Journalist deportation violates 'dissociation', press freedom

[Originally posted at NOW]

For journalists risking their lives to cover the war in Syria under indiscriminate aerial and artillery fire, as well as the ubiquitous threat of kidnapping, the moment of touching down at Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri airport ought to be one of relief.

Yet, for one European reporter last weekend, the ordeal was not to conclude so soon. Arriving from Amman after a stint in Aleppo Province, the journalist – who requested anonymity – was detained and questioned for twelve hours by airport authorities (known as General Security) before being denied entry and deported.

His offense, he was told, was having a stamp on his passport issued by the Free Syrian Army – stamping passports being an increasingly common practice for journalists traveling through rebel-held territory. A “political decision” had been made, General Security informed him, to refuse him entry. He was given no further explanation.

According to General Security media affairs director General Munir Aqiqi, the journalist was denied entry for reasons of “higher state interests” (in Arabic: “المصلحة العليا للدولة”) – a broad and sometimes controversial legal principle, analogous to the French raison d’État, that was also recently used to reject a draft law allowing women to pass their nationality on to their children.

Aqiqi would not confirm to NOW whether there was any specific policy to deny all entrants with such stamps, though he argued the stamps were invalid because, “There is no state called ‘Free Syrian Army’.” He also claimed the journalist had no available press credentials or other evidence of his profession – a claim denied by the journalist, who told NOW, “They did not question my profession. They actually have a copy of my press card.”

In either case, General Security’s decision constitutes a clear violation of press freedom, according to Ayman Mhanna, director of the Samir Kassir Eyes (SKEyes) Center for Media and Cultural Freedom

“As long as there is no printed legal text that is published in the official gazette, decisions like this are illegal,” he told NOW. “It’s not like a discretionary decision. A law has to exist.”

Mhanna also took issue with the application of the ‘higher state interests’ principle. “The mere fact that [General Security] says this is for the ‘higher interests of the state’ is ridiculous. Are [they] saying that journalists pose a threat to this?”

“Unfortunately, we’re back to these very vague, very elastic expressions that can have so many different meanings, and the point is there is absolutely no legal document that justifies or sanctions such a decision.” Mhanna added that SKEyes would be following up the case with General Security and issuing a statement of condemnation.

Lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Saqr also told NOW the “higher state interests” principle, which he described as “very vague and very broad,” had likely been misused in this case. “This law has to be used under the control of the courts. If the government enforces it, the court must decide afterward whether the higher interests of the state were truly at risk.”

Accordingly, Saqr even suggested that the journalist might have a valid legal case against the government. “This is the type of situation where I think he could go to the courts. Legally I think he might win the case, because in view of the circumstances, the Free Syrian Army is a de facto authority now on the border checkpoints that are under its control. If he can justify that he has suffered damages, and he sued the state for that, he might win. But this would take many years, of course.”

The legal pretext was further derided by political analysts. “National security is not at stake here,” said Dr. Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University. “If the presence of an opposition figure or someone who has links to the opposition in one way or another is a breach of the sovereignty and security of Lebanon, then definitely somebody must look into the activities of the Syrian ambassador and the regime itself,” he told NOW.

As such, Salamey argues the decision calls into question the government’s declared policy of dissociation from the Syrian conflict. “This tells us that the government of Lebanon is not neutral in the Syrian conflict. It’s obviously taking sides by recognizing the stamp of the Assad regime and not the stamp of the Free Syrian Army. Neutrality means being equally distant from both sides, which is obviously not the case here.”

To the extent NOW has been able to ascertain, this journalist’s case is the first of its kind. NOW spoke to several foreign journalists based in Beirut who have also had their passports stamped by the Free Syrian Army, and none reported facing any problems returning to the country.

Nevertheless, given the experience of the journalist in this case, those planning to work in Syria may be advised to take new precautions. NOW learned from other reporters that the Free Syrian Army will agree to stamp a slip of paper instead of a passport if requested. Others have opted to use multiple passports, where available.

And if more such cases occur, others still will inevitably begin to avoid Lebanon as a place of work.

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

A note on the Al Akhbar/STL question

[Originally posted at NOW]

One never knows quite how seriously to take the emissions of Al Akhbar’s editor-in-chief Ibrahim al-Amin – a caricature of the puritanical, prolier-than-thou pseudo-leftist; who laments the collapse of the Soviet Union; who says with a straight face that all Lebanese who oppose Hizbullah’s private arsenal are “working for Israeli military intelligence”; who could outbid even George Galloway in admiration for the careers of Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad – but his recent attempts to excuse the publication of the names, photographs and addresses of 17 alleged witnesses in the upcoming Special Tribunal for Lebanon trial are not much to chuckle about.

