Kuwait / Middle East & North Africa

Your Highness: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is writing to express its concern about the criminal prosecution recently launched against Muhammad al-Jasem, editor of the daily Al-Watan.

CPJ Investigates the Attack on the Palestine Hotel

CPJ Investigates the Attack on the Palestine Hotel

The Arab world continues to lag behind the rest of the globe in civil and political rights, including press freedom. Despotic regimes of varying political shades regularly limit news that they think will undermine their power. Hopes that a new generation of leaders would tolerate criticism in the press have proved illusory, with many reforms…

While the press is largely free within Israel proper, the country’s military assault on the Occupied Territories fueled a sharp deterioration in press freedom in the West Bank and Gaza during much of 2002. Despite vocal international protest, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) committed an assortment of press freedom abuses, ranging from banning press access…

Kuwait’s press has long been recognized as the most liberal in the Persian Gulf. Kuwaiti newspapers, all of which are privately owned, are known for outspoken and critical coverage of the government and its policies. Nonetheless, the country’s press laws prohibit “subjecting the person of the emir to criticism” and empower authorities to suspend newspapers…

In the autocratic city-states that comprise the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), local media face both the promise of new technology and the burdens of long-standing state restrictions.

New York, December 23, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) mourns the death of French television reporter Patrick Bourrat, who was killed in an accident while covering U.S. military exercises in northern Kuwait. Bourrat, a veteran 50-year-old reporter with France’s TF1, died yesterday of injuries sustained on December 21, 2002 when he was struck by…

New York, November 4, 2002—The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemns yesterday’s decision by Kuwaiti authorities to suspend Al-Jazeera’s Kuwait bureau. Saad al-Enezi, the Al-Jazeera bureau chief in Kuwait, told CPJ he received a telephone call from the Ministry of Information yesterday informing him of the Kuwaiti government’s decision. He said that no specific reason…

Bucking a worldwide trend toward democracy in the post-Cold War era, the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa remained dominated by an assortment of military-backed regimes, police states, autocracies, and oligarchies. A new, younger generation of leaders has emerged in some countries in recent years, inheriting power and bringing hope for political…