Middle East web-journalists battle oppression

Middle East web journalists battle oppression
Shashank Shekhar
Blogging has been termed the future of journalism in the western world. But it’s in the Middle East that it has become popular and as several incidents point out -- dangerous.
An attraction to online journalism comes primarily from the fact that it allows free flow of write-ups sans the much detestable directives, censorship and editing that the journalists from mainstream local media have to succumb to.
The internet has also enhanced the strength of the otherwise rudderless social groups in the region as the success of a strike called by Facebook bloggers in Egypt the last year showed.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in its recent report said that five Middle Eastern and North African countries are among the world's worst online oppressors. It accused the governments of Egypt, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia of intimidating and imprisoning journalists and bloggers.
Toppers of the infamous list came from deep within Asia. Military Junta ruled Burma was called the worst oppressor in the world for its severe restrictions on the use of internet. CPJ accused Communist China of having the most elaborate online censorship policies.
Iran was listed as the Middle East's worst suppressor of freedom of expression. Omidreza Mirsayafi, an Iranian blogger, was cited by the CPJ report as having died in prison under mysterious circumstances.
What’s impressive is the pace at which online journalists are beginning to stand against subjugation. According to an earlier study by the CPJ, 45 per cent of all imprisoned media workers world wide are bloggers, web-based reporters, or online editors. Numerically, of the 125 journalists currently imprisoned around the world, some 56 are web-based journalists and writers. CPJ says 2009 marks the first time the number of jailed online writers surpasses the number of detained print journalists.
Though deplorable, the arrests highlight one important fact -- that online journalists, with no direct links to state controlled and state scared media houses are being taken seriously. Web journalism has particularly spread its roots in Arab countries that are not oil and gas rich. Bloggers in countries like Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia are increasingly becoming assertive in exposing human rights issues like police brutality, torture, and sexual harassment. This has made the autocratic regional governments undertake increasingly aggressive means to curb their growth.
Punishments handed out to bloggers have been severe. In 2007, Kareem Amer was given a four-year sentence for 'insulting' Egypt's president. Thirty-two-year-old Saudi national Fouad al Farhan was arrested in December 2007 and his computers seized for criticising the pace of reforms in the kingdom. He was held in solitary confinement at Dahban prison in Jeddah until his release in late April 2008.
In Syria, blogger Tariq Baissi was sentenced to three years in prison under ridiculous charges of "weakening the national feeling and the national ethos". Biassi had posted a six word long comment in a web forum in which he criticised the Syrian security services. Numerous other cyber dissidents remain behind bars in Syria.
In Tunis, Nazira Rijba, a Tunisian writer and activist, was in late 2008 charged over an article she wrote in support of the Tunisian news website Kalima. The website has been subject to censorship by the Tunisian authorities.
Nevertheless, bloggers in the Middle East are making their voices heard. In Egypt, they took an active part in organising protests against the government and in launching an anti-corruption campaigns in Libya.
They have exposed the grim realities of everyday life in war-torn Iraq. In the Gulf, female bloggers are increasingly going online calling for change in a display of growing gender equality. Arab bloggers continue to break cultural and religious taboos. They now discuss the social and political malaise plaguing the Arab world. The most important change that the internet has been able to inculcate is perhaps the spirit of inquisitiveness. Blogging has allowed people to ask questions on a range of issues from sex, religion and technology to the particularly stingy questions on government reforms.