{"id":14875,"date":"2012-12-14T11:18:11","date_gmt":"2012-12-14T18:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14875"},"modified":"2012-12-14T11:18:11","modified_gmt":"2012-12-14T18:18:11","slug":"qatar-silencing-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14875","title":{"rendered":"Qatar: Silencing Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. government has used Qatar to support \u201cdemocracy promotion\u201d in the Middle East, including as a logistical base for the invasion of Iraq. But Qatar\u2019s rulers don\u2019t like threats to their own tyrannical powers, even jailing a poet for life for implicitly criticizing the ruling sheikh, William Boardman reports.<\/em><\/p>\n


\nQatar\u2019s Hypocrisy on Freedom<\/strong>
\n12 December, 2012 – By William Boardman – Consortiumnews.com<\/p>\n

Life in prison may seem a harsh sentence for reciting a poem out loud, but it\u2019s apparently what state security demands in Doha, Qatar, where a secret court delivered this sentence at the end of a short, secret trial in a state security case tried there in November.<\/p>\n

Muhammed ibn al-Dheeb al-Ajami, 37, a Qatari poet with a wife and child, was studying literature at Cairo University when the Tunisian revolution broke out in December 2010. Inspired by events in Tunisia and Egypt, al-Ajami wrote a short poem, \u201cTunisian Jasmine\u201d [see below], celebrating the overthrow of repressive elites. He recited the poem to private audiences and the audio of at least one such performance appeared on YouTube, but al-Ajami sayshe didn\u2019t post it, and doesn\u2019t know who did.<\/p>\n

Qatari authorities took notice of the performance and, some months later, in November 2011, they arrested al-Ajami and held him in solitary confinement for most of a year before bringing him to trial. The state charged the poet with \u201cinsulting\u201d Qatar\u2019s ruling emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, as well as \u201cinciting to overthrow the ruling system,\u201d an offense that carries the death penalty.<\/p>\n

Al Ajami\u2019s 2011 poem \u201cTunisian Jasmine\u201d mentions no other country and does not name the Qatari emir or any other ruler. There is a report that the secret charges against al-Ajami also include a poem he wrote in 2010 that does criticize the emir.<\/p>\n

Hereditary Monarch or Progressive?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sheikh Al Thani, 60, came to power as emir in 1995 when, as Minister of Defense, he led a bloodless military coup that deposed his father who was then in Switzerland, and who lived in exile until 2004 (when he returned at 72).<\/p>\n

Despite his dictatorial powers, Sheikh Al Thani is \u201cconsidered to be progressive among leaders of Muslim countries. In a break with the traditional role, his second wife Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, 53, has been a visible advocate for education and children\u2019s causes.\u201d She has two daughters and five sons, one of whom is friends with the poet al-Ajami.<\/p>\n

According to al-Ajami\u2019s lawyer, Najeeb al-Nuaimi, state security called the poet in fall 2011 and asked him to report to the police. When he asked why, he was told just to report. Then he called his friend, the emir\u2019s son, who assured him the police just wanted him for routine registration. So he went, and they questioned him about his poetry and arrested him. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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The U.S. government has used Qatar to support \u201cdemocracy promotion\u201d in the Middle East, including as a logistical base for the invasion of Iraq. But Qatar\u2019s rulers don\u2019t like threats to their own tyrannical powers, even jailing a poet for life for implicitly criticizing the ruling sheikh, William Boardman reports. Qatar\u2019s Hypocrisy on Freedom 12 more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[3818],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14877,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions\/14877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}