Middle East & North Africa

2010

  

Jordan may extend repressive law to electronic media

Jordan’s Court of Cassation, the country’s highest judicial authority, issued an opinion last week stating that Web sites can be classified as “publications” and recommending that the Press and Publications Law be extended to online news sites and other electronic media. This decision, while not yet the law of the land, sets a legal precedent…

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Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, left, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband at last week's conference in London. (Reuters/Ben Stansal)

Saleh uses security as cover to quash press freedom

Ministers and officials representing some 20 Western and Arab governments and international financial institutions declared themselves “friends of Yemen” during last week’s closed-door meeting in London to address threats posed by Al-Qaeda in Yemen, according to news reports. Participants, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, offered assurances that the international community, in addition…

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An Iraqi in America: ‘Time is like a sword’ here

It has been almost nine months since I arrived in the United States. I can’t believe how fast life is moving and how different my family’s days are now are from the old days—that was a beautiful time. Everything is changing now. There’s no simplicity for us anymore.

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Ben Brik, center, after ending a six-week hunger strike to protest Tunisia's human rights record in 2000. (AFP)

Ben Brik, still jailed in Tunisia: ‘Chains will certainly break!’

“When people want to live, destiny must surely respond. Darknesss will disappear, chains will certainly break!”Journalist Taoufik Ben Brik, 49, spurred admiration among his relatives and lawyers at a Tunis appeals court on Saturday when he chanted these two verses by Abou El Kacem Chebbi, Tunisia’s most well-known poet. This unexpected recitation of Chebbi’s verses,…

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CPJ
Al-Iraqiya

After succession of surgeries, Iraqi cameraman leaves U.S.

Today, more than year after landing in the United States to receive medical treatment for severe injuries sustained while reporting in Baghdad, Jehad Ali boarded a plane at the Detroit Wayne County Airport en route to Beirut.

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CPJ
AP

Reaching out to CPJ’s award winner, imprisoned in Iran

The relentless crackdown on the press in Iran is, well, relentless. In the last few days we have received word that 11 more journalists have been arrested, including former CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, at left. There are 23 other journalists already in prison in Iran, according to the global census CPJ…

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2010