Brian Whitaker - Press Freedom in Middle East Cratering in Age of Brutal Dictatorships
Among the 22 countries
belonging to the Arab League, 17 are ranked as “bad” or “very bad” in the
annual World
Press Freedom Index published today by Reporters Without Borders. The eight classified
as “bad” are Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar and the
United Arab Emirates. The nine classified as
“very bad” are Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan,
Syria and Yemen.
Worldwide, these account for almost half the countries in the
lowest category. An even more alarming
feature of the index, though, is that it shows press freedom in the Arab
countries on a broadly downward trend. The table below compares this year’s
rankings with those in
2010 – just before the start of the “Arab spring” protests. Since
then, only six Arab countries have improved their global position and twelve of
them have gone down.
The most notable
improver is Tunisia – widely regarded as the only success story in the Arab
Spring – which has moved up 62 places. Meanwhile, Egypt has
dropped 34 places since the overthrow of the Mubarak regime. Others showing a
substantial drop (in double figures) are the UAE, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain,
Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the tiny state of Djibouti. In a
commentary on this year’s index, Reporters Without Borders highlights
Egypt and Bahrain. It says many journalists have been imprisoned in both
countries– 24 in Egypt and 14 in Bahrain – and they both detain their
journalists for very long periods of time: read more:
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