of the international terrorist group, Al
Qaeda. A year after the creation of a Press
and Publications Court to deal with press
offences, several journalists were imprisoned
in connection with their work,
banned from publishing or given high
fines. Journalists were reportedly attacked
and had their homes fired upon. In March,
security forces stormed the Sana’a offices
of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya television
news networks, which were accused by the
government of having distorted news of
violence in the south. In August, at least 25
Yemeni journalists were detained by the
army while attempting to attend a peace
conference called by tribal leaders, who
are very influential. Although later released,
the journalists were then expelled
from the area and were therefore unable to
cover the conference. In August, freelance
journalist and Al Qaeda analyst Abdulelah
Hiden Shaea was detained, a month after
he was abducted overnight by security
forces and questioned about comments he
made to Al Jazeera. In October, Shaea was
charged with “belonging to an illegal network”
and “supporting the al-Qaeda network”.
One journalist was killed in Yemen
in 2010. Mohammed Shu’i al-Rabu’i, 34,
Journalists and bloggers in Syria
continued to be charged as criminals
for their work and held for
long periods without charge.
was shot and killed on February 13 at his
home in Beni Qais, in the northwest of the
country. While working for the monthly
opposition party newspaper Al Qaira, he
had written about the activities of a prominent
local criminal outfit. Despite these
setbacks, the media continue to fight. As
Yemen Times editor Nadia Al-Saqqaf told
IPI in an interview in March 2010, “There’s
only one way for the media to go, and that
is forward. It’s like you’ve come from the
darkness to the light. It’s not possible to
stop the progress that’s happening in the
media. Only it makes the journalists
stronger and angrier.”
On August 3, the first Lebanese journalist
since 2006 was killed. Assaf Abu Rahhal,
who worked for Al-Akhbar newspaper, was
killed during clashes between Israeli and
Lebanese forces in South Lebanon. As IPI
learned during an October 2009 mission to
the country, the Lebanese media are still the
most diverse and vibrant in the Arab world;
on the other hand, criminal defamation and
other charges continue to plague journalists,
in part because of the strong sectarian
affiliation of many news houses. In March
2010, both the editor and the director of Al
Adab magazine were fined U.S.$4,000 each
for libeling Fakhri Karim, an Iraqi publisher
and adviser to the Iraqi president, ANHRI
reported. Since the murder of two prominent
journalists – Samir Kassir and Gebran
Tueni – in 2005, self-censorship in the
media has been exacerbated because of the
lack of clarity on where “red lines” lie. In
2010, May Chidiac, an LBC anchorwoman
who narrowly escaped death in a car bomb
attack the same year, was named an IPI
World Press Freedom Hero.
Journalists and bloggers in Syria continued
to be charged as criminals for their
work and held for long periods without
charge, and the country remained one of
the worst press freedom environments in
the world. In June 2010, the government
had refused to release journalist Ali Saleh
Al-Abdallah from prison, although he had
completed a two-and-half-year sentence
for disseminating false information. Several
journalists remain in prison or currently
face prison terms for their work.
In Israel, the media are perhaps the freest in
the Middle East. But the Israeli authorities
proved again in 2010 that they will not hesitate
to prevent Palestinian journalists from
covering clashes and protests in
the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Dozens of reporters and photographers
were reportedly assaulted
by Israeli soldiers, or had their
equipment confiscated or damaged.
In May, Israeli forces intercepted
a flotilla from Turkey, resulting
in the deaths of several activists and
the detention of at least twenty journalists.
While the organizers of the flotilla claimed to
be transporting only humanitarian aid, Israeli
officials said that the flotilla was illegally
breaching the Gaza blockade, and that
members of a terrorist-linked organization
were also on board. During the raid, Israel
blocked journalists’ communications, confiscated
footage and equipment, caused
physical harm to many on board and detained
journalists against their will.
Journalists in the Palestinian Territories
again found themselves victims of the ongoing
rivalry between the paramilitary
group Hamas, which controls the Gaza
Strip, and the political party Fatah, whose
officials constitute the Palestinian Authority
and have control of the West Bank.
Journalists in the West Bank, especially
those working for Hamas-affiliated media,
had to contend with assault, arrests and detentions
by security forces. In January, former
Filastin newspaper bureau chief
Mustafa Sabri was arrested and taken into
custody for having allegedly defamed the
Preventive Security Forces. He was released
two months later. In February, Aqsa TV correspondent
Tarek Abu Zeid was sentenced
by a military court to one and a half years
in prison. On July 26, a Hebron court sentenced
a journalist from Shihab news
agency, Abu Arfa, to three months in prison
for resisting the policies of the authorities.
