Welcome to the internet future in the Middle East and North Africa:
In addition to blocking blogs and arresting bloggers, a new form of censorship has started to emerge in the Middle East and North Africa: blog-hosting services removing blogs from their servers.
Arab bloggers complain that the major blog-hosting services, Maktoob Blog and Jeeran Blog, have removed popular blogs without providing any explanations or prior notice.
For example, bloggers reported that Jeeran Blog has removed a blog run by a Lebanese blogger because it contains sensitive political content. One of the bloggers who reported (Arabic) the blog removal asked Jeeran Blog to let the public know if the blog-hosting service is under pressure from the Arab political regimes.
Dear Antony,
I would like to thank you for bringing up this important issue and giving us this chance to clarify the misunderstanding that resulted from deleting Simone’s blog.
We want every body to know that Simone’s blog wasn’t deleted because of political reasons or because Jeeran doesn’t allow posting about political issues; Jeeran has many high quality blogs that discuss sensitive political issues freely without being interrupted by the Jeeran Terms of Use.
Politics has nothing to do with Simone’s case; we deleted the blog because he posted a picture of a naked woman who was known by many people, and he allowed offensive, inappropriate and extremely bad comments on many entries in his blog which was a clear violation to Jeeran terms of use.
We should keep in mind that our children as well as our little brothers and sisters read these blogs and see the pictures we post, so we shouldn’t allow such content to be posted on our servers!
Thanks again for your concern Antony.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any comments, notes or questions; our doors are always open for communication.
By the way, you have a very interesting blog
Have a great day!
Hala Taha
Jeeran Community Manager