Middle East Activists Muzzled and Arrested in Arab Gulf States

April 4, 2013

The Daily Beast (click here for original link)

By Vivian Salama

Within hours of being handed a two-year jail term for allegedly insulting the ruler of Kuwait, 27-year old Hamed Al Khalidi turned to Twitter– the very apparatus that got him into trouble—with a poem:

“I said: why prison?

I’m not a thief; I’m not a criminal…

neither deliberate nor accidental.

But when I realized my sentence serves my country,

I began to enjoy prison as though it is paradise.”

Al Khalidi is part of a growing list of young activists in Kuwait and across the Arab Gulf being targeted for “electronic crimes”—for voicing the very same longing for freedom, justice, and opportunity as those in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, where online activism catalyzed mass street protests. Days before Al Khalidi’s sentencing, the Kuwaiti appeals court extended the jail term of another opposition Twitterer, Bader al-Rashidi, from two to five years on charges that he attempted to instigate a coup and insulted the country’s Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. Kuwait, home to the most dynamic political system in the Gulf, has already sentenced some 10 online activists to various prison terms on charges ranging from insulting members of parliament (or the Emir) to inciting protests.

“The government of Kuwait and other Gulf governments have begun to feel the danger of Twitter that toppled presidents and governments in the Arab countries and it is clear from the way they are abusing many Twitter users with these false charges,” said Mohammed Al Humaidi, a lawyer and director of the Kuwait Society for Human Rights. “Most of the Gulf governments don’t have a law specifically linked to electronic crimes, and so this is unconstitutional.” (more…)

Saudi Arabia: The Internet’s Enemy Cracks Down on Skype, Whatsapp, and Viber

by Vivian Salama

Mar 29, 2013

The Daily Beast 

Infamous for the severe measures it uses to crack down on alleged security threats, Saudi Arabia is now picking on web-based communication apps, which teens rely on heavily for daily contact. Vivian Salama reports.

Skype, Whatsapp and Viber are subject to a ban in Saudi Arabia, as it demands the rights to monitor all communications via these web-based communications apps.

Despite a medley of applications now available to help Internet users avert such a ban, the kingdom declared that it would block the services within its borders unless the operators grant the government surveillance rights. The companies have until Saturday—the start of the Saudi workweek— to respond to Saudi Arabia’s Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), local news reports said.

While Saudi Arabia is infamous for taking authoritarian measures to crack down on perceived security threats, it has increasingly shifted its attention toward the telecommunications sector in recent months. The CITC announced in September that all pre-paid SIM card users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and the number must match the one registered with their mobile operator when the SIM is purchased. The country’s second-largest telecom company, known as Mobily, was temporarily banned from selling its pay-as-you-go SIM cards after it failed to comply with the new regulations.

“A proposal for a ban would be driven by political and security concerns as opposed to economic concerns,” said Aiyah Saihati, a Saudi businesswoman and writer. “The Saudi government is refraining from taking an extremely authoritarian style dealing with its critical youth population. Saudi may try, without censorship, to find ways to monitor communications.”

As revolution gripped much of the Arab world in 2011, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, spearheaded a counterrevolution—working to appease its critics with monetary and political concessions, while suppressing protests via brutal crackdowns. Reporters Without Borders lists Saudi Arabia as an “Enemy of the Internet,” saying last year that “its rigid opposition to the simmering unrest on the Web caused it to tighten its Internet stranglehold even more to stifle all political and social protests.” (click here to read more…)

 

Egypt’s Sexual Terrorism

A sad sad trend recently in this country I once regarded as extremely safe.

Feb 13, 2013

By Vivian Salama

The Daily Beast (click here for original page)

Protesters around the world demonstrate against the sharp rise of mob attacks and gang rapes in Cairo. By Vivian Salama

With reports of mob attacks and gang rape growing alarmingly common in Egypt, angry protesters demonstrated in Cairo on Tuesday, calling for urgently needed protection and harsher punishment of perpetrators of sexual assault.

Though the protest in Cairo’s Talaat Harb Square was peaceful, the slogans were hard-hitting. One banner displayed a warning that rhymed in Arabic: “Sexual assault doesn’t pay. Try again—we’ll cut your hand.”

Concurrent with the Cairo protest, solidarity demonstrations were held in cities around the world, including Amman, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Washington, D.C. and London to denounce the rise of “sexual terrorism”  in Egypt.

“There is a virus afflicting the brains of some of these men,” said Karima El Gharib, 35, a political activist who attended Tuesday’s protest in Cairo. “These sick people think that if they scare the women, we will stop our men from going to the protests. We are the country’s women: your sister, your mother. Try and say ‘boo’ to us now and we will destroy you!”

