Appeal to Defend Freedoms of Expression and the Press in Jordan

[Jordanian flag on display in Amman. Image by marc`s pics&photos via Flickr.] [Jordanian flag on display in Amman. Image by marc`s pics&photos via Flickr.]

Appeal to Defend Freedoms of Expression and the Press in Jordan

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the Jordanian Coordination Group of Electronic Websites (CGEW) on 13 September 2012 and published on Ammon News.] 

Despite King Abdullah II`s repeated assurances that Jordanians enjoy unrestricted freedom of expression and free media, successive Jordanian governments for the past three years have attempted -- and succeeded -- in passing laws designed to undermine the freedom of the press, particularly the now widespread electronic news websites.

On Thursday, 13 September, 2012 the Jordanian Senate`s Legal Committee endorsed the proposed amendments to the Press and Publications Law, which was earlier drafted by the government and endorsed by the Lower House of Parliament, in a move to further restrict the freedom of the Internet and online expression. 

The controversial proposed law has been met by concerted rejection from the Jordanian press sector and the Coordination Group of Electronic Websites (CGEW), in addition to bloggers, activists, and local and international rights and freedoms organizations. CGEW categorically rejects the Jordanian regime`s attempt to undermine its freedoms, stressing that the law violates the constitutional guarantees to freedom of expression and the press. 

The proposed law poses dangers to online expression, giving the government executive power to censor and block websites and close their local offices, unreasonable demands to license websites (including blogs) with the Press and Publications Department, and more threatening stipulations that holds owners, editors-in-chief, managers and editors responsible for the contents of online comments posted on their sites. Further legal measures are also imposed on Internet users under the proposed law. 

The proposed law presents a vague definition of "online publications," extending to electronic news websites, blogs, and potentially subjecting global websites such as Yahoo! and Google in its amended articles.

Jordan has several existing laws that restrict freedom of expression and the press, including the existing Press and Publications Law which criminalizes defamation and slander and carries prison terms and fines, and the 2010 Law on Information Systems Crimes which criminalizes the publishing of defamatory content through online portals, including email, text messages, or Internet websites. 

A wide conglomerate of Jordanian journalists, bloggers, and activists have carried out numerous protests in the past month against the proposed law, including demonstrations and rallies in front of the Parliament and the Jordan Press Syndicate, and over one thousand Jordanian websites participated in the Internet Blackout on 29 August, 2012, warning citizens that they "may be deprived of the content of this site under the amendments of the Jordanian Press and Publications Law and the governmental Internet censorship." CGEW also prepared a "blacklist" of officials and lawmakers dubbed as "Enemies of Freedoms." 

Journalists and activists have also launched a petition to King Abdullah II to interfere and protect Jordanians` freedom of expression and Internet freedoms. "Freedom of the Press and the Internet is crucial for citizens to build a strong democracy, but such amendments to the law obstruct freedom of expression and tarnishes Jordan`s image abroad," the petition stated.

Today, more than ever, Jordan is in dire need to grant its citizens their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of speech, expression, and freedom of the press. Controversial and inflammatory legislations such as the proposed amended Press and Publications Law deal a major blow to the country`s political, economic, and social reform efforts and an obstacle towards democratic change in the Kingdom.

Freedom of the press in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has already witnessed deterioration as reported by local and global indexes in the past three years, including a regression towards "Not Free" status in Freedom House`s Freedom of the Press 2012 report, and a reported decline in the level of press freedoms in the Press Freedom Index maintained by Reporters Without Borders. 

We urge you to assist in taking action against this latest move to restrict freedoms by appealing to King Abdullah II and the Jordanian government and lawmakers to reject the proposed amendments to the Press and Publications Law, and support Jordanians in defending their constitutionally guaranteed rights against oppressive measures to restrict their freedoms. 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412