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A Perilous Dance with the Arab Press

(International Herald Tribune) Mona Eltahawy - Writing for an Arab newspaper is like playing hopscotch in a minefield. From January 2004 until early this year I wrote a weekly column on the opinion pages of Asharq al-Awsat, the London-based, Saudi-owned newspaper that is read across the Arab world. And then I stepped on a mine. Without warning or notice, fewer and fewer of my columns made it into print. Then my articles stopped appearing altogether. Nobody tells you that you're banned from an Arab paper - especially a paper that is supposedly the liberal home of writers banned from other papers. An Egyptian journalist told me the editor of a newspaper he used to write for actually confessed to him that the Egyptian regime had called the Saudi prince who publishes the paper and requested that my friend be banned. That is probably what happened in my case. Since Egypt's parliamentary elections last year, the Egyptian regime has been settling scores with opponents. I had devoted many of my weekly columns to the reform movement in Egypt. The trouble with Asharq al-Awsat, beyond its disturbing acquiescence to Arab regimes, is that it claimed a liberalism that was patently false. Few newspapers in the Arab world are truly independent. Most are state-controlled or state-owned, or owned by persons very close to the state; Asharq al-Awsat is published by a nephew of the Saudi king. It is gratifying to know that Arab regimes and compliant newspapers consider some of us annoying enough to ban.
2006-06-21 00:00:00
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