Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA)

As the saga of Saudi’s hunted elites commanded attention across the Middle East and North Africa this November, news of the region’s less powerful prey fell by the wayside. Authorities in Kuwait, Bahrain, Libya, Morocco, and Egypt went after protesters, journalists, and human rights defenders critical of their regimes.

Our Middle East and North Africa round-up spotlights Bahrain’s first military trial of civilians since 2011, a growing crackdown on members of Egypt’s LGBTQI+ community, and a new player restricting Iranians’ internet access.

The most recent attack included the shutting down of three media production companies and their branches in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron, and Bethlehem. Israeli forces stormed their headquarters, destroying and confiscating equipment in an attempt to silence the Palestinian media.

Our monthly roundup spotllghts Egypt’s latest efforts to control the media (and rainbow flags), the Kurdish referendum (and aftershocks), a campaign to tackle self-censorship in Palestine and much more.

Journalist Hajar Harb has been tried in absentia, sentenced and fined for an investigative report on corruption in the Medical Referrals Department of the Ministry of Health in Gaza Strip.

Whether authoritarian regimes, so-called democracies or warring armed groups, those who wield power in the Middle East and North Africa have taken internet censorship to new levels and stepped up their individual campaigns against critics, journalists, and opponents this month.

This July, protesters in Israel and Morocco were met with violence and journalists were subjected to harassment and denial of access, Lebanon banned protests, and 150 organisations met in Doha to discuss threats to freedom of expression in general, and the case of Al Jazeera in particular.

MADA has expressed concern over the recent attacks on journalists and the raid on the offices of PAL-Media in Ramallah and a number of other media agencies.