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 Bahrain suspended Arabic-language paper Akhbar al-Khaleej for 12 hours yesterday, apparently in response to an editorial condemning the recent Iranian presidential elections.
While this might seem like an uncontroversial topic at the moment, Bahrain’s minority Sunni rulers remain anxious not to stir up problems with the country’s majority Shia population, a situation which has of course been the source of much conflict over the years.
According to several
press
reports, the Bahrain government gave no official reason for the shutdown, aside from stating that the paper had violated press laws.
The article in question, by regular columnist Sameera Rajab, trotted out a hard line against Iran’s rulers, and also speculated that once-and-future president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have had Jewish ancestors.
Well, if you can’t get them on the facts, smearing the individual is always a good backup plan. But how likely is Ahadinejad to sue?
As we’re talking about the Iranian elections and the meeja, you might expect us to talk about Twitter again. But we’re not going to.
So there.
For a decent round-up of the Arab world's media approaches to the Iran situation, The New Republic has an interesting look
at what's going on.
Interestingly, in a Google News search for Akhbar al-Khaleej, we also came across the nugget of news from earlier in June that Gulf Air had booted off both the Arabic paper and its sister English-language title Gulf Daily News from its flights.
“This is the latest in a long line of bans imposed by Gulf Air over the years because our newspapers have upset someone. The last was imposed for nine months, and one, in the early 90s, lasted two years!” fumed an editorial
in the Gulf Daily News.
“We were also banned in the ‘80s following a report about a Gulf Air aircraft that lost one of its front wheels on take off from London. Some suspensions have been based on our reporting of stories that Gulf Air's public relations department decided they did not wish us to publish,” it added.
[Sub editors may note the inconsistent use of apostrophes in the decade abbreviations above. Rest assured these are lovingly preserved from the original GDN piece.]
The editorial went on to speculate that this time it had upset the sovereign wealth fund that owns Gulf Air. Whoops.
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