Minister of Justice presses charges against Omani newspaper for 'insulting him and the Ministry'. Courts order shutdown and jail 2 journalists

Here's a topic for the incoming Majlis Al Shura to fix - Oman's antiquated media and 'freedom of expression' (sic) laws. In a criminal case brought by the Minister of Justice Mohamed Al-Hanai, a few days ago the Omani courts ruled against a small Muscat-based Arabic language paper Al-Zaman, ordering the paper closed for a month and sentencing an editor and journalist to 5 months in prison for publishing allegations of corruption within the Ministry. The case goes to appeal on Oct 15th.





These are the charges:
- insulting the Justice Ministry
- insulting the Justice Minister and his Under-Secretary
- trying to create divisions within Omani society
- violating article 60 of the civil code (the publications law)
- working as a journalist without a permit.

What an evil bunch. Who would ever commit such heinous acts? They were insulting a Minister of the Crown; impuning his reputation (albeit based on reports of allegations to the contrary). As for the last 3 charges, well, almost any publication can be found guilty of those if you want to.

[side note to UD from Consigliere on list above: - Yep (although not this Ministry), Yep (although not this Minister), arguably; yep (who hasn't?); yep (obviously) ].


Er, indeed Consigliere. Noted. Five months in prison, you say? I think we all await the results of the appeal on baited breath. However I fear the problem is with the law itself, not the legal process or the probity of the Courts. I bet I could legally convict my cat. with a violation of Article 60.

I mean, the person pressing charges is the Minister in charge of the law! I suspect his legal case is pretty well honed.



Photo: Insulted Minister of Justice for Oman Mohamed Al-Hanai shown here on left (Muscat Daily)


Dhofari Gucci blogged about it today too here.

The news of their arrest and conviction was reported world wide (Journalists write the world's news, remember chaps?) (eg. BBC) and was even reported in the Times of Oman. Here's the BBC report:

Oman editors jailed for 'insulting' justice minister

A court in Oman has jailed two senior journalists for five months for insulting the justice minister.

The court also ordered the closure of Ibrahim al-Maamary Yussuf and al-Haj's newspaper, Azzaman, for one month.

The newspaper had published articles alleging corruption inside the justice ministry.

The case stirred complaints about media clampdowns in the Gulf Arab nation, which faced small but significant pro-reform protests earlier this year.

An Omani official, Haron Saeed, was also sentenced to five months in jail in the same case.

All three were found guilty of "insulting" Justice Minister Mohamed al-Hanai and his under secretary of state by accusing them of "fraud, deception and prevarications" in an article published on 14 May.

Defence lawyer Ahmed al-Ajmi said he had succeeded in having the three freed on bail and the order closing the newspaper suspended, until an appeal against the verdicts on 15 October.
...

Oman's media laws are ill-defined, poorly served by legal president, and give broad reasons for courts to convict. Note the trial was a criminal case, not just a civil suit. And readers should know that in this specific case, under the law, it would NOT be a defense to simply prove the allegations are true.(!)

So, the Minister of Justice was well within his legal rights to press charges, presumably also feeling darn right insulted, and the courts would not have had difficulty reaching a legally valid verdict in his favour, as the law is so draconian. What the case has highlighted is the true state of play with journalism and law in the Sultanate, something I've blogged about often.

There is no real freedom of expression in Oman, especially in the licensed media. This blog has been blocked by the internet authorities several times in the past.

It's about time Omani law recognised that public criticism of the Government's performance or of Government Ministers, especially if true, is not the same thing as sedition. At the same time, journalists should know that reporting hearsay and accusations as if they were true means those claims first need to be substantiated, or they can be correctly considered libel in any reasonable jurisdiction. Even then it should be a civil case.

The big international Journalism NGO Reporters without Borders is also involved:

MUSCAT-BASED NEWSPAPER CLOSED, JOURNALISTS FACING TRIAL OVER ARTICLE ABOUT JUSTICE MINISTRY

Reporters Without Borders has written to Sultan Qaboos, Oman’s head of state, expressing deep concern at tomorrow’s trial of Yousef Al-Haj, a journalist with the Muscat-based daily Al-Zaman, as a result of a complaint by justice minister Mohamed Al-Hanai about article published on 14 May.

In its letter, sent on 11 August, Reporters Without Borders voiced amazement at the range and scale of the charges brought against Al-Haj in response to the article, which quoted a justice ministry employee’s allegations about growing corruption within the ministry and favouritism in promotions.

“The proceedings are out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence and we call for their immediate withdrawal,” the letter said. “We fear that Yousef Al-Haj will not have time to organize his defence for the first hearing and will not get a fair trial.”

