Author: Editorial
Publication: Wall Street Journal
Date: June 24, 2003
One irony of victory in Iraq is
that Iraqis now enjoy more freedoms than the rest of the Arab world
that supported the U.S. liberation. That includes Kuwait, staging
ground for U.S. forces, where last week journalist and political
reform advocate Mohammed Jassem was arrested for allegedly criticizing
members of the Kuwaiti royal family.
Kuwait was rated as only partly
free last year by human rights watchdog Freedom House. Although the
constitution nominally provides for freedom of the press, this is
severely limited by the printing and publications law. This law --
the penalty of which is five years imprisonment -- forbids criticism
of the emir or the royal family.
Mr. Jassem says prosecutors told
him he had violated this law when he told a gathering of Kuwaitis
that members of the ruling family were interfering with legislative
elections due to be held July 5. But that wasn't his first offense.
His two-year campaign against proposals to give the government greater
powers to shut down newspapers may have had something to do with
the authority's decision to silence him.
All of this is in stark comparison
to Iraq, where a free press is now flourishing. Mark Gordon-James
-- a journalist who has just opened an English-speaking newspaper
in Baghdad -- tells us that about 100 new newspapers have started
up in Iraq. He says people are "ecstatic that we're here," and that
ordinary Iraqis are giving them "a lot of support and access." He
describes Iraq as the "ultimate free country here at the moment."
Some of those papers are misusing their freedom to incite violence,
but those abuses can be contained.
One reason Arab authoritarians were
wary of liberating Iraq is the power that the example of free Iraqis
would have on their own rule. So far Kuwait's rulers, and most others
in the region, are reacting in precisely the wrong way.
