The spaces for free expression are fast shrinking in countries where only yesterday the people rose up against a stifling power structure. In Algeria, after the Hirak rebellion, the time has come for impounding and silencing as witness the fate of our brothers and sisters at Maghreb Émergent and Radio M. In Tunisia, where for a while the spirit of what was called the ‘Arab spring’ still survived, arbitrariness now rules and often enough journalists are prosecuted and gaoled like common criminals for having simply plied their trade.
As for Egypt, after the social mobilisation around the COP 27, the name of Alaa Abdel Fattah – and all the other political prisoners – disappeared from the newspapers. ‘Move along, there’s nothing more to see.’
On the other shore of the Mediterranean, France is affected in its way by this freedom-threatening wave. We wonder whether we still have the right to discuss certain ‘controversial’ issues like Israel’s undeniable regime of apartheid among other crimes perpetrated by Tel Aviv. Judging from the harassment suffered by Sarah Hamouri at every one of her public appearances in France since her expulsion from Jerusalem, the net seems to be closing in. Muslim men and women remain the favourite scapegoats in the dominant political and media rhetoric, either in the name of a struggle against the so-called Islamo-leftists – a far-right neologism henceforth part of everyday speech – or as the collateral damage of a campaign against ‘le wokisme’ which has inflamed the most reactionary passions. And the concentration of French media in the hands of a few billionaires – from Vincent Boloré to Patrick Drahi by way of Xavier Niel and Bernard Arnault – has left little room for dissenting voices.
Faced with such a situation, Orient XXI strives to provide a space for free expression regarding the region that extends from Morocco to Afghanistan. A space not only for readers here but for readers ‘out there’ as well as for writers based in the Maghreb and the Middle East to whom we offer a safe place to publish and vent their ides – over 20% of our readership live sin the Maghreb. With our editions in French, Arabic, English, Persian, Spanish and Italian we are making our contents available to the largest passible audience. But as you know, all this costs money.
Having opted for independence and free access, Orient XXI sees itself as a kind of public news service, to which those of you who can afford it make contributions so that everyone can read our contents, so that our journal can quite simply stay alive. A journal produced by human beings for other human beings – at a time when so much hype is devoted to artificial intelligence, expected to replace living journalists – , with the ambition of providing analyses and original insights into every aspect of a region which does not boil down to its wars, its immigrants or its Islamism, but which also includes a rich and creative artistic, cultural and intellectual scene.
In order to continue our mission, we are launching a campaign to raise $48,000 a sum which will allow us to go on paying out two salaried employees, our freelance journalists and our translators. Thus it is thanks to your contributions that over the past year we have been able to increase the number of investigations and reports on and in the region. We are preparing to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Orient XXI on 30 September, which will be an opportunity for us to thank you for your support and your loyalty. And we would be happy to meet with you on that occasion.
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