YEAR IN REVIEW: Civil Rights Highlights

This blog launched began after New Year's Eve in 2005. What a time to start looking at civil rights in the Middle East, and to wonder what the explosion (if it would come) would look like! Despite the persistence of destructive blasts across the region, there were a bunch of inspiring - and unprecedented  - breakthroughs. Here's a quick look back at the good, the bad, and the just plain wacky:

BIGGEST OUTRAGE: Sudan Genocide
This was a tough category, but in the end the unabated killing and the international community's inability to stop the Bashir regime take the cake. An entire region is being cleared of its indigenous black African population, revealing in stark terms the hypocricy of cries of "racism," "imperialism," and "ethnic cleansing" so often thrown about by the region's rulers.

FORGOTTEN OUTRAGE: Iran's Baha'i Crackdown, Yemen's Akhdam Marginalization (tie)
The Baha'i religion is out and out banned in Iran. Followers, who must practice in hiding, are banned from universities, jailed, and even murdered. The black Yemenites known as Akhdam have lived in Yemen for centuries but continue to face egregious discrimination domestically and indifference from the outside world.

MOST MUNDANE OUTRAGE: Banning Valentine's Day in Saudi, Fearful Photocopiers in Cairo (tie)
Saudi Arabia has officially banned Valentine's Day. The men at the Xerox store in Egypt are afraid to even copy protest posters.

DICTATOR OF THE YEAR: Bashir and Bashar (tie)
Parade magazine gave Bashir its top spot in the annual ranking of the world's dictators. Bashar, meanwhile, began 2005 by hosting John Kerry but then sat in the hot seat much of the rest of the year. He is the only dictator in the region currently subject to a UN investigation. Runner-up is the region's longest-serving despot, Muammar (36 years and counting), and his son Saif - who had the audacity to title his art exhibit "The Desert is not Silent."

TURNING POINT: February 21
The dam burst on February 21 this year, as Lebanese poured out into the streets to protest the Hariri assassination. It was the first of several massive non-violent rallies that soon forced the unimaginable: a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. On the same day in Cairo, a Kifaya rally drew several hundred people, putting Egypt's "Enough" movement on the map. Here are a few of the protests that subsequently followed:

• Kuwait's blue revolution for women's right to vote
• Iranian women's sit-ins (successful) for the right to attend soccer games
• Tunisia's Fock Yezzi online "enough" campaign
• An interfaith vigil organized by young Egyptian Muslim bloggers

MOST DARING MOMENT: Ammar Abdulhamid blogging his interrogations 
Many people showed courage this year, but the pure audacity was displayed when Ammar Abdulhamid provided regular blog updates on his interrogation by Syrian security forces, all the way up to strongman Assaf Shawkat. The Syrian intelligence operatives evidently did not know about his blog. Then again, they also referred to Guantanamo as "Guatemala."

MOST INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN ACTIVIST: Jane Novak
Another tough call, but the award has to go to Jane Novak, a journalist whose writing and blogging has singlehandedly kept Yemen's dictatorship (and its widespread crackdown on independent journalists) in the spotlight. She has been so effective that regime-controlled newspapers now attack her personally. A one-woman dynamo.

OUTSTANDING EDITORIAL WRITING ON CIVIL RIGHTS: Mody Al-Khalaf
This groundbreaking young Saudi writer challenges the regime's many civil rights outrages and advances her own positive vision of what Saudi society could look like. Added bonus: she invokes Martin Luther King, Jr., endearing her even more to this blog.

BEST LOCAL BLOGGING ON CIVIL RIGHTS: Chan'ad Bahraini, Nora Younes (tie)
Thanks to Chan'ad, the outside world was able to feel part of the many grassroots protests that rocked Bahrain during 2005. His clear prose and photo-journalism was outstanding. Over in Cairo, Nora Younes provided several outstanding reports, including the aforementioned Xerox man, the exodus of Coptic Christians, and the Sudanese refugee demonstration. Both proved that bloggers can often do a better job than mainstream journalists in reporting on civil rights violations.

MOMENT OF LEVITY: Kharfan
This anonymous Syrian blogger burst on the scene for a few short months, offering hilarious insight on Syria and its "Lion Cub" dictator. A more consistent performer in this regard is the Religious Policeman, who gets a runner-up award. The most unintentionally humorous showing: an Austrian pop band's paean to UAE dictator Sheikh Zayed.

NOTABLE PASSING: Zouhair Yahyaoui
Yahyaoui launched the dissident blog/site TUNeZine in 2001. In May of 2002, he ran an online poll on TUNeZine asking if Tunisia was "a) a republic, b) a kingdom, c) a zoo, or d) a prison." Needless to say, he got to know President Ben Ali's internal security goons pretty well. He died in March at age 36 from a sudden heart attack. But TUNeZine lives on.

LEADERSHIP CHANGES: Mauritania, Saudi, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Sudan
So there was a coup in Mauritania, King Fahd died, the Lebanese threw off a Syrian de-facto rulers, Iran elected a new wacko president, Iraq saw several new leaders, and Southern Sudanese leader John Garang died in a helicopter crash. That's a lot of turnover for one year.

ODD FIXATION: Sexuality Issues
In 2005, this blog ended up publicizing several stories otherwise missed by English-language media and bloggers. Many had to deal with sexuality issues, including the region's first gay marriage, the first lesbian soap opera character, and transsexuals in Iran. Do your own psychoanalysis.

PHOTOS OF THE YEAR: Follow the Links

• Egyptian plainclothes police administer a beating
• Qaddafi and Bouteflika joking around at the Arab League summit
• A public hanging of Iranian teenagers
• Iranian girl-band rocks out
• Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi faces the judges
• Over one million Lebanese party for freedom and get results

2006 Risky Prediction: A "Jasmine Revolution" in Syria

HATS OFF TO 2005, LET'S SEE WHAT EXPLODES NEXT YEAR.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Mass demonstrations are not at all part of the political culture of Saudi Arabia, unlike in Bahrain," said Laurence Lou?r, specialist on the Middle East, and especially the Shia politics, CERI Sciences-Po.

"Urbanism does not support this type of gatherings, there is no identifiable major places where people could converge," says the researcher. The preferred means of protest, Saudi Arabia is the petition.
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