The Jordanian authorities continue to detain and convict dozens of activists over freedom of speech charges.
The Amman Criminal Court sentenced the journalist Ahmed Hassan Al-Zoubi to one year in prison plus a fine over a critical post he published on his Facebook page.
The court’s decision came after the Public Prosecution appealed against the Magistrate Court’s previous decision to imprison Al-Zoubi for two months.
Al-Zoubi’s arrest is linked to a post he published during the truck strike that began in Ma’an governorate at the end of last year, in protest against the significant increase in fuel prices.
Jordan has been downgraded from ‘obstructed’ to ‘repressed’ in a 2021 report by the CIVICUS Monitor, a global research collaboration that rates and tracks fundamental freedoms in 197 countries and territories.
According to the report, the suspension of the last remaining Teachers’ Association, internet shutdowns, and restrictions enforced on journalists, civil society, and activists have led to the downgrade.
For many years, Jordan was classified by Freedom House as a partly-free country. But as of 2021, Jordan’s classification fell back, and it was classified as not-free.
