Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://archive.gijn.org/tag/middle-east/page/2/)
The lights of free speech are being steadily extinguished across the Arab world, heralding a new era of ignorance, intolerance, and repression. Saddest of all, the majority of Arabs — who saw free speech as the only gain from the Arab Spring upheavals – now seem willing to accept the loss of this universal human right, in return for promises of stability and economic prosperity.
In the past year, a group of Arab journalists has been working secretly in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria, and Yemen as part of a global network of investigative reporters mining the so called “Panama Papers.” They found that some Arab strongmen and their business partners are linked to offshore companies and bank accounts. What’s astonishing about this story is not that Arab dictators are going offshore to hide their wealth and evade sanctions. It’s that a community of Arab journalists is continuing to do investigative reporting in a region where there is increasingly little tolerance for accountability of any kind.