By Siddrah Alhindi
Banning books and manually covering exposed skin in magazines are actions regularly
taken by higher powers in a society. In the Middle East, it is no surprise that certain websites are blocked, the Internet can be shut off, journalists are imprisoned, and voices are silenced. Propaganda used to take the form of posters and prints yet now it occurs through posts on streams
of social networks. You can like, follow, block, report, and even self-censor to protect your safety, but the power doesn’t ultimately belong to the people. Freedom of speech is being stripped away from the human rights of citizens of Middle Eastern countries.
According to Freedom House, an independent organization dedicated to expanding freedom and
democracy around the world:
In response to pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East
and North Africa, authoritarian regimes cracked down severely on dissent, going to new extremes of political violence, mass arrests, and restrictive legislation.
This organization has documented several cases of human rights violations in countries such as
Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. These violations have been placing limitations on freedom
of speech throughout the years.
A problematic process that stems out of these restrictions in today’s technology-driven world is
media censorship which has plagued almost every inch of the Middle East. In today’s society, the use of the internet and media platforms has become a part of the lives of everyday people with over 4 billion people around the world using the Internet. Whether the average citizen is checking out a friend’s post, or reading the news, there are higher powers that are controlling what they want their citizens to see or in the Middle East’s case, what they don’t want them to see.
The effects of media censorship could vary in negativity. For example, Qatar was blockaded in 2017 by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt. Turkey had allied with Qatar, aiding it through the boycott. Amidst that political climate, a media censorship act such as banning popular Turkish series from broadcasting outlets like Saudi’s MBC might seem to be a small-scale problem that would only affect soap-opera viewers. However, this action demonstrates a larger form of boycotting Turkey.
In 2018, nine million Snapchat daily users in Saudi Arabia were blocked from viewing Al
Jazeera’s content on their Discover Channels after the Saudi government asked the media
platform to remove the Qatari media network from their citizen’s screens. This is another act of
censorship taken by the Saudi Arabian government to block content that can “violate the laws of
the country.”
Larger forms of violations target the freedom of the press. According to Reporters Without Borders, an international non-profit organization that promotes freedom of information and the press,
When the Arab Spring got under way in 2011, the population in some countries demonstrated their thirst for freedom by their use of the media and social networks. Spaces for expression have emerged but the situation has not improved everywhere and the region continues to be one of the most dangerous for journalists.
In 2015, The Committee to Protect Journalists, an independent organization that promotes press
freedom worldwide, listed the “10 Most Censored Countries” as a part of their annual
publication, Attacks on the Press. Saudi Arabia and Iran were included among those countries with Saudi Arabia being the third most censored and Iran the seventh. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have been banned in Iran since 2009.
The organizations are advocating for change to give the power back to the people. Yet most of the power remains in the hands of political leaders and governments that are creating a tighter grip on the media to control it. This hunger for censorship is driven by the fear of rebellion, which has been sparked after the revolutions of The Arab Spring.
The examples mentioned might seem outdated yet this type of lifestyle is still unfortunately
prevalent in Middle-Eastern countries to this day. Forms of technological oppression are
advancing and adapting to our digital age. Like the links in a chain, some links on the internet
are leading people to confinement in a system where the search results for breaking free have
been blocked.
