Jassim Al Qames and Bashar Al-Sayegh were arrested and tortured by the Kuwaiti secret police.  The police’s grounds for apprehending the two Kuwaitis was that someone had anonymously posted on their blog, Al Jareeda, a negative comment concerning the Emir of Kuwait, Shaikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.  Although the bloggers quickly removed the comment within fifteen minutes, the police noticed the comment and acted upon it.  Therefore, the police apprehended Jassim Al Qames forced him to sign a document of consent, which he was prohibited from reading.  Bashar Al-Sayegh was not apprehended.  Read more...

Members of Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently spent two weeks in Jordan, touring five prisons and interviewing their prisoners.  While the organization commended Jordan for opening its prisons, it stated that Jordan needs to address the beatings and mistreatment that are widespread among its prisons. 

On August 22, the day following HRW’s visit of Swaqa Correction and Rehabilitation Center, the security staff beat nearly all 2,100 prisoners held there.  The guards also forcibly shaved the heads and beards of all the inmates.  Most of the inmates are Muslims whose religious beliefs require them to keep a beard.  Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, commented that shavings occurred to humiliate and degrade the prisoners and served no “legitimate penal purpose”.  Read more...

Al- Hayat, a popular London based pan-Arabic paper, was recently banned by the Saudi government.  It is unclear what caused the banning of the paper, especially because officials stated it was not any single article that caused the government’s regulation.  However, two possible reasons emerge for the government’s displeasure with the newspaper causing the banning of the newspaper.  The first possibility is related to the Al-Hayat’s insinuations that the recent deaths of camels in Saudi Arabia were actually caused by infectious diseases, rather than the government’s view that blamed the mysterious deaths on the camels’ poor diet.  Secondly, the Associated Press suspects that the paper may have been banned because the newspaper recently published an article connecting a Saudi man, Mohammad al-Thibaiti, to an Iraqi extremist group, the Islamic State of Iraq.  Although Saudi Arabia’s reasons for banning the newspaper are unclear the fact that they have silenced the newspaper probably because it criticized the government is alarming.  However, the ban of Al-Hayat may be a unique situation and may not indicate a shift from Saudi Arabia’s new found openness in reporting.   Read more...

One of twelve hostages released

Taliban militants released twelve more South Korean hostages Wednesday and the remaining seven hostages may also be released as early as the end of this week.  Among the 12 released were two men and ten women.

On Wednesday, the Taliban released 12 of 19 South Korean hostages as part of a deal with South Korea.  The Taliban originally demanded release of imprisoned insurgents in exchange for the South Korean hostages.  They later backed down on these demands.  Under the terms of this deal, South Korea reaffirmed a pledge it made before the hostage crisis began to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.  Seoul also said it would prevent South Korean Christian missionaries from working in the Muslim country, something it had already promised to do.  Read more...

Tejan Kabbah, the president of Sierra Leone has threatened to impose a state of emergency due to extreme violence between rival parties in the current national election. Presently, supporters of two rival parties have been fighting for two days.

In an effort to curb pollution, China began drafting a new law that would save energy and reduce emissions.  Where most Chinese cities are often wrapped in a toxic gray shroud, the issue has become more urgent as China prepares to host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The China Daily newspaper reports that the drafted amendment to China’s old water pollution law would remove a 1 million yuan ($132,000) cap on fines for water polluters and allow penalties of 20 to 30 percent of the direct economic losses caused by a spill or pollution.  The law also stipulates that governments at all levels should control energy use and emissions, strengthen management of resource-intensive companies and divert capital into environmentally-friendly industries.  Read more...

On August 24, Fatah supporters staged the largest protest in Gaza since Hamas took over in June.  Thousands of Palestinians gathered in Unknown Soldier Square in Gaza City for noon time prayers.  They were protesting “incitement” against Fatah members in mosques controlled by Hamas. 

After prayers, the protesters marched to Al Sayara, a Hamas security complex formerly controlled by Fatah.  There, members of Hamas’s Executive Force fired their guns into the air to disperse the crowds and clashed with protesters.  Palestinian Authority television claims that seventeen demonstrators were injured.  However, Hamas denied that any injuries occurred.  Read more...

    African asylum seekers were deported from Israel and returned to Egypt, where they had originally been granted asylum.  These 50 refugees also included some Darfur survivors.  The Africans had fled to Egypt in order to escape genocide and other atrocities that refugees had faced while in their home nations.  However, because of their maltreatment in Egypt the refugees later tried to flee to Israel.  A Sudanese leader in Egypt reported in the Washington Post that the deported Africans “have escaped from an Egyptian reality of suffering very similar to that of Sudan — racism in the Egyptian street, killing by the authorities” and have not received help from the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees.  The refugees also fear that the Egyptian government will try to transport the refugees back to Sudan.  However, Israeli officials asserted that part of the agreement with Egypt regarding the deportation of the refugees included an Egyptian promise not to send the Africans to their native countries.  Yet, this promise does not fully relieve the deported immigrants fear.  One of the fears is that if the refugees can be unilaterally moved without their consent or without following the internationally outlined protocol the refugees will always have to fear future movement.  Read more...