The challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic across the world have been manifold; health and economic crises and a climate of fear and uncertainty. In North Africa, it has also heightened a crackdown on freedom of expression.
Leaders, particularly in Algeria and Morocco, have taken advantage of the new climate to silence dissent and remove voices of the opposition they have deemed a threat.
Journalists have been arrested and imprisoned for doing their jobs, and views expressed online through songs, YouTube videos, or poems have met with heavy sentences.
Whilst far from being a new phenomenon, the recent crackdowns make an important case for how emergency measures and restrictions have been adopted to serve more than just safety protocols.
Before the pandemic spread, a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa had been experiencing a wave of public protests for more democratic and accountable rule akin to the so-called Arab Spring of 2011.
“The crackdown started several months before the pandemic, but has been exacerbated by the emergency laws and extrajudicial tools regimes are employing under the guise of the pandemic,” Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace Middle East Program.
“Regimes across North Africa are exploiting the pandemic to crackdown on activists, journalists, and anyone critical of the regime, particularly those using social media.”
With some governments responding poorly to the health crisis, and tourism sectors being impacted and livelihoods threatened, the repressive measures have further heightened and exacerbated public anger.
Algeria
In Algeria, with the popular anti-government protest movement known as the Hirak put on hold for safety reasons since March, the repressive climate, arguably the worst in North Africa, has worsened with the continued arrests of journalists and activists, which has been a maintained pattern since President Abdelmadjid Tebboune took office in December.
This week alone, prominent Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni was sentenced to three years in prison, a verdict that lawyer and president of the Algerian League for Human Rights Nouredine Benissad described as “very heavy”.
“Justice in Algeria serves the ruling power and the system, not the people and the state,” Drareni’s lawyer, Abdelghani Badi, said in a statement…
Read full article at Middle East Eye
