From CDHR
January 11, 2008
When Self-Imposed Censorship is Not Enforced
By Ali Alyami
The Saudi population is amongst the most self-regulated on earth. This is due to a crippling fear of being punished for doing something a member of the thousands of princes and princesses may consider offensive or insensitive to the royal supremacy. There are no codified civil laws, rules, or regulations in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi people operate in the dark because they do not know what to expect or what borders they can and cannot cross. Depending on the moods of those who enforce the rules, decisions are made on the spot by princes and their hand-picked extremist religious judges, security men, and terrorist-like religious police. This reality permeates every aspect of the Saudi society, infrastructure, judicial system, and media outlets. Most Saudi journalists, professors, authors, narrators, analysts, and commentators are among the best and sharpest in the world, yet they live and work under constant fear of being severely penalized if they transcend the border of what is narrowly defined and permissible by their absolute government, the royal family.
It is an irrefutable fact that some primitive (cosmetic) media stifling rules have been relaxed during the past four years in Saudi Arabia. However, Saudi print and visual journalists can only write about the real issues indirectly and metaphorically. They dare not mention the failures of any member of the royal family, as the princes control the media, national income and its dispensations, security, education, mosques, transportation, the judicial system, political decision-making, and every important ministerial and governorship position in the country. This reality makes it impossible for the media to discuss, highlight, expose, or critique any issue in depth that does not involve a member of the royal family.
The Saudi media has a lot to talk about. All forms of civil society are banned by the Saudi government, and severe gender segregation in public places is fiercely enforced by the government’s religious police. The Saudi people are among the most deprived of crucial social norms and elements such as amphitheaters, co-ed restaurants, sports arenas, theaters, classrooms, bars, music halls and acting stages. Free public debates are taboos, as are intellectual freedoms. This socially dry, isolating and insulating environment was recently punctured by the creation of blogs. Young Saudis, like their regional and global counterparts, have begun to use the new internet medium to communicate with each other and discuss legitimate social and political issues.
One such blogger is the courageous Fouad Farhan of Jeddah, a major liberal and cosmopolitan city in the Hijaz region. He broke free from the self-regulated pattern which most Saudi journalists have no choice but to embrace if they want to avoid imprisonment, the loss of their jobs, and stigmatization. Mr. Farhan writes about what the Saudi government and its religious establishment label as corrupting and un-Islamic infidel values such as liberty, codified civil laws, accountability, and transparency, among other issues. Since these topics are un-Islamic, they are considered security risks and against God’s will and the beliefs of Wali Elimr, the king. Mr. Farhan was seized by the dreaded agents (Mubahith) of Prince Naif’s Ministry of Interior on December 10, 2007, ostensibly for reasons other than his demands for better governance.
In order to avoid domestic and international condemnation, such as that which occurred in the case of the gang raped bint Al-Qatief in December, Prince Naïf did not close blogging activities. However, he also failed to accuse Mr. Farhan of any crime. The question is, why was Mr. Farhan arrested? If his arrest was due to his writings, which most Saudis seem to suspect, then this is proof that the reform King Abdullah and his hired propagandists in the West brag about is a farce. Why is it a crime for the new generation of young citizens to discuss issues that shape and affect every aspect of their daily lives, as well as the future of their society and country?