#TechIndustry

Journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin has had his Kuwaiti citizenship revoked. Photo: Mohamed Nanabhay/CC BY 2.0 One early April morning, the newsroom of a Kuwaiti television channel skipped all mention of the sirens that had wailed through the night and disrupted everyone’s sleep. American and Israeli missiles had been raining on Iran for weeks, and Kuwait was one of multiple neighbours Tehran had been lashing out against. But the crew, like many others in the tiny state, had learned that the night’s developments were not free to speak about. Najwa*, a Kuwaiti journalist with more than two decades of experience and part of that broadcaster’s team, says she has never seen censorship this bad. “The ceiling of freedom is completely shattered,” she tells Index on Censorship by phone, asking to be referred to by a pseudonym for fear of persecution. She is not alone. Since US-Israel hostilities on Iran began on 28 February, a sweeping crackdown on war-related speech has consumed the Arabian Gulf. Journalists have been silenced, residents detained, and the basic act of filming the sky – plumes of smoke, the aftermath of a strike – has become a prosecutable offence across multiple Gulf states. The legal architecture enabling these crackdowns predates the war. The conflict has provided governments a pretext to activate it at scale. The most visible case is that of Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a prominent dual US-Kuwaiti journalist who was detained in Kuwait on 2 March after posting a geolocated video of a jet crash linked to the conflict. After global calls for his release, Shihab-Eldin has since been acquitted, but stripped of his citizenship, a tactic aggressively deployed by Kuwaiti government in recent year, impacting over 60,000 people, according to estimates. The outcome has been the complete silencing of critics, including those who were previously vocal who fear facing this fate. The practice, justified by the government in Shihab-Eldin’s case as the result his illegal dual nationality, affect not only Shihab-Eldin, but his siblings. But Shihab-Eldin’s case is part of a much larger story of media clampdown that has received little international attention. “There is no official figure, but it is informally circulated that approximately 1,200 people have been detained by state security – either for filming strike locations or for expressing sympathy with Iran,” says Najwa. For Kuwait, the current climate carries a particular weight. The small Gulf state was long regarded as the region’s most democratic: it had the Arabian Gulf’s most combative freely-elected parliament, a constitution that meaningfully constrained the ruling family and a media spectrum that reflected and responded to that political pluralism. For decades, journalists pushed boundaries their counterparts elsewhere in the Gulf could not approach. That reputation began unravelling in 2024, when the then-new Emir suspended parliament indefinitely alongside key articles of the constitution, removing the most significant institutional check on executive power, and with it much of the legal and political cover that had allowed a relatively open press to function. It is against that backdrop that the war arrived. Najwa describes a media environment now operating under unspoken martial law. Official information about the war is channeled exclusively through a daily military briefing, prepared by military and security apparatuses and delivered on screen by a uniformed spokesperson. The briefings offer the numbers of drones and missiles intercepted. They make no mention of strike locations, infrastructure damage, or Iranian strikes on Israel. Kuwait’s media, Najwa says, has been instructed to adopt the American narrative framework wholesale. Any deviation carries grave consequences. For a country where roughly 30% of its 1.4 million people are Shiite and therefore carry close ties to Iran as the world’s preeminent Shia state, this war is a particular conundrum. On 6 April, a local press cited official Kuwaiti statements warning against content that “incites sectarian discourse” and urging the avoidance of “provocative content online.” “State security has expanded its net to include the charge of sympathising with Iran,” Najwa says. A “like” on a post, or a comment, can be interpreted as sympathy with the enemy and referred to state security for interrogation. She gives the specific example of Zainab Dashti, a broadcaster and former freelance presenter at state television, who posted opinions on X that authorities deemed pro-Iranian. According to Najwa, Dashti was detained by state security in early March and has not been released. Two other Ministry of Information broadcasters were informally suspended from work because of their association with her. Old tweets from 2012 and 2014, praising Hezbollah at a time when the organisation was not yet criminalised in Kuwait, were surfaced and used against them. Index on Censorship could not independently confirm these allegations. But Najwa is unequivocal: “Even insinuation can be reframed as sympathy with Iran.” The situation is so acute that Najwa deleted her WhatsApp conversation with this reporter the moment it ended. “Even this conversation with you,” she said before hanging up, “after we finish, I will delete it. Because at any moment, if someone searches my phone – at a checkpoint, anywhere – and sees this conversation, I could be referred to state security. And when people are referred to state security, there is no fixed charge, no fixed timeline. There are people who have been there since the beginning of March and have not yet appeared before a court.” The pattern is regional. In Saudi Arabia – Iran’s arch-rival and competitor for regional hegemony – an expatriate journalist who has reported from the kingdom for over six years describes conditions as unprecedented. “We are not told which targets were struck, and sources refuse to share details,” they told Index, asking not to be named. “We learned from unofficial sources that workers at petroleum facilities are not allowed to bring in their phones, so as not to capture the scale and scope of damage. People are terrified of taking pictures. Street banners warn against filming anything, disseminating news, or distributing so-called rumours. There are no clear and direct instructions hindering journalists, but the overall environment is crippling.” The legal framework enabling these crackdowns, says Inès Osman, Executive Director of MENA Rights Group, predates the war but has been radically redeployed. “What has changed is the scope of who is considered a target and what is considered political. Ordinary citizens posting a video of smoke on the horizon did not necessarily see themselves as engaging in an act that could get them prosecuted. Authorities are now treating war-related content as falling within ‘endangering national security’ or ‘harming the reputation of the state’, which carry heavy sentences.” Osman points to a deeper motivation. “Gulf states have spent millions marketing themselves as stable, modern, investable. Any narrative that runs against that is ultimately threatening their very foundation,” she says, referring to booming economies in Saudi and the UAE, competing over foreign investments, and other smaller ones vying to catch up. The war, she argues, has made explicit a bargain many residents, particularly expatriates, had allowed themselves to forget. “We deliver security and prosperity, but you need to keep silent.” The numbers are stark. In the UAE, Abu Dhabi police have reportedly arrested hundreds for sharing footage of strikes and interceptions, with at least 35 individuals receiving orders related to “misleading” videos and reports suggesting up to 70 British nationals may face charges. In Qatar, more than 300 people have reportedly been detained for sharing war imagery. In Saudi Arabia, 19 journalists have been detained alongside blanket photography bans, backed by an official campaign warning that sharing such footage “serves the enemy”. A March 10 report by Reporters Without Borders documented intensifying restrictions across the region. The United Nations has raised alarm over civic repression. Even as a fragile ceasefire takes hold, Osman is not optimistic. “History has shown that emergency measures almost always become permanent. The post-9/11 counter-terrorism framework was kept and significantly expanded, well after the original justification faded. Even if the bans are formally lifted, they will leave behind a climate of fear and self-censorship.” In Kuwait, Najwa puts it more plainly. The war, she says, may pause. The silence it has enforced may not. READ MORE