On Sunday, he published the first of two responses to STL spokesman Marten Youssef’s criticism of Al Akhbar’s conduct at the SKEyes Media Coverage of International Justice conference over the weekend, in which he argued that the public had a “right” to know the information, before changing the subject to the litany of alleged foul play on the part of the prosecution (or, as Amin calls it, the “international campaign of fabrication targeting the Resistance”).

In his second piece on Monday, Amin boasted that “We Will Not Be Silenced”, painting Al Akhbar as heroic whistleblowers, hounded and demonized once again by the global conspiracy “to damage the Resistance”.

Of the many points to make against this outrageously misplaced self-pity and dishonesty, let’s take just the two most obvious:

- A whistleblower is someone who exposes the crimes of the powerful, on behalf of the powerless and innocent. Al Akhbar, by contrast, put the powerless and innocent in potentially lethal danger, the only possible consequence of which is the protection of the guilty and powerful.

- Youssef’s criticism did not come from some morally compromised political bias, but from basic, fundamental respect for the process of international justice. As someone who attended all three days of the MCIJ conference, I can confirm that Youssef’s was not a minority opinion – all legal experts present, most of whom had extensive experience in international tribunals such as the ICTY and ICTR, and had no personal connection to or stake in Lebanese politics, were of the unanimous opinion that anything jeopardising the protection of witnesses was condemnable and a potential breach of the law.

Freedom of suppression: Fears for press freedom if alleged Hezbollah attack blows over

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

The release on bail Wednesday of a jailed Lebanese-Palestinian journalist may herald the end of what a local watchdog described as one of the worst violations of press freedom of its kind in Lebanon for years.

Rami Aysha, who has freelanced for international publications including Time, was reportedly investigating an arms smuggling story in Beirut’s southern suburbs on August 30 when he was detained and then imprisoned for almost a month without charge. Though an initial report by Al-Manar television station said Aysha was arrested by army intelligence, a letter received by the Committee to Protect Journalists by concerned colleagues alleged the arrest was in fact carried out by members of Hezbollah, which has a strong presence in the southern suburbs. The letter further alleged that Aysha was “severely beaten” by Hezbollah members, who inflicted on him two black eyes – an account corroborated by Aysha’s brother Ramzi, who visited him in a Byblos prison and reported that he had a broken finger and had been beaten on the head with his own camera. Al-Manar is run by Hezbollah, the press office of which could not be reached for comment.

It took almost three weeks for an official charge to be made against Aysha. On September 19, his lawyer, Saliba al-Hajj, informed the Samir Kassir Eyes (SKEyes) Center for Media and Cultural Freedom that Aysha was accused of attempting to smuggle arms himself – a charge both Hajj and Ramzi Aysha denied when contacted by NOW Lebanon.

Ayman Mhanna, SKEyes’ executive director, told NOW Lebanon that a serious violation has occurred either way. “If Aysha was arrested because of his work as a journalist, then his arrest was totally unacceptable and totally illegal, because there is absolutely nothing in Lebanese law that justifies this. And even if he was arrested for other reasons, what his brother and lawyer said about his beating is also totally unacceptable, and we demand an official, public and transparent investigation and trial of those responsible.”

Lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Sakr agrees, though he cautions that the legal question hinges on the charges raised against Aysha. “A journalist cannot be arrested for simply doing his job, though he can be sued, let’s say, for defamation. In Lebanese law we have something called ‘crimes by publication,’ but again, one cannot be arrested for these,” he told NOW.

“If, however, a journalist is caught committing a crime – carrying out intelligence work for Israel, for example – then of course he can be arrested,” he added.

Should the charges against Aysha prove false, Sakr says he would have several courses of legal action available to him. “If he has been arrested beyond the normal period of arrest according to the law, he could sue for illegal detention. And if he has been subject to false charges by a third party, then he can sue also for false claims. But this would have to wait until the end of the trial, if there is one.”

However, neither Aysha nor his lawyer appears willing to pursue such a course of action. “Even though we feel that no one has the right to arrest Rami but the Lebanese state, what happened, happened. Unless something new comes up, we will not do anything,” Ramzi Aysha said.

“What can we do against the army and Hezbollah?” asked Hajj rhetorically. “All that we can do in this country is pray.”

