...Or Does It Explode?

Random Thought for Saturday

Question: When Iran's Basiji force members meet up with their counterparts from the Saudi religious police (the muttawa vice squad) do they swap "law enforcement" techniques?

Benchicou Prizes Awarded

In celebration of the one year anniversary of Mohamed Benchicou's release from jail, prizes have been awarded to a Syrian and an Algerian.

We have previously written about Benchicou (including reporting erroneously that he was still in jail), the publisher of Le Matin newspaper who earned himself two years in the slammer for criticizing Algerian President Bouteflicka. Now, Benchicou has been free for a year and has even launched a blog, which includes a report on the prize ceremony.

The event, held in Algiers, presented the "Benchicou Free Plume Awards" to free-spirited writers: Michel Kilo, who was just himself sentenced to three years in jail for signing a petition in Syria, and posthumously to Abdelhai Beliardouh, the Algerian journalist with El-Watan who was killed in 2002 after reporting on organized crime.

Given that Beliardouh is now burief and Kilo sits in jail, the prizes are bittersweet. But the fact that Benchicou is once again a free man giving out free expression awards offers a glimmer of hope.

Don't Dare Report on these Protests

Burning gas stations, banks, and supermarkets may not be a particularly noble form of protest. But the Tehran equivalent of the Boston Tea Party currently underway in response to government-mandated gasoline rationing is now offically a non-topic:

Iran's top security body has ordered local journalists not to report on problems caused by petrol rationing, a day after its surprise introduction.

Angry motorists have reacted violently to the curbs, attacking up to 19 petrol stations in the capital, Tehran. There are still long queues outside filling stations.

The authorities switched off the mobile text messaging system in Tehran overnight to prevent motorists from organising more protests...

Iranian TV initially did not mention the unrest and mostly interviewed people who said they supported the rationing.

Nothing to see here...

Rationing Leads to Riots

Popular outrage over sudden gas rations leads to destroying property and vandalism in Tehran. Could likely be a fleeting moment of protest - and a crude one at that - but it could also be lighter-fuel to a larger fire. Developing...

Cheering on the Syrian National Football Team

What's wrong with this photo?

A fan, with a picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attached to his shirt, cheers for the Syrian team during their West Asian Football Federation Championship soccer match against Iraq at Amman International Stadium June 22.

Saudi Religious Police Put on Trial, Public Outrage Growing

Fascinating report on a groundbreaking development in Jiddah:

Three members of Saudi Arabia's religious police will stand trial this week for their involvement in the death of a man in their custody, an unprecedented action against the powerful enforcers of the country's strict moral code.

The death, the second in the custody of the religious police in the past month, has triggered calls for a reevaluation of the force's role and responsibilities, and generated a media uproar -- a first in a country where criticism of the religious establishment had until recently been off-limits.

"Things have gotten so out of hand that the commission has taken on the roles of policeman, judge and jury. Its employees exercise the right to suspect, accuse, detain and punish on the spot while they also enjoy immunity from any kind of accountability or questioning," Arab News columnist Abeer Mishkhas wrote this week...

Newspapers have splashed stories about the commission on their front pages since the first death. The criticism has roused the commission, long known for being aloof and dismissive of the press, and its members have for the first time given almost weekly briefings to the news media.

Last week, commission chief Ibrahim al-Ghaith denied claims by a human rights group, the National Society for Human Rights, that commission members obtained confessions by force. He also announced the establishment of a legal department to advise commission members. Ghaith had earlier said that the commission was studying ways to improve the conduct of members in the field and that stricter rules for arrests and raids would be put in place...

Saad al-Sowayan, a professor of folklore and anthropology at King Saud University in Riyadh, said Saudis have lived in fear of the commission for decades but have finally started to speak out against it.

"The signs are that the heyday of the Control Squad is perhaps over," Sowayan wrote in a recent article on the London-based Web site SaudiDebate.com. "Slowly but increasingly, irate Saudis are literally fighting back. Local newspapers have reported that within the last two years, physical attacks by the public against the Squad have been on the rise."

...On May 23, more than a dozen commission members raided the home of Salman al-Huraisi, 28. The commission said it found large amounts of alcohol. The members arrested everyone there, including Huraisi's father, Mohammad, and handcuffed Huraisi and beat him, said Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, who is representing the family.

Commission members continued to beat Huraisi in front of his father at their offices, his brother Ali said. When he fell unconscious, they called an ambulance, but he was already dead, Lahem said.

Tunisian writer Kamel Labidi on the Paradox of Press Freedom

Tunisian writer Kamel Labidi surveys the state of journalism in the Arab world and offers a less-than-optimistic assessment:

The second of June marked the second anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese writer Samir Qasir, with no indication of who ordered the car bombing that silenced one of the loudest Arab voices criticizing autocratic Arab regimes, particularly the Assad family in Syria.  The fact that the perpetrators have escaped punishment has paved the way for similar crimes, for example the murder of Gibran Tueni, the owner of the newspaper al-Nahar and a member of the Lebanese parliament, and the attempted assassination of the journalist Mai Shadyaq.

Then there was the discovery of the body of Libyan journalist Dayf al-Ghazal, mutilated by torture, in the city of Benghazi in the same week as the murder of Qasir.  With the exception of the Libyan intelligence services, no one knows who kidnapped and tortured to death the journalist who had resorted to the internet to write about the oppression and corruption under Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi.

The last few years have produced a strange situation in which journalists feel under threat across the region, whether they work in countries where constraints on freedom of expression have intensified—Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and Libya—or those in which red lines have begun to disappear, such as Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, and Yemen...

Read the entire piece.

Street Shot from Iran's Youth Culture Crackdown

"A police officer forced a young man whose clothes were deemed un-Islamic to suck on a plastic container Iranians use to wash their bottoms."

Omar Al-Bashir Found Guilty of War Crimes

Alas, it wasn't at the ICC. But still, the verdict comes down from Nobel Laureate Wole Sonyinka and a panel of judges. Read the indictment and the verdict.

Snapshots of Genocide