48 minutes ago

#TechIndustry

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN

from the gaming-like-it’s-1930 dept It’s time for the second in our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of…

Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the reinventing-software dept Most of the discussions about the impact of the latest generative AI systems on copyright have centered on…

The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the we-keep-seeing-this-over-and-over dept Last week, I wrote about why the social media addiction verdicts against Meta and YouTube should…

Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the unfun-twist-on-an-old-story dept This may not be an actual “Wyden siren,” but it still has his name attached to…

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Age Old Questions

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the ctrl-alt-speech dept Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and…

The EU Killed Voluntary CSAM Scanning. West Virginia Is Trying To Compel It. Both Cause Problems.

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the tricky-problems dept Last week, the European Parliament voted to let a temporary exemption lapse that had allowed tech…

Aspyr: Hey, Those Crappy Tomb Raider Remastered Outfits Were Made By Our Artists, Not AI!

News Room4 weeks ago0

from the McPromptism dept I’m going to trust that most of our audience will have some idea of what McCarthyism…

It Appears RFK Jr. Is Having Trouble Finding Anyone To Take The CDC Director Job

News Room1 month ago0

from the running-out-of-clowns dept All the way back in August of 2025, RFK Jr. made the extraordinary decision to fire…

Trump’s DOJ Hands $1.2 Million Payout To His Former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn

News Room1 month ago0

from the corruption-is-a-flat-circle dept As if we needed any more evidence showing just how deep and thoroughly corrupted the Trump…

FBI Director Kash Patel’s Personal Email Account Apparently Breached By Iranian Hackers

News Room1 month ago0

from the who-needs-opsec-when-you-can-party-with-hockey-players dept Call me a sicko, but I’m almost always happy when a top-level government official’s communications get…

Turns Out That Advertisers Not Wanting To Fund Neo-Nazi-Adjacent Content Isn’t An Antitrust Violation

News Room1 month ago0

from the it-was-always-a-shakedown dept Remember when Elon Musk told advertisers to “go fuck” themselves and then sued them for the…

FBI Tells Senate It’s Still Bypassing 4th Amendment By Purchasing Location Data From Third Parties

News Room1 month ago0

from the more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same dept In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that warrants were needed to obtain cell site location info…

Trending

SCOTUS Narrows the Reach of the Voting Rights Act

Seasonal trends favor bulls even as BTC price ends April in a defensive mood: Crypto Daily

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN

Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong

Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Age Old Questions

The EU Killed Voluntary CSAM Scanning. West Virginia Is Trying To Compel It. Both Cause Problems.

Aspyr: Hey, Those Crappy Tomb Raider Remastered Outfits Were Made By Our Artists, Not AI!

It Appears RFK Jr. Is Having Trouble Finding Anyone To Take The CDC Director Job

Trump’s DOJ Hands $1.2 Million Payout To His Former National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn

FBI Director Kash Patel’s Personal Email Account Apparently Breached By Iranian Hackers

Turns Out That Advertisers Not Wanting To Fund Neo-Nazi-Adjacent Content Isn’t An Antitrust Violation

FBI Tells Senate It’s Still Bypassing 4th Amendment By Purchasing Location Data From Third Parties

Latest News

SCOTUS Narrows the Reach of the Voting Rights Act

Seasonal trends favor bulls even as BTC price ends April in a defensive mood: Crypto Daily

Trending

#TechIndustry

Subscribe to Updates

Cookies

Manage Cookies

Your permission applies to the following domains: