JAMAL Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered by a 15-man gang allegedly acting on the order of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman disappeared on October 2.
But before he made the final journey to the Saudi embassy in Istanbul, Turkey where he was gruesomely murdered, he had submitted his opinion piece to Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor at The Washinton Post.
He had been contributing opinion articles to the Post since September 2017 till his death in October 2018.
In his last article, titled: “What the Arab world needs most is free expression”, Khashoggi explained the kind of repression present in the Arab world, and how it is exacerbated by the government’s media censorship.
He was concerned that citizens are not free in most countries in the Arab world, with the exception of Tunisia, according to the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House.
Three other countries in the region that passed as “partly free” include Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait.
“As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.”
He wrote that hopes activated by the Arab spring of 2011 were eventually shattered, and made Arab nations “either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.”
Khashoggi grieved about his friend Saleh al-Shehi who is currently “serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment,” and lamented the Egyptian government’s seizure of al-Masry al Youm, a national newspaper in the country.
None of these acts of tyranny outraged journalists and citizens, he wrote.
“As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate, ” a development that harms journalists and the media business.
He wrote that the expectation the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media has also been blocked by the government.
[Read Khashoggi’s last column for The Post before his disappearance in Arabic]
The late journalist, however, praised the effort of Qatar’s government that continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.”
The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power, he stated.
In his view, the Arabs need something similar to Radio Free Europe, which grew from Cold War years into a critical institution that played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom.
“The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.”
In a recent tweet, his editor, Attiah wrote: “They may have silenced my friend [Khashoggi] but they cannot kill his words. “
Ajibola Amzat, Managing Editor at The ICIR. He can be reached via aaamzat@icirnigeria.org
and @ajibolaamzat on Twitter.