censorship

Ensure National and Foreign Forces Respect Rights; Investigate Killings

2021: a grim year for Free Speech as hundreds of Journalists are arrested in an increasingly authoritarian World

By Dina Matar | – Hundreds of journalists killed or arrested, rising numbers of female media workers targeted, floods of misinformation and hate speech and ineffectual or hostile governments unable or unwilling to protect the public’s right to know. The 2021 press freedom index released recently by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) makes for grim reading. […]

censorship

Justice: French arrest Man they believe to be Top Saudi Assassin of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi

Juan Cole

Update: French authorities have released the individual they apprehended on Tuesday. Read on for the significance of this attempted arrest of al-Otaibi. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Rick Noack and Sarah Dadouch at The Washington Post report that French authorities arrested a Saudi man they believe to be Khalid Aedh al-Otaibi, a member of the […]

censorship

Yemeni journalist accused of spreading atheism is jailed for 15 years in Saudi Arabia

Brian Whitaker

( Al-Bab.com) – A Yemeni journalist has become the latest victim of Saudi Arabia’s laws against religious disbelief. Thirty-year-old Ali Muhsin Abu Lahoum worked in Sana’a for the Yemen Times before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and taking up a job with a TV station. More recently he is said to have been working […]

censorship

Apple Sues Israeli gov’t-backed NSO Spyware Company: “Notorious Hackers – Amoral 21st C. Mercenaries”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Apple is suing the NSO group, which produced the spyware that Israel uses to keep under surveillance the 5 million Palestinians it holds in thrall to its Occupation. The NSO group is believed to be close to the Israeli state. They have sold their hacking tools to repressive governments around […]

Authoritarianism

For First Time, US joins Brazil and India as “Backsliding Democracy”: GOP is making US a Third World Country

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sweden’s International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance finds this year that the United States of America has joined the ranks of “backsliding democracies,” joining India, Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. The IDEA institute notes, “Democratic backsliding, namely the sustained and deliberate process of subversion of basic democratic tenets by […]

censorship

Turkish Online Censorship Ramps up, Targeting Sites Critical of the Government or the President

Global Voices

By Arzu Geybullayeva | – ( Globalvoices.org) – Written in 1953, the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is about a future where books are burned in an oppressive society. A new report titled Fahrenheit 5651: The Scorching Effect of Censorship, uses the well-known book to explain how a series of amendments made to […]

censorship

Human Rights? Saudi Arabia put a Child Dissident on Death Row for 10 Years, but has Finally Released him

Human Rights Watch

By Bill Van Esveld | Associate Director, MENA, Children’s Rights Division | – Nearly ten years after Ali al-Nimr was arrested by Saudi authorities in February 2012, he was finally released from prison this week. His mother tweeted a video showing their emotional reunion. But amid the relief and celebration, al-Nimr’s ordeal highlights the cruelty […]

censorship

“A Psychopath with Infinite Resources:” Al-Jabri accuses Saudi Crown Prince MBS

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Scott Pelley at CBS’s “60 Minutes” interviewed Dr. Saad al-Jabri, the number 2 man in Saudi intelligence until 2014, when he fled for his life to Canada. Al-Jabri made a number of serious accusations against Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, including alleging […]