Gay Oman Controversy Spirals Out Of Control

Omani weekly tabloid newspaper The Week appears to be in a great deal of hot water indeed. The paper ran a piece last week on what it was like being gay in Oman which looks to the untutored eye like a well written and balanced feature - if a surprisingly frank and open one. It has resulted in an amazing backlash that has led the paper to issue an unconditional apology on its home page as it faces censure at the highest level and the possibility of action from the country's legislature.

The Oman Journalist's Association has strongly condemned the piece according to Gulf News (which hit a new high today by reporting on a woman who threatened to blow herself up at Dubai's Public Prosecution and failed to mention there was no bomb in her 'bomb belt'*), while also calling for the Ministry of Information to act - and the chairman of the Omani Shura Council, Shaikh Khalid Bin Hilal Bin Naseer Al Maa’wali, has weighed in, promising action by the Council's media committee. In a tweet, as it happens. In fact, in a final confirmation that this is, indeed, a hot story (all today's journalist needs to confirm it's a biggie), the whole thing trended on Twitter.

It's not as if homosexuality in Oman hasn't been aired in public before - the (formerly) excellent Muscat Confidential blog ran a great interview on this very topic back in 2010. Muscat Confidential has in the past been blocked by Omani authorities, but no blocking followed the publication of this post.

But, of course, We Don't Talk About Elephants In This Room and there's clearly a huge difference between a blog post and a tabloid newspaper - and it's worth noting the outrage is clearly community driven, it's not a nanny state government acting against a brave little newspaper. The piece has clearly widely offended Omanis.

The Week's apology neatly paraphrases Father Jack Hackett, but 'the article' - so hot its nature can't even be mentioned in that apology, it seems - lives on. Omani blog Oman Coast has reproduced the piece on those who choose not to reproduce and it's linked here for your elucidation. As Oman Coast says, please read on only if you are a mature reader used to free speech who is not easily shocked or offended.

Meanwhile the messenger, it would appear, has been quite comprehensively shot...

* I suppose in the interest of fairness I should point out that Gulf News has now added the no bomb information to its story online, although not rewritten it in light of the new finding, so the first line still reads, "A mother wearing a belt of explosives who threatened to blow herself up in the Dubai Public Prosecution building has surrendered and has been arrested."

Anti Social Media

Khanjar, Saidi-type, circa 1924, from Oman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oman's National Human Rights Commission has come out against the online commentators and activists who have been irking the government to the point where there have been a significant number of arrests recently.

The Commission's statement, linked here, is a model of clarity. For instance: "NHRC pointed out that there is a difference between the freedom of opinion as a right and the practice of this right in reality. The dividing line makes the practice of this right legal and going beyond it a crime punishable by the law. The rule in this issue is that the freedom of individuals stops when the freedom of other individuals starts."

Right.

The Omani public prosecution issued a statement last week that clarified its position on the issue of opinion expressed online and "calls upon all citizens on the importance of following the legal methods and means for the expression of opinion in line with the legal concept for the freedom of expression."

The problem is, of course, as Omani columnist Susan Mubarak points out in Muscat Daily, there is no official 'line' that defines quite where " the freedom of individuals stops" and "the freedom of other individuals starts". Her excellent piece on the issue is balanced by the Uriah Heep tones of the Oman Tribune.

Article 29 of Oman's 'Basic Statute of the State' guarantees "The freedom of opinion and expression thereof through speech, writing or other forms of expression is guaranteed within the limits of the Law." Those limits are, of course, nowhere defined.

Further clarifying its statement, the NHRC said that "It affirmed that it supports the freedom of opinion, which seeks to achieve the public interests rather than those harming or insulting others."

The 'About Human Rights' page on the NHRC's lovely, retro-style website is "under construction". You'd have thought it would have been 404, wouldn't you?

(Update: I've just learned from @muscati that a female member of the NHRC has resigned from the commission as a result of its decision to make this statement.)

Muscat

I do love Muscat. It sort of tumbles around between the foothills of the Hajjar mountains and the Indian Ocean, dotted with palms and swept by the cool Winter breeze flowing in from the uncertain sea; it's clean and neat, strangely and yet comfortingly similar to the coastal towns of the Eastern UAE. If, like me, you've just spent a day touring Kalba, Fujeirah, Khor Fakkan, Biddaya and Dibba with relatives, you'll instantly recognise Muscat as being cut from the same cloth.

Today Oman played Kuwait in the GCC Cup (the 19th such tournament, if you don't mind. I'm here working for a client on campaigns hung around that self same contest) and managed a nil-nil draw. Which didn't stop the city's youth taking to the streets in a massive teddy-bear hugging, beeping process of cars festooned in Omani flags and streamers that jostled on into the night.

Grief, but what are they going to get up to if they actually win?

Border

It's been almost nine years since the border between the UAE and Oman was agreed between the late Shaikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and HM Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Detailed negotiations then carried on, resulting in in a detailed and mapped agreement on the border in May 2005, almost six years to the day from the original agreement.

Over the past couple of years, a green fence has started to snake its way along the frontier between the two countries, slicing through the wadi plains and climbing up into the rocky foothills of the Hajjar mountains. The 'rabbit proof fence' is high and topped with razor wire, set into concrete and relatively serious as fences go. And it was built by the UAE, apparently.

It's no easy task, closing this border. Because of the original tribal affiliations of the people living in these areas, there are enclaves of Oman within the main borders of the UAE, including the Northern tip by the Straits of Hormuz, the Musandam Peninsula; a pocket of land inland from Khor Fakkan on the Indian Ocean near the village of Shis and the wadi plains of Vilayat Madha. So you drive from Dubai through Sharjah, Oman and then a little bit of Ajman to get to Hatta, for instance. What's more, if you drive North of Hatta on the road (used to be track, *sigh*) from just beyond the Hatta Fort Hotel to the desert town of Dhaid, which is part of Sharjah, you'll be driving through Ras Al Khaimah to get there.

It's kind of complex, no?

Now they've shut the border between the UAE's desert oasis town of Al Ain and Omani town Buraimi, which have always lived side by side in the desert, sort of semi-morphed into a single town. What's interesting here is that there are now to be two border crossings between the two towns, a move that was hilariously headlined by Gulf News: "Expatriates get separate border crossing at Al Ain" as if it were some kind of benefit to have to drive 15km out of town to cross the border!

The National had an excellent piece on the effects of the move this week, as residents try to manage a border through a community that in many ways had become a single community made up of two adjacent towns in two adjacent countries. A sort of Siamese City.

The other border crossings, including the road through Vilayat Madha to Hatta, remain open. The question is for how long - and how they can be closed. It's hard to find a reason why the border has been so comprehensively locked down, although smuggling and illegal immigration have both been mentioned as the core reasons behind the massive project.

So now you can't just pop over the border to Buraimi and visit the pools at Kitnah or pop over to the Hanging Gardens and then slip up the track from Al Ain to Hatta, perhaps stopping off for a splash around in some of the wadis on the way. It'll be interesting to see how long it'll be before the Hatta Track itself (now blacktop anyway, so no wadi bashing to be had here) is closed off.

Sad times.