Accordingly, Mhanna believes Aysha’s case will have detrimental consequences for press freedom in Lebanon. “Though we at SKEyes have witnessed and reported dozens of violations of press freedom in recent years, there has been nothing as severe as this for at least two years,” he said. “We are shocked that we all had to wait for two weeks before this issue became slightly public, and it’s still not getting the public and media attention it deserves. The idea of arresting a journalist during the course of his work and resorting to physical aggression, regardless of any charge, is unacceptable. And the practice of holding someone for a long time without charges is another thing that needs to stop in Lebanon.”

The case also shines a spotlight on Hezbollah, a party with a history of obstructing press freedom in areas under its control. “Last year we reported at least five cases of journalists being detained by Hezbollah and having their photos deleted and so on, all of which we documented in our Annual Report on Press and Cultural Freedom,” said Mhanna. Indeed, NOW Lebanon has in the past had notes confiscated and been prevented from reporting by Hezbollah members in the southern suburbs.

That such behavior may now be escalating into physical attacks on journalists sets a worrying precedent for press freedom, says Mhanna. “Hezbollah members are in no position to conduct any arrests of any citizens, let alone journalists, and let alone beating them in the process. If we open this Pandora’s Box, then all parties will start conducting these arrests.

“We’ll be back to the law of the jungle.”

Luna Safwan contributed reporting.

Lebanon's clergy finds new common ground on need for more censorship

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

A taxing problem of satirizing the religious is that they so often do a better job all by themselves.

How is one to improve, for example, on the name of the ‘Committee for the Conservation of Values’, Lebanon’s brand-new cross-sectarian censorship board? Not since Saudi Arabia’s ‘Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice’ has Orwell’s 1984 been so faithfully reconstructed.

As the Samir Kassir eyes [SKeyes] website reveals, this first-of-its-kind collaboration between the official Sunni, Shia, Druze and Christian clergy aims to combat the “moral decadence”, “social corruption” and “threats to the Lebanese family” arising from the grave “abuses” of media freedom in recent times. As a charming afterthought, it even “invites” media outlets to “conduct self-monitoring”, in order to lighten the workload and streamline the overall purification process.

I telephoned SKeyes’ Ayman Mhanna, who had evidently guessed why I was calling when he picked up, laughing, with the words, “It’s not a joke.” He explained the unwritten gentleman’s code by which the mosque and the church – which are not formally invested with legal power to censor – enforce their will upon the state. “Whenever the censorship bureau sees anything at all related to religion, they take it upon themselves to forward the movie, the play, the script, or whatever, to the religious group that could be offended, and they wait for their response, and usually they respect their response and censor accordingly.” He pointed to the recent case of Tannoura Maxi, which had to be pulled from cinemas for a second round of censorship when initial cuts were found to have insufficiently satisfied the church. “No matter what the law says about freedom, in de facto terms [the religious leaders] hold the real authority.”

All of this makes me rather fed up. I’m fed up, in general, of the religious everywhere whining about “militant” and “oppressive” secularism while having things entirely their own way, all the time. I’m also fed up of hearing from otherwise liberal friends that the confessional system is the protector of freedom in Lebanon. Has it ever been more obvious that the country is not merely a theocracy, but a polytheocracy, and that the only thing God’s terrestrial deputies are able to agree on is the imperative of strangling and suffocating liberty?

Another assassination attempt

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

“April”, TS Eliot once wrote, “is the cruelest month”. So it would seem in Lebanon, where just a day after the 37th anniversary of the Ain el-Rammaneh massacre that sparked the civil war, the journalist Mustafa Jeha was fired on by would-be assassins on the Damour-Jiyye highway in what was the month’s second attempt on a public figure’s life, as well as its second deliberate targeting of a journalist.

Mustafa is perhaps best known as the son of his eponymous father, also a writer, who fell victim to a successful assassination attempt in 1992. The motive of the killing remains unclear. On the one hand, Jeha père was an affiliate of the Guardians of the Cedars, the party-cum-militia whose highly controversial ideology earned it no shortage of enemies. On the other, he also wrote a number of books critical of Islamic doctrine, such as ‘Khomeini Assassinates Zoroaster’.

According to a statement released yesterday by the Beirut-based Samir Kassir eyes [SKeyes] Center, which monitors free speech violations in the Middle East, Jeha fils announced in January of this year that he was “re-opening the judicial case of his father’s assassination”, suggesting that Saturday’s attempt on his life demonstrated “the killers’ readiness to do all they can to prevent progress” in this regard. How singularly despicable that someone should be killed for wanting to know why his own father died. The SKeyes statement is well worth reading in its entirety, and - whatever one’s opinion of Jeha’s political and/or religious beliefs - one cannot but echo their unconditional condemnation of this anachronistic savagery. As George Orwell so imperishably put it: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”