Last month, the United Nations issued a statement expressing “deep concern” after more than two dozen women reported they had been sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square—in some cases, with extraordinary violence—during demonstrations marking the two-year anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.

The activists, though, know that raising awareness of the issue is an uphill battle.

On Monday, the human rights commission for the Islamist-dominated Shura Council held a press conference, provocatively stating that women are to blame for sexual assaults against them. Women “know they are among thugs,” said Adel Afify, a member of the committee representing the ultra-conservative Asala Party. “They should protect themselves before requesting that the Interior Ministry does so. By getting herself involved in such circumstances, the woman bears 100 percent responsibility.” Another member of the council alleged that the tents at protest sites encourage “prostitution.” (more…)

Egypt To President Morsi: No Dictators Allowed

Newsweek International (click here for original link)

by Vivian Salama

December 3, 2012

Amr Darrag is on a call when a second phone in his Cairo office begins to ring. He’s been awake since 6 a.m., and the stack of papers on his desk swells with every passing minute. A leader in Egypt’s Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, Darrag is also part of the 100-member committee scrambling to draft the country’s new constitution—a pending document that has hit every possible bump in the road since Egyptians toppled President Hosni Mubarak last year.

“We have a couple more days until we finish our mission,” says Darrag, secretary-general of the Constituent Assembly. “Those who are not interested in stability in Egypt or want to keep the Muslim Brotherhood out of the scene are trying to stop us from issuing the constitution. The courts want to dismantle the assembly. The president had to stop these tricks or the country would fall into chaos.”

On Nov. 22, as Americans sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, Egypt’s first post-revolution president, Mohamed Morsi, issued a decree exempting all of his decisions from legal challenge. The move was a stunning power grab that quickly earned him the nickname “Egypt’s new pharaoh”—a title once bestowed upon his defunct predecessor. Hundreds of thousands of disbelieving Egyptians flooded city streets from Alexandria to Aswan with a familiar cry: “The people want the fall of the regime!” Tahrir Square came alive once again with tents and bullhorns and a howl so loud—so impassioned—that it was dubbed the “19th Day” of last year’s revolution. Angry female protesters returned in masses to Tahrir, resilient after months of deteriorating security that included repeated incidents of harassment and sexual assault.

Morsi also declared that the courts cannot dissolve the Assembly, which many say is unfairly dominated by his fellow Islamists. As tensions built nationwide, the Assembly slammed together the first finalized draft of the constitution last week—a text that could set the course for Egypt’s future and that few have been privy to see.

“He shot himself in the foot,” says Steven A. Cook, the Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Perhaps ‘new pharaoh’ is an overstatement, even though Morsi is no democrat. Somewhere within the councils of the Muslim Brotherhood, someone thought this decree would play well in Tahrir.”

Play well it didn’t. As antagonized protesters violently clashed with pro-Morsi demonstrators, the president defended his decision, insisting it is temporary and geared toward eliminating the bureaucratic hurdles obstructing Egypt’s unraveling transition. The comment inspired the snarky headline in independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm: “Morsi is a ‘temporary’ dictator.” The Brotherhood brushed off the protests as merely “politics,” distinguishing it from the 2011 revolution, when “united Egyptians revolted against autocracy.” The organization warned, via Twitter, that a revolution without the Muslim Brotherhood is no revolution.

But that was a tough sell to make to those who descended on Tahrir, driven by lingering memories from 30 years of Hosni Mubarak’s chokehold. Less than two years after Egyptians earned their first taste of democracy, the country once again has a president with near-absolute power and no constitution to dictate otherwise (the decree was ironically introduced as a “constitutional declaration”). There is no Parliament, since the military generals dissolved it in June. Then the generals were replaced by Brotherhood loyalists—as were the heads of most state-run media organizations.

(click here to read more…)

Al Jazeera’s (R)Evolution?

Here’s a study I was pleased to contribute to a new-ish e-zine called Jadaliyya which focuses on Arab affairs.

by Vivian Salama

Jadaliyya (click here for original link)

In March of 2011, an unusually forthright editorial by an anonymous writer made its way into The Peninsula Qatar, an English language daily bankrolled by a member of the emirate’s ruling family. At the time of publication, protesters had already toppled the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt, uprisings were in full swing in Libya and Yemen, and in the Persian Gulf, Bahrainis were gearing up for what would prove to be a bloody battle, only days after the op-ed ran.

“Businesses and institutions are treated as ‘holy cows,’” the author wrote in the editorial, entitled “Why are we so timid?”