After being summoned at short notice for interrogation at the prosecutor’s office on 5 July, without having time to notify is lawyer, Al-Haj was charged with:

insulting the justice ministry
insulting the justice minister and his under-secretary
trying to create divisions within Omani society
violating article 60 of the civil code (the publications law)
working as a journalist without a permit.

Reporters Without Borders has been told that Al-Zaman editor Ibrahim Al-Mo’amari had applied for press cards for his journalists and had obtained the requested accreditation for all of them except Al-Haj.

On returning to the newspaper after his interrogation on 5 July, Al-Haj was surprised to find he had been banned by the information ministry from writing any further articles for publication. The ban is still in force. He had been interrogated by the police three times in the past without being banned.

The Reporters Without Borders letter also advised against closing Al-Zaman in response to an order issued by a Muscat court in connection with the case. “It would be regrettable if the Omani courts upheld this decision, which would violate freedom of the press and would give credence to the journalist’s allegedly defamatory claims.” The newspaper has nonetheless been closed.

The president of Al-Zaman’s board, its editor and one of its design editors are also to be tried tomorrow on a charge of illegally employing Al-Haj without a permit from the information ministry. Many journalists work without permits in Oman.

So, lots of good press for Oman in the global media, just as we approach the Majlis elections (which were supposed be the 'good news' story).

Still, Muscat Confidential says well done Justice Minister Mohamed Al-Hanai! His job is to enforce the law, and he's a man that clearly enjoys his work. He's got guts.

I mean, we've had riots, strikes, civil disobedience, looting, arson, demonstrations, sit-ins, arrests, imprisonment, wholesale changes to the Cabinet & the constitution, and then yet further protests. (and that's just what was reported in the Times of Oman)

And now people choose to insult the Minister of Legal Affairs by publishing tattle-tale from his junior staff about corruption and nepotism. My god - has it come to this? This, this is anarchy.

I join the honorable Minister of Justice in saying, No.

Not here.

Not now.

Here, we draw the line.

Insulting a Minister? How about you try a few months imprisoned at His Majesty's pleasure my son.

Booyakkashah.





On a different topic entirely, Enforcing the law, Saudi Arabia Style.

Banning Books – Did Oman ban the June 14th Edition of The Economist?

I read the Economist regularly. It appeals to my libertarian ethics, and offers a reasonably independent and socially liberal analysis of events. And I think its really well written. But I noticed last weeks edition didn’t seem to be available. Ah well, maybe late. But no, the week dragged on, and no new edition surfaced.

So I searched the on line edition, and, behold, the June 14th-20th Edition had an interesting article in it that indeed refered to Oman – on the US State Dept report on Human Trafficking.

The report, copied below, does mention Oman, although only in a cursory way along with the other GCC countries. The report itself seems pretty innocuous in general, and about Oman in particular. But is this why the edition seems to have been stopped at the border? Weird. It was hardly a state secret that Oman again was listed as Tier 3 and that the Government strongly objected. Afterall, it was the lead story from the Oman News Agency, and the fact of Omans reported Tier 3 status was in the official ONA release. So why ban the Economist? Did it just sell out really quickly and I missed it? Anyone else see this Economist for sale?

If the edition was banned, I wonder why? Is someone getting a little bit paranoid about this report issue?

I really hate book banning, or book burning for that matter. It always strikes me as the ultimate closed mindedness and is most patronising to the people. Stopping people reading ideas by physically removing the printed word makes me think of intellectual repression in Germany or China, or South Carolina for that matter.

The coloring in of the cleavages and occasional nipple is a practice I find quaint, and at least somewhat consistent with the legal code. But if this is true ... rather OTT I think. Someone was really feeling sensitive...

Human trafficking. A horrible business
Jun 14th 2008 From The Economist print edition

The modern slave trade is thriving

CONSIDERING it is a business that has provoked wars in centuries past, scant attention is paid to the modern slave trade. But one way to track the trade in people is the recently released annual report on trafficking in persons from America’s State Department. And it makes for gloomy reading. Though there have been improvements of late, the numbers of people involved are still appallingly high. Approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across national borders each year and millions more are traded domestically. The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are at least 2.5m people in forced labour at any one time, including sexual exploitation, as a result of trafficking.

Efforts to wipe out this modern slave trade are hampered because human trafficking is a big business. It is impossible to know the exact sums involved but recent estimates of the value of the global trafficking trade have put it as high as $32 billion. The United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking describes it as a high-reward and low-risk crime. People come cheap and many countries lack the necessary laws to target traffickers, or they are not properly enforced. Worse still, it is often the victims of the traffickers that are treated as criminals.

Women suffer most in this respect: the report estimates that 80% of victims of international trafficking are women forced into some form of prostitution. Women are involved in trafficking too, though this is less common. In Europe and Central and south Asia women are often recruited by other women who were themselves the victims of trafficking. In part to avoid detection by the authorities, traffickers grant victims limited freedom while simultaneously coercing them to return home to recruit other women to replace them.

The report also casts a light on the increasingly important role that technology is playing in the trade, both in combating it and its perpetration. The internet helps to identify and track down the perpetrators but increasingly it is becoming part of the problem. Chatrooms are used to exchange information about sex-tourism sites; people are targeted through social-networking sites where pornographic records of sex trafficking are also bought and sold; victims are ensnared through instant messaging.

There are a few bright spots. Ethiopia is commended for its efforts to combat the trafficking of children by establishing child-protection units across the country. Romania’s creation of a national database to identify and respond quickly to trends in trafficking is also praised as is Madagascar’s campaign to wipe out sex tourism.

The report ranks countries into 3 tiers determined by how compliant they are deemed to be with America’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. Predictably, some countries listed in tier 3, the worst offenders, have responded to the accusations with outrage. But these are not the only countries that have a problem. There is also “special watch list” of tier-2 countries that need careful monitoring.

The foreign ministry of Cuba, a country the report places in tier 3, firmly denied that the report had any value and used the opportunity for a customary jibe at America, saying that “the government of the United States has a lot to do in its own country to combat the rampant phenomenon there of prostitution, sexual exploitation, forced labour and the trafficking of people.”

Of the six Gulf states, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia were listed as Tier 3 and Bahrain crept up to the tier-2 watch list. Only the United Arab Emirates made it to tier 2 on the basis of its efforts to combat abuse against foreign domestic servants and construction workers. Foreign ministers from the Gulf Co-operation Council simply said that the information in the report was wrong. They claim that America “aims to practise unjustified pressure for political ends”.

And there is some evidence they could use to back up this assertion. One country exempt from the rankings is America itself. Self-analysis is always difficult but the report, though comprehensive, might have more force if America were to turn the spotlight fully on itself.

Copywrite The Economist.

Youtube brought down by Incompetent Pakistanis

I'm sure you've read how Pakistan, supposedly to stop access to the Girt Wilders clips, ended up bringing down access to Youtube for billions for a few hours. Access was restored, even in Pakistan, after apparently youtube removed the videas. I don't know which videos they mean, because the ones I linked to down below are still working... ?

See the recent article in FT article

Interestingly, a Pakistan Gov official said they had to do that, because at present they don't have the technology in place to censor the internet properly, but can only block the whole site.

Abdullah Riar, Pakistan's information technology minister, yesterday said ... the government was working to refine its ability to censor the internet. It will acquire new equipment for its internet exchanges within weeks "to selectively block [more specific addresses] if those are found offensive".

"Now," he said, "we have to block the whole website because we don't have the technology to selectively block URLs."

Maybe that's the advantage Omantel brings to WorldCall!!! Oman is becoming a world leader in internet censorship. Oh dear...

Internet Laws In Oman

Oman – The country of good news
Those who live in Oman will know that there is certainly NOT a free press of any description here. The main newspapers are owned and controlled by establishment figures and are very, very strong on selfcensorship - nothing gets reported at all that might possibly be construed as questioning Government or the establishment figures, no real crime reports, no court reports, no effective questioning of anything important. The Omani papers make the UAE and Bahrain papers seem agressive and open. Really, its that bad.

The only hope for Oman is the internet, you'd think. But wait.

Internet use in Oman is regulated by Omantel’s Terms & Conditions, which mandate that users “not carry out any unlawful activities which contradict the social, cultural, political, religious or economical values of the Sultanate of Oman or could cause harm to any third party …. Any abuse and misuse of the Internet Services through e-mail or news or by any other means shall result in the termination of the subscription and may result in the proceedings of Criminal or Civil lawsuits against the Customer.”

To use the Internet, individuals, companies, and institutions are asked to sign an agreement not to publish anything that destabilizes the state; insults or criticizes the head of state or the royal family; questions trust in the justice of the government; creates hatred toward the government or any ethnicity or religion; promotes religious extremism, pornography, or violence; promotes any religious or political system that contradicts the state's system; or insults other states. Users must also agree not to promote illegal goods or prescription drugs over the Internet.

Omantel imposes additional physical restrictions on Internet access in Internet cafés. Individuals or companies wishing to open an Internet café must submit a floor plan for the proposed site. The plan must be designed so that the computer screens are visible to the floor supervisor. No closed rooms or curtains are allowed that might obstruct view of the monitors.22 Moreover, Internet café operators are asked to install proxy servers to monitor and log user activity.

for more detail see http://opennet.net/research/profiles/oman