Thank you. Good morning. I think it’s safe to assume that very few people here have been to Saudi Arabia.
For outside observers, Saudi Arabia looks like a far, fascinating, and mysterious place.
And, for a very long time, the country has been off limits to visitors, and tourists, a very closed society.
Satellite TV, the internet, have and are changing that gradually, but very slowly.
Satellite TV channels started broadcasting to the country in the early 90’s, and the internet was not introduced to the public until 1999.
Now one of the reasons why it took this long for the government to introduce internet to the public compared to other countries in the region,
Is because the Saudi government wanted to make sure that they have the ability to filter content that they deemed inappropriate to their citizens.
They thought that this way they can exert their control over the new medium,
like they have done with the old media, that traditional media, before that.
When Iraqi forces of Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, and reached the Saudi borders,
the government banned local newspapers from reporting the news.
For the first week of the invasion, Saudi citizens were dependent on local newspapers for news and information,
Have had no idea that an invading army is actually advancing at their borders.
Now you think the Saudi government can pull off something like this nowadays?
Not a chance, no way, not even for a few minutes.
The internet opened a new space for Saudi’s, that they have never had before,
A public sphere that never really existed before the internet.
Remember this is a country with no free press, no elections and where dissent was not tolerated.
The internet comes and offers Saudi Citizens, 70% of them under the age of thirty this new place,
that is largely out of government control. Today, 47% of the population is online.
Did the government try to censor it? Sure they did.
But here’s the thing we have learned over the past decade: 0:02:39.000,0:02:44.000 Internet censorship doesn’t really work. The government can block a website,
or hundreds of thousands of websites
But if people wanted to access something, they will find a way to do that. 0:02:50.000,0:02:55.000 Mirror sites, proxies, torrents, tools like Tor and other software and hardware.
If there is a will, there is a way.
And it is a constant cat and mouse game, where the young tech savvy users will always,
always be one step ahead of government bureaucrats.
Internet forums were the first cyber battle field where Saudi’s inhaled the sweet breath of freedom.
And blogs followed after that shortly.
My blog—Saudi Jeans—was one of the first blogs in the country.
I was in college, studying pharmacy at King Saud University in Riyadh.
Which was not very fun, so about eight years ago from today, I decided to start a blog.
Just for fun, and to practice my English. I never thought it would become anything serious.
I never thought I would be blogging years later, but I’m still doing that and I’m here today because of that blog.
With the rise of blogging, censorship began to show its ugly face.
Most of the first attempts to censor blogs were broad and dumb, but the first targeted blocking came in June of 2006,
When the blog Saudi eve was blocked.
Saudi eve, an anonymous female blogger, was blocked because she was writing about sex and religion,
Two big taboos in Saudi Arabia. Because of the content of her blog, 0:04:16.000,0:04:19.000 very few people actually came to her defense when that happened.
I was one of the few people who came to her defense. I defended her right to free speech,
And criticized the government for their mindless censorship. And I paid for it.
A few days later, my blog, Saudi Jeans was blocked by the government.
Lucky for me, the blogging community actually came to my defense and a few days later the blocking was lifted.
At the time, the government said the blocking was by mistake.
Quickly, the Saudi bloggers started to receive increased international recognition,
because they provided this new window into a country that was previously closed.
More recognition meant the government began to pay a closer attention to the blogosphere.
And the first manifestation of this came on December 10th 2007 when the government arrested Fuad al-Farhan,
Because he blogged about political prisoners in the country. 0:05:18.000,0:05:23.000 December 10 is the world human rights day, so you can see the irony here.
Al-Farhan was kept in solitary confinement for 4 months, and then he was released with no charges and no trial,
Under pressure from international media that was closely watching the case.
The case and that tension it received made the government realize that jailing bloggers would cause them international embarrassment.
So they started to think about a different approach about censorship.
Over the past few years, the govt has issued a set of new laws and regulations for online expression.
At the beginning of last year, they announced an update to the current publishing law to cover the internet.
The new law said that bloggers must register their blogs with the ministry of information,
In order to stay within the lines of the law, or risk paying fines or going to jail over that.
There was an uproar by the bloggers who saw no reason to register their blog with the government.
And the government later came out saying that well, just registering is not force, its voluntary,
if you want to register that’s fine, if you don’t, we’re fine with it.
But they made this concession because they realized they cannot actually enforce this part of this law.
How are they going to go after every blogger to make them register their blog with the ministry?
Many other parts of the law has the same problem. They were written by an old mentality that doesn’t seem to understand the internet.
That the internet is decentralized and that the government cannot,
no matter how hard they try, to have full control over.
Now, despite the increased censorship, Saudi’s continue to use the internet creatively to express themselves.
Not just on blogs, but also using other platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other tools.
YouTube comedians like Omar Hussein and Fahad Libtari became local celebrities.
They challenged censorship using subtle techniques criticizing social and political situations in a way that everyone understands,
But at the same time, doesn’t allow the government to crack down on them.
Now, it doesn’t always work. Last year, video blogger faras bugnow was detained for a few weeks after he talked about poverty in the capital city.
Now it seems like the government was in denial about the existence of poverty in a rich oil country, but this is nothing new.
Last month, the Saudi justice minister denied that there are any prisoners of conscience or opinion in the country.
This is simply not true: what about Hala Lucheni, the teacher who was arrested for protesting a loan in Riyadh last year,
and who is on trial today, probably at this very hour at a court in Jedda. 0:08:15.000,0:08:18.000 His charge? Speaking to the foreign media.
What about Hamza Kashgari, the young man in jail for tweeting statements
that religious conservatives considered blasphemous and called for his head?
Last week, he turned 24, still in jail, with no charges and no trial for almost three months now.
Now the government will certainly continue to censor, to try to control the flow of information,
And stop people from expressing themselves freely,
But the good news is, this is a battle that they cannot win.
Now, we have a new young generation that is beginning to assert itself, stepping out of darkness and into the light.
Change will come to Saudi Arabia, it will take some time, but in the end, change is coming.
there is nothing they can do to reverse the tide of history. Thank you.