Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRinfo), Cairo **Updates IFEX alerts of 20 and 13 February 2008** (HRinfo/IFEX) - The following is a 5 March 2008 joint statement by HRinfo, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and 31 other organisations: 34 …

Mideast Wire Elaph, an independent Saudi owned news website, wrote on February 26: “In Saudi Arabia, when a column written by any writer or journalist is blocked by the editor in chief, then the options facing that writer are very limited: either he dumps the column in the garbage can …

Mideast Wire On February 21, the independent Al-Masry al-Yawm daily carried the following report by Osama Salah and Munir Adib: “... A number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders affirmed that the anti-terrorism law, whose draft was exclusively published by Al-Masry al-Yawm yesterday, will not prevent the group from exercising its peaceful …

Mideast Wire Ibrahime Al-Amine, chairman of the board of directors of the independent pro-opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar, wrote on February 22: “How can Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, save himself from this spider's web strangling Lebanon and the region? Up till last night, all the ideas were …

Mideast Wire On February 16, the conservative daily Keyhan carried the following commentary: “These days, the throbbing veins and the torn collars of the so-called Reformists can be observed in the 2 Khordad media and some of them are selectively exaggerating a few of Imam Khomeyni's standpoints- those which can …

Mideast Wire Mansour Al-Jamri, editor in chief of the independent newspaper Al-Wasat, wrote on February 19: “The document of principles for regulating radio and television satellite broadcasting in the Arab world, which was ratified by the Arab media ministers in their emergency meeting in Cairo on the 12th of February …

Mideast Wire On February 18, the Palestinian-owned Al-Quds al-Arabi daily carried the following opinion piece by Chief Editor Abdel-Beri Atwan: “Now, after the dust has cleared out and after the funerary processions of martyrs Rafik al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, and Hajj Imad Mughniyeh, the leader of Hezbollah’s military …

Mideast Wire   On February 14, the reformist daily E’temad carried the following commentary by Rasul Nafisi: “The relationship between the two countries of Iran and America is more than one and a half centuries old. Nevertheless, it is only from the military coup of 19 August against Dr Mosadeq …

BBC Monitoring Excerpt from report by Iranian Tabnak news website on 17 February Tehran, 17 February: Radio Ma'aref [Islamic knowledge] has launched its English service on the ninth anniversary of the start of its work which coincided the birth anniversary of Imam Musa [the seventh Shi'i Imam] on Sunday 28 …

BBC Monitoring Text of press release by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on 15 February New York, February 15, 2008 - The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the adoption of a charter by the council of Arab information ministers intended to regulate and control satellite TV stations. …