The Layalina Review
VOL. V NO. 14, June 19-July 02, 2009 Robert Menard, former Director of the Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF) in Qatar, resigned amidst claims of violations of press freedom, writes Habib Toumi for Gulf News. The DCMF was created in December 2007 by the Qatar Foundation and Emir Shaykh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, in partnership with French-led Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders). The Emir’s wife, Shaykha Mozah, is the chairperson of the DCMF. The relationship between the DCMF and the government has become tense over the past few months, beginning earlier this year when a group of foreign journalists was denied access to the country, writes Christie Silk for Editors Weblog. The DCMF was attempting to provide safe houses for threatened journalists, but the government claimed that “giving shelter to journalists from some countries might go against Qatar’s diplomatic interests,” according to Gulf News. Menard responded with an open letter to Shaykha Mozah on the DCMF’s website, in which he cast blame on “some people who are close to you and others you have appointed to senior positions at the center.” The DCMF expressed its opposition to existing press laws in Qatar, which make speaking out against the royal family, the army, or the Islamic faith a punishable offense. “It's practically impossible to criticize government policy... The Qatari press law is both obsolete and repressive,” Menard reportedly said in The Financial Times. Menard, former head of Reporters Without Borders, was criticized in local press for “insulting Muslims” and for “crossing the red line in press freedom,” reports Gulf News. As Spokesman for the DCMF, however, Menard has been vocal about the positive impact of his former organization, one of few groups outside the West dedicated to protecting press freedom. He listed “starting an independent news agency for Somali journalists, providing bulletproof jackets in Somalia, Iraq, and Pakistan, opening a press center in Gaza, and supplying newsprint to newspapers in Guinea-Bissau” as among the Center’s accomplishments. Menard’s resignation comes at a time of widespread concern over the question of press freedom in the Middle East, though media censorship was officially abolished by the Emir of Qatar in 1995. In a similar issue involving restriction of press freedoms, Bahrain’s oldest newspaper was temporarily shut down last week for “violating the country’s press code,” according to the Project on Middle East Democracy. Akhbar Al-Khaleej, founded in 1976, was shut down by the country’s Ministry of Culture after the publication of an op-ed piece by Samira Rajab, in which the author criticized the recent Iranian elections and implied that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish. According to an article in Al-Arabiya, Rajab referred to a presidential debate between Ahmadinejad and former opposition candidate Mehdi Karroubi in which Karroubi asked Ahmadinejad to state his full name in front of a large audience. Ahmadinejad responded tersely, stating only part of his name and reportedly omitting one of his surnames that would point to his supposed Jewish ancestry. The Bahraini government asserted that the article “affected Bahrain’s relationship with a neighboring country,” noted Salman Dossari for Alsharq-Alawsat, causing the journal to be shutdown. The Bahraini Journalists Association (BJA) issued a statement which urged the Ministry of Culture to reconsider its decision “in order to promote the atmosphere of freedom and democracy that is seen in Bahrain under the leadership of King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa.” The BJA expressed its concern that the decision had come directly from the Ministry of Culture and not the judiciary, which they said was in violation of the country’s official press code. Publication of Akhbar Al-Khaleej resumed after less than twenty-four hours.
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