By Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi
18 October 2007
The press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders published its Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007 on 16 October, and for the Arab world in general, it does not make for good reading. Of the 21 Arab states listed (Oman is not included), 12 have performed worse than last year, and only four are in the top half of the index of 169 countries.
The index "reflects the degree of freedom that journalists and news organisations enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom," says RWB.
The top five Arab performers are Mauritania (50th), Kuwait (63rd), the United Arab Emirates (65th), Qatar (79th) and the Comoros Islands (96th), the top four having all improved their positions from last year. In fact Mauritania, which is making its first appearance in the top 50, has risen a massive 88 places since 2004.
The authorities in Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar "have displayed a tendency to be more open-minded and, in some cases, initiatives have been taken with a view to liberalising press laws," says RWB. "But self-censorship continues to be widespread in the press in these countries."
The worst five Arab performers are Somalia (159th), Palestine (158th), Iraq (157th), Libya (155th) and Syria (154th), all of whom lost ground from last year.
Violence is mainly responsible for the poor showings of Somalia, Palestine and Iraq, according to RWB, which says that for Palestine, the "main cause" is fighting between Hamas and Fatah. "Hostage-taking, arrests, physical attacks and ransacking of news organisations - the Palestinian media and the few visiting journalist [sic] are threatened from all sides," it adds.
In Iraq, "what journalists fear most are the armed groups that target them without the authorities ever finding a way to put an end to the litany of violence," says RWB. "More than 200 journalists and media assistants have been killed since the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003."
Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, while ranked a very low 148th, has risen from the bottom 20 for the first time. "Saudi journalists enjoyed something of a respite in the past year," says RWB. "But the controlled exercised by the information ministry's media surveillance committee prevents the Wahhabi-led kingdom from rising higher in the ranking."
The performance of North African states is "mixed," says RWB, "with insignificant rises by Algeria (123rd) and Tunisia (145th) and disturbing falls by Morocco (106th) and Egypt (146th) because of the large number of prosecutions brought against the press."
It adds: "Coverage of police abuses, use of torture during interrogation and the lack of judicial independence stang the Egyptian authorities into tightening the vice on independent journalists. Despite all the harassment, the independent media have openly displayed their lack of enthusiasm for the possibility that Gamal Mubarak could succeed his father as president…bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. A young man known as Kareem Amer was sentenced to four years in prison in Egypt for blog posts criticising the president and Islamist control of the country's universities."
Although Morocco's journalists are "better off" than their Egyptian colleagues, according to RWB, they have "in the past 12 months been the target of repeated attacks for which they were not prepared. Confiscation of newspaper issues, temporary closures of newspapers, summonses for questioning, imprisonment and severe sentences will leave lasting scars on the journalistic community, which is now very mistrustful of the government's promises of reform."
The US and Israel have two rankings each, one for their domestic press freedom, and the other "extra-territorial." While top Arab performer Mauritania is only two places behind the US domestically (48th), its extra-territorial ranking plummets to 111, worse than seven Arab states, including Lebanon (which rose to 98th) and Morocco. RWB cites the US detention of Al Jazeera's Sudanese cameraman Sami Al-Haj in Guantanamo Bay since 13 June 2002 as one reason limiting its ranking.
Likewise, while Israel's domestic ranking is 44, extra-territorially (ie. in the occupied Palestinian territories) it sinks to 103rd, behind the top half-dozen Arab performers.
Following is a table summing up the performances of the Arab states:
Rise from 2006 2007 Ranking Fall from 2006 2007 Ranking
Mauritania 50 Comoros 96
Kuwait 63 Morocco 106
UAE 65 Bahrain 118
Qatar 79 Jordan 122
Lebanon 98 Djibouti 132
Algeria 123 Sudan 140
Yemen 143 Egypt 146
Tunisia 145 Syria 154
Saudi Arabia 148 Libya 155
Iraq 157
Palestine 158
Somalia 159