“What essentially ails the Qatari media (English and Arabic-language newspapers) is the absence of a comprehensive law that specifies its role in a clear-cut way and seeks to protect it against the people and interests opposed to free expression or those who cannot appreciate criticism,” the op-ed read.

It was at about the same time that this editorial ran that Al-Jazeera Arabic, the renowned television network that essentially put Qatar on the map, started facing a dilemma. The network has found it increasingly difficult to distance itself from the growing political ambitions of its patron, Qatar, particularly as it is kept alive by the one hundred million dollars it receives annually from the Qatari government. Moreover, the wave of information now available to the masses via the Internet and satellite television has exposed the gaps in its reporting of issues that do not fall in line with the government’s agenda, while also highlighting its biases in the various uprisings. (more…)

Anthony Shadid, RIP

Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer winning Middle East correspondent, died yesterday of an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria for the New York Times. He was 43. I had the pleasure of working with Anthony briefly in Egypt when he was still with the Boston Globe. He was a class act. It’s no wonder that the journalist community is reacting so strongly. He leaves behind a void. My deepest condolences go out to his wife, New York Times reporter Nada Bakri, and to his two young children. RIP Anthony.

Back in the concrete jungle…

I’ve always found New York to be a beautiful place. The people are amazing to watch. The fashionistas. The crazies. The businessmen in suits. The ladies in fur (sorry PETA). I especially love the buildings. There was a time when I believed my calling (well, one of my callings) was architecture  (although I confess, it took me three tries to spell it correctly!! Thank you, spell check)

I’ve been back about 3 weeks now. Perhaps I have yet to re-embrace the hustle and bustle attitude of the city, but I just can’t stop myself from looking up and around me at the beauty that’s everywhere here. That said, I thought to take a break from revolutions and foreign policy to share a few nice shots I’ve taken around the city. Enjoy!

New York's Tallest Building, the Empire State Building (Did you know where are 1,860 steps in the Empire State building from the street to the 102nd floor?! /Photo by Vivian Salama

City Hall, Lower Manhattan/Photo by Vivian Salama

5th Avenue/Photo by Vivian Salama

Whitestone Bridge from the Upper East Side/Photo by Vivian Salama

“The Protester”: A Photo Journal of the Egyptian Revolution

Thanks to TIME Magazine for recognizing the revolutionaries all over the world… I’ve been meaning to write this for quite some time but only finding the chance to do it now.

A year ago when Mohammed Bouazizi, a fruit vendor in Tunisia, burned himself out of frustration from a political system that neglected him, I was en route to Beirut ahead of the Christmas holiday and writing, mainly, about the credit crunch in the Arab Gulf states and mounting concerns that the banking system would not soon recover from the blow. Days after I returned from Beirut, my host, Rania Abouzeid, came to stay with me in Dubai in a desperate attempt to fly to Tunisia, where flights were almost entirely grounded amid an uprising across the country. It was hard to imagine then that the desperate act of this young man not only set in motion a revolution in his country, but around across the region.

Jan. 27, 2011: me and Rania Abouzeid heading to Cairo (at 3am -- ughhh!!!)

On January 14, 2011, following a month of violent protests against his rule, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali – Tunisia’s president since 1987 — was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia along with his wife and their three children.  A week later, Rania and I were on a flight to Cairo where calls for a revolution had begun to circulate on social media websites. They were days I will never forget, and with TIME Magazine’s 2011 Person of the Year issue being dedicated this year to The Protester, I want to share with you all a few memories and photos of the protesters I met in Cairo this year. (Click here to read some of my stories on the Arab Spring)

On January 27, two days after the protests officially begun, Internet and mobile phone service was completely cut off in Egypt and we were left guessing where crowds were gathering. After trying a few spots around town, Rania and I decided to go toward the Mohendiseen neighborhood near the Moustafa Mahmoud mosque. It was a good guess! About 500 protesters had gathered after Friday prayers where they came face to face with riot police chanting slogans like “The people want the end of the regime” and “Hosni Mubarak: illegitimate.”

We began to march, with the intention of going toward Tahrir Square. (Rania and I were quickly separated in the crowd and were each forced to continue reporting on our own). Weaving through side streets and alleys in the Cairo neighborhood, people watched us from balconies, throwing bottles of water, garlic and onions, and bottles of vinegar – all simply remedies for tear gas inhalation, because everyone knew what lie ahead.  The longer we marched, the more the crowd swelled, with protesters called on those people in their homes not to be afraid.

Cairo, January 27, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

Cairo, January 27, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

Jan 27: Protesters Near Moustafa Mahmoud Mosque/Photo by Vivian SalamaS

Sure enough, we were quickly confronted by tanks and soldiers firing tear gas at the crowd. I’ve never seen so much camaraderie in my life. Soldiers at a nearby military hospital threw medical masks at the protesters and pharmacists handed them out to the crowds. At one point I felt quite ill from the tear gas. A man approached from behind me and pressed a vinegar-covered mask against my mouth and nose. A nearby vendor (who probably struggles to feed his own family with the pennies he earns) emptied his refrigerator, handing out water bottles and cans of soda to the fatigued protesters.

Every where I looked, people were helping each other, helping strangers tie their masks, sharing water bottles, aiding those who were most affected by the gas.

There was one point, marching with the crowd from Mohendiseen, when we approached a major intersection and I heard roaring cheers. I jumped up on a car to see what had happened and was personally overcome by emotion. From three different directions, massive groups of protesters were approaching the intersection – the other groups coming from as far as Giza and the Nasr City. They did this without Internet or mobile phones.

Cairo, January 27, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

Groups of young men pushed to the front of the crowd and began to battle riot police, taking over their vehicles and chasing them away. Our group, now numbered in the hundreds of thousands, pushed slowly across the historic Qasr El Nil bridge in an attempt to move into Tahrir. There were moments when I worried that an attack by the military would trigger a stampede – we were stuffed tightly onto the bridge. But every time protesters began to push back, the young men in the crowd would grab the women in the crowd and push them against the bridge railing so to protect them from being knocked down.

Some were more prepared than others!! Cairo Jan. 27, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

It was a long night with protesters burning the ruling National Democratic Party headquarters and battling with soldiers in Tahrir. Riot police trucks were set on fire (and the Semiramis Hotel, where many journalists took refuge) was partially on fire for part of the evening. I was trapped in Tahrir for the night and forced to take a last minute room at the Semiramis. I woke up early the next morning to a different Cairo, where charred military tanks stood in the middle of Tahrir Square and smoke billowed from the NDP headquarters and, sadly, from the adjacent National Museum. It would take another two weeks (only!) to overthrow Hosni Mubarak but that first Friday was by far the most memorable. There is an Arabic expression that often refers to the Egyptian people as being “light blooded” (light hearted/good senses of humor). They definitely showed their spirit throughout the frustrating 19 days (and 30 years) it took to shake up their political system.

Tahrir Square, January 28, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

Tahrir Square, January 28, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

me in Tahrir (late January 2011)

I visited Bahrain in the weeks that followed and I spent a lot of time covering the uprisings in Yemen and, less so, the ongoing crisis in Syria. After years of battling misguided stereotypes of terrorism and violence, these protesters have showed the world that they desire freedom and a decent standard of living and they have the right to demand it just as those in Europe and the US demand of their governments.

The Tunisians, Egyptians and all the other citizens around the world fighting for democracy have a very long and bumpy road ahead.  The TIME Magazine Person of the Year issue questions whether there is a global tipping point for frustration. I believe what happened this year is, in large part, because of overpopulation and because of the global economic slowdown touched societies rich and poor – but toppled those that were already on the brink before markets crash. The world is smaller than ever thanks to the Internet and various technologies that allow us to share experiences with people on opposite corners of the world. As we continue to get closer, and the world, smaller, it will become impossible to distance ourselves from even the most seemingly remote events.

Cairo, January 27, 2011/Photo by Vivian Salama

Pakistan mourns veteran journalist

VIVIAN SALAMA

The National

February 8. 2009 

LAHORE // Journalists should never take themselves too seriously, reads the website of the venerated Pakistani journalist Khalid Hasan, “because what they write in the morning is used to wrap fish in the same evening”. 

Perhaps Hasan underestimated the power of his own pen. Since the written word never dies, fans of the late journalist, author, translator and civil servant are comforted that his legacy lives on in more than four decades of work. Funeral services were held yesterday for Hasan, who died on Friday in northern Virginia after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 74.

Although his later years were spent predominantly in the United States, Hasan continued to serve as an influential voice of the Pakistani people on both sides of the world. Based in Washington since the mid-1990s, he reported for various Pakistan-based English publications, including Nation, the Daily Times and the Friday Times. He wrote more than 40 books and translated the works of Saadat Hasan Manto from Urdu.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, offered his sympathies to the family and expressed the country’s gratitude for the contributions of “a great journalist”. Pakistan’s information minister, Shehrbano Rehman, said: “Mr Hasan was one of those rare journalists who earned respect for standing tall in a profession.” 

Hasan’s professional ethics, media analysts believe, is one of his greatest legacies, and something towards which the Pakistani media as a whole must strive. His editorials often expressed his concern over the state of the Urdu-language press in Pakistan, questioning whether it emphasised a disconnect of Pakistanis from the western world.

In recent years, Pakistan’s media have endured uncertainty, with a history of ups and downs including gag orders under the previous administration of Pervez Musharaf and the country’s general political turmoil. Print, broadcast and new media organisations are growing rapidly in number because of a boost in private funding, but qualified journalists are few and far between.

“It is an evolving situation where you have more resources today in technical terms or perhaps financial terms, but there is a shortfall as far as human resources are concerned,” said Ejaz Haider, the opinion editor for the Daily Times, an English-language daily newspaper based in Lahore.

Hasan’s colleagues and friends say the death of this veteran journalist, who published articles as recently as two weeks ago, is a great loss to the industry.

“Khalid Hasan had an impact that you don’t find in a lot of journalists today,” said Adil Najam, a professor of international relations at Boston University and lead author of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“People would read his columns not just because he was saying something interesting, but because it was Khalid Hasan – he could have written about kite flying, but you read it.”

Hasan’s recent criticism on Muntadhar al Zaidi – the Iraqi journalist famed for throwing his shoes at George W Bush, the former US president – demonstrated his steadfast commitment to journalistic ethics. “What the man did was wrong,” he wrote in December. “He must not misuse [his] privilege or employ it to push his personal or political agenda.”

Pakistan has long prided its efforts to maintain a free press and Hasan seized that privilege. A one-time press secretary for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto when he was president, Hasan resigned and became a sharp critic of Pakistani politics after the military coup by Gen Mohammed Zia ul Haq.

“He was devastated when Bhutto was hanged and never forgave the state of Pakistan for what happened,” said Jugnu Mohsin, publisher of the Friday Times, an independent English newsweekly.

His unwavering dedication to addressing the important issues and timely issues could best be seen in his writings about Kashmir. A native of Srinagar, Hasan often candidly expressed his fears that tensions between India and Pakistan would erupt into another brutal subcontinent war. 

He told CNN in 2002: “What has affected me most is the fear and the apprehension that [between] India and Pakistan, a war could break out and it would result in human suffering on a scale which one cannot even begin to imagine.”

Shock and Awe in 2007 News Biz

by Vivian Salama

 PostGlobal – WashingtonPost.com

As we begin 2008 and look back on the biggest stories that made headlines over the past year, I cannot help but ask a question that I, as a journalist, have recently come to dread: what qualifies as news, nowadays?

Stories that make news these days are not necessarily newsworthy, and vice versa. One of the factors which traditionally drove newsworthiness was significance. The number of people whom a story affects is important. Celebrities are easy targets and, dare I say it, they usually make for easy headlines. The fiasco surrounding Paris Hilton’s 23-day “traumatic” lock-up is just one painful example. For readers living overseas who did not have the pleasure of experiencing this media frenzy, many networks deployed their helicopters to film an aerial play-by-play of Hilton’s trip [in the back of a police cruiser] from her California mansion to the courthouse. Of course, there are other examples, including the meltdown of pop singer Britney Spears and the untimely death of former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith. Also, the Internet has complicated the question not only of what constitutes news, but also of who should legitimately and credibly deliver it. Viral videos have become such a sensation that their profound popularity often makes for headlines.

As for news – that is, the old fashioned kind – it is difficult to choose just one story that tops the list. Certainly the war in Iraq still rages on; however, death tolls have grown mind-numbing to the average reader/viewer, and the stories that make big headlines usually relate to war funding or government ineptitude. Also, similar to the December holidays, political campaigns begin earlier and earlier each year. The high stakes surrounding the 2008 presidential race dominated headlines early on in 2007. As for stories that made a significant impact domestically, I would include the tragic collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minnesota last August and the brutal Virginia Tech shooting in April (I was in North Korea the day this happened, a country notorious for being a “Hermit Kingdom.” My group knew nothing about the shooting spree until we returned to South Korea the next day. Incidentally, the gunman was an American of South Korean descent. The outpour of sympathy which we, as Americans, received from the Korean people was profound).

We live in a 24-hour news culture, where sometimes – I’m sorry to say – quantity often trumps quality with regard to coverage. This cultural shift first occurred in the days following the September 11th attacks, when the public was understandably hungry for every bit of information it could get. However, just as this country grew used to positioning itself in attack mode, so, too, have the news media – at the expense of in-depth, investigative journalism. The old expression, “if it bleeds, it leads” has taken on a whole new meaning. Nowadays, if it bleeds, gasps, heals, chokes, laughs, cries, sneezes or quivers, it’s on YouTube.

C’est la vie, I guess. Happy New Year, everyone.