Freedom of Expression on General and Professional Websites: A Policy of Double-Standards?!
Ali Mansouri Writer, Researcher, Consultant
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“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” (Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) Writers write for different purposes. I personally write mainly to raise awareness on certain academic issues or human universal values and practices. I also write to fight corruption, thievery and deception in higher education. I do not write for pleasure or to waste my time. This is why we expect decent and honest people to take our sides and to give us a little freedom to write and to fight. Those who stand against us are mostly indifferent people or selfish people who care about themselves only or are “mercenary lawyers” who do not care about wrong and right and do not enjoy any principles or human values. Their only concern is to win the cases for their clients and accumulate profits whether their clients are corrupt or not. We really do not mind if things go as normal or take place as per the normal human understanding of justice and according to international laws and criteria and well-known legal proceedings. Regrettably, this is not the case in most countries in the world, especially in the Middle East region where the rule of the “jungle” prevails and justice and human rights are almost non-existent. You do not only find corrupt governments, politicians and businessmen but, sadly, you also find most of the judges are corrupt to their nails and the “justice” systems are rotten to the bottom line. Corruption and deception go deep into all aspects of life and sectors, including higher education. One day, a corrupt VC and a corrupt Assistant VC picked up five of my articles and filed a court case claiming that the articles have been written against them though there is not a single mention of them or of the University in the articles which deal with general academic and higher education issues. The articles are still available online and I will write in detail about this court case. The articles are in English but the corrupt VC and corrupt Assistant VC have them translated into Arabic by a “commercial translation bureau” run by translators who do not have any reasonable command of English. The mistranslated texts are completely wrong and have nothing to do with my English articles. I pointed out this to the police and the public prosecution and to the judges. Surprisingly, the Arabic mistranslated and distorted texts were the ones used in the legal proceedings and hearings because the police, the public prosecutors and the judges do Page 2 of 5
not understand English! Imagine that. You write in English and they mistranslate your articles into Arabic and distort them and then file a court case against you! The Arabic texts are not only wrong translations but they contain phrases and expressions which are not found in the English texts. There are thousands and thousands of cases like this one, which have made most people in the Middle East no longer trust the judges and find them as corrupt as the people we are fighting. The legal system is there not to ensure justice but to ensure the corrupt people continue with their corruption! It is merely a system for collecting garbage. In spite of everything, we are still defiant and we write in different newspapers, magazines and different websites on the Internet to expose corruption, raise awareness and pass academic and general knowledge. One of the blessings of the Internet is that oppressed people all over the world have found in it a platform where they can voice their opinions and grievances. Writers and academics, in particular, have found the Internet a very powerful tool to express themselves and publish their articles and researches, especially in countries where freedom of expression and freedom of speech are almost non-existent. Of course, the absence of freedom is the major reason why corruption, deception, and injustices prevail in many countries. People face very harsh punishments of fines and long-term jail just because they write an opinion here or there or they publish an article on this website or that. If you look at the most popular general and professional social media websites, you find they are mostly USA-based where the freedom of expression is unparallel in the other parts of the world; or so we believe. So we expect these websites to adhere to the basic human values of liberty and freedom and offer a genuine platform for their fellow human beings all over the globe, especially in the Middle East region where freedom of expression and freedom of speech are at a minimum in most countries. Corrupt officials and senior managers, especially in higher education institutions, have never been happy or comfortable with this sort of freedom. They always resort to their traditional and repressive tactics of using “repressive laws” to silence those who dare to expose them on these websites. They found an excuse in the claim that an article or articles written to expose their corruption and deception are “defamatory and libelous”. As we have explained, they normally use this very excuse to silence and jail anybody in their countries. I am not surprised at these attempts but I am really shocked to find that some people on very free and professional websites Page 3 of 5
give in very easily and quickly delete some of my articles! This is really frustrating. If these American-based websites do not support the oppressed people to publish their articles, who would do that? It is also a double-standard policy to find very critical articles about many governments, institutions, powerful people, Emirs, Kings and Presidents, including the President of the United States, written by some Western journalist and writers, but their articles are not deleted whereas our articles about an incompetent and corrupt Vice Chancellor (VC) or corrupt Assistant VC or a university well-known for cheating and deception are deleted because, it is claimed, the articles contain some “defamatory content�. It is very demotivating for any writer to see his/her articles deleted for such oppressive excuses. If articles are removed from publication just because somebody has complained against them, then we cannot really write anything interesting or significant, especially about corruption. Most of my articles have included academic and factual information in addition to personal views. The articles are in no way defamatory but, as we all know, there are some people who do not want anything to be written about them even if they are corrupt or indulge in slavery, thievery or sexual harassment. For them, everything is defamatory and libelous. Unfortunately, this is mostly the case in the Middle East, as we have said, and in other developing countries where you find brutal dictatorships and tyrannical governments. So where is the freedom of speech and the freedom of access to information? In fact, whether something is defamatory, libelous or not is a matter for a court of law in a free country to decide, not in an Arab or a Middle Eastern country where freedom of speech is almost non-existent. This is why we are publishing with some freedom-based websites and with other free publishers. The articles are still available on other websites in spite of their deletion from others. Of course, if a publisher or a website removes articles just because of a complaint or a report, then writers would find somewhere else or another way to publish. Recently, President Trump has not been able to stop the publication of the book "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" by Michael Wolff though he is the president of the U.S.A.! He and his team also claim that the book is defamatory, libelous and full of lies and they are threatening to take the author and the publisher to court. Some of my articles may be very critical, but I do not think there is anything defamatory or libelous in any of them. They are expository of corruption and removing them from any website is completely wrong. It is a serious setback to the freedom of expression and freedom of speech on these
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websites. The corrupt VC, Abood Al-Sawafi and corrupt Assistant VC, Hamed Al-Hajri, may delete all my articles but they cannot silence me. I will turn their lives into hell!
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