14 Feb 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
After the events of 13 March 2011 and the shameful attack on University of Bahrain (UoB) students by a group of militias that supported by the Bahraini regime, the UOB administration dismissed more than 400 innocent students and many of them get arrested. I was one of the students expelled because of participating in some protests in and outside the university.
A while later, the administration decided to bring the expelled students, but not all of them, back for the start of the next semester. There are more than 30 banned who have not been allowed to continue studying at University of Bahrain. The university changed to a place that you could not study in; it was like a military base with scattered checkpoints. Many students could not attend their classes on time because of the checkpoints. Barbed wire surrounded everything. The General Directorate of Criminal Investigation (CID) agents were in every corner. Armed forces were spreading at all of the gates, and there were more pictures of the regime than educational boards and banners in the university.
In addition, two female students kidnapped from the campus were tortured by masked people with the assistance of University of Bahrain security.
A few months ago, University of Bahrain administration told the rest of the expelled students that they can continue studying by the beginning of the next term. Afterwards, a group of regime supporters protested at the campus against the decision, but neither the security team nor the Ministry of Interior (MoI) forces tried to stop them by saying it was peaceful, proving the double standards about dealing with protests and gatherings
Mohammed Bahar is a University of Bahrain student who was dismissed during the crackdown last year
14 Feb 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
The Bahraini government spends thousands and thousands of dollars on PR companies every month. Their purpose of using such companies is simple: to project a positive image of Bahrain while also tempering any negative press coverage.
One such company is Qorvis, a Washington D.C. Based PR firm that receives a monthly stipend from the Bahraini government of 40,000 USD. They operate by attempting to influence journalists or opinion makers through the strategic placement of favourable reports defending the actions of the Bahrain government. Their methods range from circulating articles on outlets such as PR Newsire, to emailing journalists directly in order to defend the actions of the regime.
Some PR companies are also suspected of engaging in more clandestine activities, such as creating sock puppet accounts on Twitter to spread pro-regime propaganda. The revelation that BGR Gabara, yet another British PR firm reportedly working for Bahrain, planned to organise a Twitter campaign on behalf of Kazakh children exacerbated such concerns. Given that the US government are also involved in such sock puppetry, there is no reason the private sector won’t seek to profit from it.
Another dimension of PR work is minimising negative publicity. For example, the Guardian recently took down an article from its Comment is Free section after a British PR firm representing the Bahrain International Circuit made a complaint. The article, which Dragon Associates argued contained “considerable inaccuracies”, threatened to derail Bahrain’s plans to host the F1 Grand Prix this year. It has yet to be put back up, either in its original or altered form.
Perhaps the most worrying players in the murky world of PR are the likes of Olton, a British intelligence firm who officially have a contract with the Economic Development Board, but who also appear to work for Ministry of the Interior. As well as providing “reputation management”, their software is reported to be able to identify “ringleaders” through using social media such as Twitter and Facebook. Given that dozens of students were dismissed from university based on evidence garnered from their Facebook profiles, many are demanding to know who is doing the watching.
The threat posed by unscrupulous PR companies to freedom of speech should not be underestimated. It is bad enough that they distort the public sphere in exchange for money, yet it is the rise of companies like Olton that is the most alarming, for when does intelligence gathering become ‘evidence’ gathering? Furthermore, when does “reputation management” involve facilitating the silencing of those narratives that oppose the desired rhetoric of the paying client?
Marc Owen Jones is a blogger and PhD candidate at Durham University. He tweets at @marcowenjones
13 Feb 2012 | Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Kingdom
The global police organisation went beyond its remit in pursuing Saudi Arabian journalist Hamza Kashgari, says Denis MacShane MP. Now we must ensure the kingdom’s authorities respect free speech
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13 Feb 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Syrian journalist Mazhar Tayyara was killed by government forces’ fire in the city of Homs, a centre of the Syrian resistance against President Bashar al-Assad, on 4 February. Tayyara, a stringer for Agence France-Presse and other international news organisations, was reporting from the Homs neighbourhood of Al-Khaldiyeh when government forces shelled the area. The journalist sustained multiple severe injuries and died in hospital within hours.