Reporters faced even greater obstacles in
Gaza. A September 2010 study by the
Palestinian Centre for Development and
Media Freedoms (MADA) revealed that in
Gaza journalists lack equipment as a result
of the Israeli blockade, and Israeli
forces prevented newspapers from Ramallah
from entering the Strip. In July, after a
ban on three newspapers from the West
Bank was lifted by the Israelis, the Gaza
authorities nonetheless refused to allow
Al-Hayat Aljadedah, Al-Ayyam and Al-Quds
newspapers into the area. Beginning in
February 2010, English documentary
filmmaker Paul Martin was detained for
25 days, accused of aiding a militant
whom Martin was scheduled to help defend
in court. In September, Hamas was
widely criticized for its closure of the
Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
Although widening access to the Internet
has in some ways expanded the space for
discourse in Egypt, the authorities have reacted
by clamping down on bloggers and
traditional media with restrictive media
and national security laws as well as the
threat and use of force. Egypt has been
under Emergency Law continuously since
the assassination of President Anwar al-
Sadat in October 1981, despite promises
from National Democratic Party leader
Hosni Mubarak to repeal the law. The law
allows the authorities to monitor and censor
the media. While the Internet is not
generally censored or filtered, Web use is
monitored through controls on Internet
cafés, which most users rely on for access.
Critical bloggers face harassment, raids on
their homes, defamation lawsuits, arrest
and long detentions. Bloggers Mosad
Soleiman and Hany Nazeer have reportedly
been in jail since 2008 on repeatedlyrenewed
detention orders, although they
have not yet been tried. In 2010, several
journalists were handed steep fines and
prison terms for their work – a particularly
worrying trend as the country moved toward
legislative elections in November
2010 (which were widely criticized as
being rigged) and presidential elections
scheduled for October 2011. Several journalists
were pressured to tone down or stop
producing their work.
Press freedom conditions remained bleak
in Algeria in 2010. President Abdelaziz
Bouteflika’s government continues to control
the broadcast media, and exercise pressure
over private publications that rely on
advertising from state institutions. According
to the OpenNet Initiative, Internet use is
regulated through the criminalization of
posting content that offends public order or
morality, and through surveillance of Internet
cafés. In March, the website of Radio
Kalima – Algérie, an independent news
provider, was blocked only two months
after the station launched. Journalists can
be arrested for non-accreditation, as well as
under criminal libel and insult laws, including
laws that explicitly protect the president
and other officials. When convicted, journalists
face imprisonment or steep fines.
Foreign journalists are sometimes denied
entry, or prevented from working once they
are in the country. Two Moroccan journalists
were ordered to stay in their hotel room
for four days in September, and were prevented
from covering conditions in a
refugee camp that houses ethnic Sahrawi
refugees from Western Sahara.
The status of Western Sahara, which is administrated
as part of Morocco, remained a
sensitive subject for the press in that country,
as did the royal family and the sanctity
of Islam. Despite a 2002 liberalization of the
Press Law, journalists still face prison terms
of three to five years for defamation, and
can also be imprisoned for other press offences,
including the spreading of “false information.”
Several journalists were sent to
jail for their work in 2010. In February, the
newsmagazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire
was forced to close due to bankruptcy – but
founder Aboubakr Jamai told the Committee
to Protect Journalists in an interview
that the magazine would have been able to
pay their creditors had it not been for orders
to advertisers that they should boycott the
publication. The journal was also set back
financially in 2006, when it was ordered to
pay the equivalent of around U.S.$350,000
in a defamation case. In October, the magazine
Nichane closed because pro-government
organizations refused to advertise in
its pages, the Arabic Network for Human
Rights Information (ANHRI) reported.
Tunisia took the spotlight in early January
2011 when massive protests against economic
conditions and corruption resulted
in the flight of former President Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali, who had run the country
with an iron fist for more than twenty
years. At the time of this writing, it remains
to be seen whether the new atmosphere of
press freedom and freedom of expression
will be institutionalized with whichever
government is to come. But observers are
optimistic that whatever the future holds
for Tunisian journalists, it will be brighter
and better than the tight control and outright
persecution that characterized the
media environment for so many years. IPI
participated in a mission to Tunisia in late
April 2010, as part of the Tunisia Monitoring
Group, a coalition of free expression organizations
under the International Freedom
of Expression eXchange (IFEX). The
mission found that a lack of judicial independence,
restrictions on freedom of assembly
and the continued censorship of all
media, as well as the physical abuse and
persecution of journalists, posed a material
threat to press freedom. Since the ouster of
former President Ben Ali, several journalists
who were in prison have been released,
and state-controlled media have taken it
upon themselves to change positions and
report freely on the Jasmine Revolution.
Above: Friends and relatives mourn as they carry the
coffin of Iraqi journalist Riyadh Al-Sarai during his funeral
procession in Baghdad, Iraq, September 7, 2010. (AP)
108 IPI REVIEW
IPI REVIEW 109