HRW condemns 'censorship' at UN internet forum in Riyadh

• UN accused of censoring criticism of Saudi Arabia
• HRW says online record, transcript altered
• Tensions between rights groups and host country

BEIRUT - The Human Rights Watch researcher for Saudi Arabia said U.N. organisers of a major internet summit in Riyadh threatened to eject her from the event for mentioning a jailed Saudi teacher and later censored a video containing criticism of the kingdom.

More than 9,000 participants from 170 countries took part in the United Nations' Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in the Saudi capital in December to discuss "policies for a safe, inclusive and innovative digital future," according to the U.N.

Before the conference, activists criticised the U.N. for holding the IGF in Riyadh, saying the kingdom used such events to deflect attention from its human rights record and repression of free speech, especially online.

HRW's Saudi Arabia researcher Joey Shea said IGF secretariat members approached her as soon as she had finished moderating a workshop during which Saudi rights activist Lina al-Hathloul, speaking via video link from outside the country, accused Riyadh of monitoring the social media of Saudis abroad and targeting them for arrest on their return.

"They took me, and then I grabbed my colleague just to have another person in the room," Shea told Context. "They took me sort of to a private room back in the security area and basically said that the host government had complained against me."

The U.N. "failed to protect the most basic freedom of expression," Shea said. For her, that represented the "most outrageous" aspect of the incident.

"This is a U.N. conference about global internet policy, where civil society has an official role, and they can't even uphold the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights," Shea said.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology did not respond to a request for comment.

Code of conduct or cowardly deference?

Asked for comment, the IGF Secretariat referred to a statement on its website that said it had addressed concerns related to the code of conduct with the parties involved.

"The secretariat's role in such instances is to uphold the established rules and facilitate a constructive environment for dialogue," the statement said.

Shea said organisers had told her the Saudi government had seen a video she had shot during the forum and shared on HRW's social media in which she mentioned by name Muhammad al-Ghamadi, a retired teacher HRW said was sentenced to death in 2023 for his tweets, retweets and YouTube activity.

A Saudi court overturned his death sentence last year and sentenced him to 30 years in prison, rights group ALQST.

Shea said the organisers had told her that Saudi authorities had taken issue with the video and the workshop. She said they considered the mentioning of the names of individual human rights defenders to be a violation of the code of conduct.

"Not only did they ... cowardly defer to the wishes of the host government, but ... the conversation they had with me was not, 'they've complained, you have freedom of speech, and we are going to protect that'. It was, 'they've complained, and we're going to investigate this'," Shea said.

Shea said the IGF had told her that her accreditation would be revoked, but following discussions between the organisers and HRW headquarters in New York, she had been allowed to stay.

Neutral forum or censorship?

HRW said the IGF had in December deleted a video recording of the workshop that had been posted on its YouTube channel, then in January, published a video of the event that edited out some of Hathloul's remarks.

"The IGF also edited out the names and details of cases of human rights defenders for whom a moment of silence was held. The secretariat also removed this content from the session's online transcript," HRW said.

It said the edited video included a note on the screen that content had been removed for violating the IGF code of conduct.

The IGF secretariat statement said all summit participants had to agree to a abide by a code of conduct as a condition of their registration "requiring that remarks focus on issues rather than specific actors".

These provisions, it said, were "not a measure to restrict legitimate discourse, but rather to ensure that discussions remain issue-oriented and that the IGF continues to serve as a neutral forum for debate on critical global issues".

HRW said the incidents at the IGF "were the latest example of repressive government hosting a major UN conference censoring and intimidating civil society representatives".

(Reporting by Nazih Osseiran; Editing by Jon Hemming.)