Cairo 15 July, 2018

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) launched today the “Report on Freedom of Opinion and Expression in the Arab Countries in 2017”.

The report examines and analyzes freedom of opinion and expression in 12 Arab countries (Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Palestine, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and Saudi Arabia). The report highlights the attacks on journalists and media outlets, and follows the elections of journalists’ syndicates, the attacks on human rights defenders, the assaults on demonstrators, the confiscation of books, and more.

The report monitored the exploitation of Arab governments of the political and security conditions in the region to impose a suffocating siege on freedom of expression and preventing peaceful transition of power.

The report also deals with the ramifications of the Iranian-Saudi conflict and the severing of ties between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt on the one hand, and Qatar on the other, on freedom of opinion and expression.

ANHRI said “We can call 2017 the year of quelling the Arab spring revolutions that demanded bread, freedom and social justice, demonizing them and blaming them for the crises of the peoples of the region, ignoring that these crises were the cause of the uprisings of the peoples of the region in 2011”.

Click here to read the full report

Freedom of expression in the Arab countries in 2017