Beirut, August 20, 2010

Press Release
Jordanian news sites study the option of registering in Beirut, in protest of
harassments against them

Amman-SKeyes
It seems that the Jordanian local websites have decided to register in Lebanon as part of a
pre-emptive measure to avoid being subjected to the “Information Technology Crimes
Act”, which the government seems to have passed without taking into consideration its
inapplicability to the electronic media. According to this law, the electronic media has
been placed in one basket along with credit card fraud, pornography, terrorism and
hacking…
According to the information available, these main news websites are determined to go
next Sunday to Beirut to study this option, and to register there, after “Amman became
more restricted for them and after its cyberspace would no longer accommodate different
points of views or criticisms against a policy or an approach. Nothing has become lower
than the level of freedoms except the level of the Rifai government’s popularity”.
The government had passed the “Information Technology Crimes Act” which is
unprecedented in the history of the international press, in terms of its restrictions against
public and press freedoms. This law allows law enforcement officers, in accordance with
Article 13 from this law and on the basis of suspicion, to raid the offices of electronic
sites and seize computers belonging to the journalists, in addition to imposing fines
between one hundred and five thousand Jordanian dinars. What is worse, however, is that
unequivocal clauses in this article allow for prison sentences from one to three months,
hard labour and blocking websites.
Some of these websites’ publishers said that they conducted high-level legal contracts,
and that they examined the Lebanese laws that have a wide margin of freedoms, while
there is stability in the laws governing press freedoms contrary to the situation in Jordan
where laws are changed and amended according to the whims of each prime minister.
These websites will abandon the [Jordanian] media scene and relocate to Beirut – both
officially and legally – while maintaining the exact nature of their online presence,
allowing every citizen both inside and outside of Jordan to follow the news on these sites
first hand.
The idea of registering abroad is taking place in protest of the successive decisions taken
by the government of Samir Rifai,starting with passing the Code of Conduct that
deprived the daily and weekly newspapers from governmental subscriptions and
advertisements. This has adversely affected weekly newspapers as the decision
contributed to the foreclosure of more than 13 weekly newspapers. In addition, there was
the more sinister decision of blocking websites from public sector employees in order to
eliminate the electronic news media in Jordan, not to mention the provisional
“Information Technology Crimes Act”, where the Jordanian government rejected all
amendments to it proposed by the websites, bringing the dialogue over this issue to a
dead end. This means that Jordan will enter the spiral of further restrictions against press
freedoms in an unprecedented manner since the return of democratic life in 1989.

Samir Kassir Foundation, Aref Saghieh Bldg.( Ground Floor), 63, Zahrani St., Sioufi, Achrafieh, Beirut, Lebanon
Tel /Fax: 00961 1 397334, Mobile: 00961 3 372717, E-Mail Address: info@skeyesmedia.org