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Do media freedoms exist in the Middle East?

On the morning of Aug. 13, Iraqi Kurdish journalist Widad Hussein Ali, 28, from the RojNews Agency, was abducted and later beheaded by Kurdish security forces in Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan.
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October 21, 2016

This story originally appeared at themedialine.org.

On the morning of Aug. 13, Iraqi Kurdish journalist Widad Hussein Ali, 28, from the RojNews Agency, was abducted and later beheaded by Kurdish security forces in Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan. 

His body was found in the street. He had been tortured to death for publishing articles critical of Kurdish authorities. His abduction and beheading came after almost 12 months of interrogation by Kurdish police. 

On June 9, Iranian blogger Mohammad Reza Fathi was sentenced to 444 lashes because of articles posted on his blog about social affairs and civil rights. He was accused of spreading lies and disturbing the public. 

On Sept. 10, Kurdish journalist Adnan Hassan was released after serving 10 years in prison in Iran. Hassan had originally been sentenced to death for defending Kurdish rights for a now-closed, local weekly newspaper, Asou. He was the longest-serving journalist in an Iranian prison. 

Stories like these are not uncommon in the Middle East, an area where journalists often fear for their lives. 

Journalists are frequently threatened, harassed, arrested, charged, sued, imprisoned and even beheaded for spreading information and voicing their opinions in a part of the world that tends to be among the world’s most unstable and authoritarian and where governments have gone to great lengths to censor and restrict the free flow of information.

In the past few years, however, the state of the media in the Middle East has grown even worse. 

Oman recently shut down the Azamn newspaper and arrested three of its journalists. Since surviving an attempted coup d’etat in July, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey shut down more than 130 media outlets and arrested hundreds of journalists. Bahrain is holding an activist, who faces up to 15 years in prison, because of tweets he published last year. 

Jordan has banned media outlets from publishing anything about the royal family. Egypt imprisoned 24 journalists this year. Iran created a state-sponsored intranet to stop the flow of information into and out of the country. 

The Middle East comprises about 6 percent of the surface of the earth, but in 2016 alone, 19 of the 37 journalists who were killed worldwide were murdered in the Middle East, according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a Paris-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) dedicated to defending media freedom worldwide. 

“We can’t talk about free press because there is no free press in the region,” Alexandra El Khazen, head of the RWB Middle East and North Africa desk, said. “Murder is the ultimate form of censorship. So, when a journalist is killed, which is really frequent, the right to information for the broader public is also in danger.”

Until the Turkish coup, there were 145 journalists imprisoned worldwide, 65 of them jailed in the Middle East. However, Punto 24, a Turkish nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving editorial independence and media freedom in Turkey, has estimated that since the abortive coup, at least 200 journalists have been detained while some 2,308 journalists were fired. 

While in detention, many journalists are tortured and denied basic human rights. 

This year, every Middle Eastern country, including Israel, has been ranked in the bottom half of the Press Freedom Index, compiled by RWB, with six countries ranked in the bottom 10 percent.

Tunisia, ranked No. 96; Lebanon, ranked No. 98; and Israel, ranked No. 101, are considered to have the freest press in the region. These countries, however, are still plagued by censorship, especially military and political censorship. 

For example, most recently, Mudar Al Momani, a prominent Jordanian journalist who lives part time in Jerusalem, has been denied entry into Israel because of “security concerns.” Nevertheless, media within Israel is considered to be free, enjoys the ability to scathingly criticize the government, all while the power of the military censor is steadily diminishing.

The more conservative countries, such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, and the more politically unstable ones such as Egypt, Syria, Iran and Turkey, are usually the countries guilty of the most censorship and the tightest restrictions.

“Journalism is feared by leaders trying to seek stability,” the RWB’s El Khazen added. “The list of topics limited by the authorities is rather long and it keeps getting longer.”

Bahrain, which is ranked No. 162 by Reporters Without Borders, is guilty of human rights abuses toward journalists. On July 31, Bahraini journalist Hassan Jassim Hasan Al-Hayki, 35, died after allegedly being tortured. Al-Hayki had been in custody for around a month before his death was announced. Several human rights organizations have called on the Bahraini government to investigate the circumstances of his death.

The Middle East has consistently had the lowest rankings in terms of freedom of the media and information. In 2008, eight countries were ranked in the bottom 10 percent and 15 countries were in the bottom half of the RWB Press Freedom Index. 

Throughout the Arab Spring uprisings beginning in 2010, media freedom significantly deteriorated because of the wave of mass protests in the Middle East, spurred by civilian dissatisfaction with governments, the economy and corruption. The protests began in Tunisia in December 2010 and spread throughout most of the Middle East, with the largest protests in Egypt. 

Since the Arab Spring, there has been a sweeping movement to repress journalists and the media in the region in almost all Arab countries except Tunisia, which seems to be moving toward allowing broader freedoms. Many other countries, including Turkey, Syria and Egypt, have fallen into political and social disarray as leaders have tightened media control and censorship in a bid to retain power.

“The freedom of the press in the countries of the Arab Spring … became more restricted than before,” said Mahasen al Emam, director of the Arab Women Media Center in Jordan.

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