Amnesty International Condemns Sentencing of Omani Activists

[Amnesty International symbol. Image by Tamorlan via Wikimedia Commons] [Amnesty International symbol. Image by Tamorlan via Wikimedia Commons]

Amnesty International Condemns Sentencing of Omani Activists

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statemwent was issued by Amnesty International on 17 July 2012.] 

The Omani authorities must drop the charges against a number of activists facing prison sentences merely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression, Amnesty International said today. 

In the latest case on Monday, a court in the capital Muscat sentenced five activists to jail terms of between one year and 18 months on charges including publicly insulting the Sultan as well as using the internet to publish defamatory and insulting materials, and publishing materials harming public order. They have been released on bail pending appeals.

Around 20 other Omani activists face similar prison terms after being charged with a number of offences connected to the exercise of their freedom of expression and assembly including protesting, inciting protests, insulting the Sultan, and obstructing the traffic. 

Most are currently out on bail while their trials are ongoing. 

“These sentences are the latest phase in the Omani government’s orchestrated crackdown on freedom of expression and assembly, which has been under way since last year,” said Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International. 

“All charges levelled against activists merely for engaging in peaceful activism must be dropped. If anyone is imprisoned on the basis of such charges, we would regard them as prisoners of conscience and call for their unconditional and immediate release.”     

The five sentenced on Monday were university students Mohamed al-Badi and Mona Hardan, who writes on Facebook under the name Wardat Dhuffar (Dhuffar Rose), poet ‘Abdullah al-‘Arimi, Taleb al-‘Ebri, and photographer Mohamed al-Habsi. 

All five were also handed fines of 1,000 Omani riyals (around US$2,600). They have been reportedly released on bail pending appeals. 

On 9 July another poet, Hamad al-Kharousi, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of 200 Omani riyals (US$520) after being convicted of insulting the Sultan and using the internet to publish defamatory and insulting materials. 

Hamoud al-Rashidi, a writer, was given a six-month sentence and a fine of 200 Omani riyals. They were both also released on bail pending appeals. 

These seven activists are among dozens of others who face prison sentences and fines on similar charges related to protests and freedom of expression. 

Protests in Oman in early 2011 – sparked by popular unrest across the Middle East and North Africa – led to a number of political and social reforms, but tight restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly remain in place. 

Scores were arrested and many brought to trial in 2011 with at least one man reported to have died when police forcibly dispersed protesters in the town of Sohar.

The court proceedings currently under way follow another wave of arrests of activists, writers and lawyers in late May and early June 2012. 

“The Omani authorities’ ongoing attempts to stamp out dissent are unacceptable, and they must uphold the rights of all Omanis to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression,” said Philip Luther.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412