Journalists and media activists have begun to confront the Jordanian government over its moves to block local news websites. Two months now after the blockage, many of these sites are struggling.

In two waves, at the beginning of June and again in early July, Jordan’s Department of Press and Publications blocked nearly 300 websites for violating its press law. The government alleged the sites had failed to secure licenses required under the controversial amendments to the law in September last year.

The blocking has sparked an outcry among journalists, activists, and human rights organisations that Jordan is curbing the press and freedom of expression.

Five of the blocked websites – AmmanNet, JO24, Ain News, Khabar Jo, and All of Jo – filed a lawsuit against the government Jul. 25 challenging the constitutionality of the amended press law as well as the legality of the procedure by which the ban was imposed."It's clear that the government was very disturbed by the way these websites have provided a space to talk about corruption." -- 7iber editor-in-chief Lina Ejeilat

Article 49 of the amended law gives the head of the Press and Publications Department the right to block and close unlicensed websites if they do anything illegal, Mohammad Qatishat, the lawyer representing the websites, tells IPS.

Article 15 of the Jordanian constitution states that “newspapers and information media may not be suspended nor the license thereof revoked except by a judicial order in accordance with the provisions of the law.” Article 49 is therefore unconstitutional, Qatishat said.

The head of the Press and Publications Department, Fayez Shawabkeh, tells IPS that the constitution referred “mainly to licensed media” and therefore did not apply to the unlicensed websites he blocked.

Others have brought separate cases against the government and against Internet service providers (ISPs). The popular site 7iber has filed a lawsuit on the basis that it is a blog, not a news website, and should not be subject to the ban. The publisher of JO24, Basil Okoor, is suing ISPs and the government for damages.

As websites wait for these lawsuits to proceed, they are using other creative ways to fight back – developing mirror sites, handing out instructions to get around the ban, publishing news via Facebook or other social media, and holding public protests and debates on the law.

7iber has published material on its mirror site and on Facebook teaching people how to bypass the block, and distributed instructional flyers at local debates “not just for 7iber but for any site,” says 7iber editor-in-chief Lina Ejeilat.

Still, protesting can only go so far before reality sets in. Alaa Fazaa, publisher of Khabar Jo, tells IPS that the ban has gradually been choking his website. A few weeks ago, “two companies told me that they would stop advertising on our website because it’s blocked.

“At this time I have no financial resources. I cannot pay salaries to my employees,” he adds, the strain of recent weeks apparent in his worried expression. “We cannot continue publishing the news the way we did before.”

Fazaa has set up a mirror site, but “not so many people are interested in following you on mirrors.”

Over the past decade, electronic media and news sites have blossomed in Jordan, providing new platforms for reporting and for public discussion. Some see this development as worrying for the government, particularly since the start of the Arab Spring two years ago.

“It’s not just happening now,” Fazaa says. The context began over four years ago, he says. Ejeilat said a “new political atmosphere” had begun with the Arab Spring when people were “much more outspoken about corruption and against public figures.

“It’s clear that the government was very disturbed by the way these websites have provided a space to talk about corruption,” Ejeilat says, even though “this online sphere played an important role in pushing the government to prosecute some of these [corruption] cases.”

Some of the websites were carrying out “independent news reporting in Jordan” and “producing content that could be investigative and hard-hitting” and therefore “beneficial to Jordanian society,” says Adam Coogle, researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The government claims it is trying to protect people from blackmail and character assassination. But forcing sites to register or banning them is not the proper way to do so, experts say.

“If such activities are going on, the authorities have ample ability to investigate and prosecute them,” says Coogle. “Forcing the websites to register in the first place is a violation of Jordan’s obligations under freedom of expression.”

According to General Comment 34 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Jordan is party, “general State systems of registration…are incompatible with” freedom of expression.

Daoud Kuttab, general manager of AmmanNet, is among many who believe the government’s real goal is to create a “chilling effect”. “Their aim is to control and maybe intimidate people into [covering] what they think the media should cover and how they should be working.”

According to Shawabkeh, “bankers, owners of big companies, investors” felt threatened by slander and blackmail. The law was also meant to protect ordinary Jordanians, he added later.

“It’s about the protection of the elite,” says Fazaa. “They do not want us to write about the elite – the political elite, business elite and so on.” The government, he said, is afraid of these websites.

“The websites are independent. They give the real picture. They give information about things that government does not people to know.”

Twenty-five-year-old Syed Hasan, a doctor practicing in a private hospital in Lahore, plans to spend most of May 11, Pakistan’s long-awaited Election Day, in bed.

Members of the minority Ahmadi community in Pakistan say they have been disenfranchised by the country’s election laws. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

A member of the Ahmadiyya faith, Hasan has promised to boycott the impending elections on the grounds that his community of roughly four million has been disenfranchised.

Ever since the constitution branded them non-Muslims, Ahmadis — who believe that the 19^th century cleric Mirza Ghulam Ahmad is the messiah promised by God – have been amongst the most persistently persecuted minorities in Pakistan.

This discrimination is felt deeply at the ballot box, where Ahmadis are compelled to register their votes under a separate category from other residents and thus accept the status of non-Muslim, in violation of their religious identity, Amjad M. Khan, president of the U.S.-based Ahmadiyya Muslim Lawyers Association, told IPS in an email.

According to Hasan, “If we want to vote as Pakistani Muslims, which we consider ourselves to be, we have to denounce the Ahmadi community and our spiritual leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, as a false prophet,” a move he is not prepared to make.

He told IPS his faith is more important to him than casting a vote.

Though the choice is a clear one for many Ahmadis, civil society leaders and even conscientious political parties worry about what the boycott means for democracy in this country of 170 million, where hopes for a “free and fair election” have been running high ahead of the May 11 polls.

For Adnan Rehmat, chief of the influential Islamabad-based media development organisation ‘Intermedia’, “If 200,000 adult Ahmadis cannot vote because the…laws disenfranchise them…it means the elections are technically neither free nor fair” and indicates that something is “seriously amiss” at the core of the state’s functioning.

“Ahmadis…are discriminated against at a level that’s unprecedented, even in our own chequered history,” Pakistani novelist and journalist Mohammad Hanif told IPS, adding that forcing Ahmadis to mislabel themselves at the ballot box is “much worse than disenfranchising people – it’s more like taking their humanity away”.

Decades of discrimination

From its inception in 1947 until Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq took over as military dictator in 1985, Pakistan has had a joint electorate system that allowed all citizens equal right to elect political candidates of their choice, irrespective of religious leanings.

In a bid to “Islamise” Pakistan, Zia-ul-Haq ordered a separate system for what he called non-Muslims who could only vote for five percent of the parliament seats allocated to them.

The system has effectively robbed the community of political representation, preventing Ahmadis from rising to prominent posts within the government or even finding employment in state institutions like the police force.

In 2002, attempting to appease hard-line Islamists, former President Pervez Musharraf issued Executive Order No. 15, which mandated that Ahmadis be registered on a “supplementary voter roll”, a move Khan says is “anathema to Islamic justice”.

Since then, he said, successive governments have been wilfully blind to Pakistan’s “voter apartheid”, violating Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Pakistan has been a signatory since 2008.

Although some see this discrimination as a purely political issue, for Ahmadis it is a matter of life or death. Legal loopholes allow religious extremists to lash out at the minority community, while the country’s controversial anti-blasphemy laws pave the way for further intolerance.

Last month, the Jamaat-i-Ahmadiyya (Ahmadi Movement) issued its annual report for 2012, stating that 19 members of the community were killed last year; in total an estimated 226 Ahmadis have been killed in sectarian violence since 1984.

Almost three years ago, on May 28, 2010, 94 members of this community were massacred in their mosques during the Friday congregation in the eastern city of Lahore. Not a single perpetrator has yet been brought to justice.

This year, the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by former cricket star Imran Khan, has taken up the cudgels on behalf of the persecuted minority. PTI Spokesperson Zohair Ashir told IPS his party considered all Pakistani citizens equal under the law.

“It’s a shame that past governments did not rectify the many injustices and inequalities in the system,” he said, adding that, if it comes to power, PTI will “address all such issues in an expeditious manner”.

He stopped short of specifying what concrete steps would be taken to ensure Ahmadi participation in the political sphere, admitting, “It is hypothetical at this stage to determine what legislative measures need to be taken and when. Fixing the economy and energy crisis and fighting terrorism are areas of immediate and high priority for us.”

Few believe the upcoming election will bring any changes.

Speaking to IPS over the phone from Chenab Nagar, a city in the Punjab province where 95 percent of the 70,0000 residents are Ahmadis, a 37-year-old Ahmadi journalist named Aamir Mehmood said he “cannot think of any politician or party that has the courage to initiate a debate and scrap these discriminatory laws in our country which are used against the minorities”.

As Election Day draws near, groups and individuals acting to protect the “sanctity of Prophet Muhammad” have been vocal about their approval of discriminatory election laws and their disdain for the scheduled boycott.

“If they (Ahmadis) want to reverse this decision (the 2002 executive order), they must take the route of the courts and the parliament,” Qasim Farooqi, spokesperson of the proscribed sectarian outfit Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) told IPS.

“Boycotting is not the answer,” said Farooqi. “Voting is important, the Ahmadis must play their role — by not participating in the elections, they are only making the country weak,” he stressed.

The simmering tension bodes badly for Ahmadis, who sooner or later will be forced to bear the brunt of Islamists’ wrath. Last month, seven Ahmadis were booked on various charges including “defiling the Holy Quran” and “calling themselves Muslims”. They were also accused of printing and distributing “blasphemous” literature in the form of the community’s newspaper, ‘Al-Fazal’.

Community leaders said that the paper, one of the oldest in Pakistan, was only distributed within their community.