The Jordanian authorities arrested activist Alaa Malkawi while standing in front of his house in the Hashemite area of Zarqa.
A special security force in two vehicles surrounded him in front of his house, arrested him and took him to an unknown destination.
Sources suggested that his arrest could be for a tweet he shared saying: “they don’t have to kill us with live bullets to keep their dictatorship. They could kill you with a poor educational system, poor transportation, silencing, starving, heartbreaking and oppressing us, subjecting us to injustice, and lack of justice, as well as killing us with unhealthy food and poor infrastructure.”
The Jordanian authorities had arrested Malkawi several times before for his political views, and his participation in several peaceful opposition demonstrations.
Jordan is witnessing widespread protests against a government decision to raise fuel prices, while the government refuses to back down from its decision, despite difficult economic crisis in the country, and the increase in unemployment and poverty rates.
CIVICUS Monitor report, a global research index that ranks and tracks basic freedoms in 197 countries and territories, has downgraded Jordan’s classification in 2021 from “impeding” to “repressive”, noting that the Jordanian authorities’ closure of the teachers’ union and the closure of the Internet, and restrictions on journalists, civil society and activists, led to the downgrade.
The Freedom House index, in its annual report for the year 2020, showed Jordan’s decline in the ladder of civil liberties and political rights, by ranking 34th in the world to become a “not free” country, after it was classified as a partly free country.
