RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The government is censoring a leading Arabic-language newspaper after it published a column saying the Information Ministry controls the press in Saudi Arabia, the paper's regional director and author of the column said Saturday.
In another statement Saturday questioning press freedom in this desert kingdom, a writer criticized the Saudi media for not reporting the firing this past week of an editor whose paper printed a poem accusing Islamic judges of being corrupt and following the orders of "tyrants."
The Interior Ministry ordered the dismissal of Mohammed Mokhtar al-Fala, editor-in-chief of the daily Al-Madina, earlier in the week. The poet, Abdul Mohsen Musalam, was jailed.
"Our press does not publish such news, which proves that it is still a prisoner to its weakness," liberal Saudi writer Abdullah Nasser al-Fawzan wrote in an opinion article in the daily Al Watan, accusing top editors of practicing self-censorship to comply with government wishes.
Dawood al-Shirian, regional director for the London-based daily Al Hayat, told The Associated Press that the Saudi issue of the paper has been subjected to censorship by the Information Ministry since Friday, the day after his column criticizing the ministry appeared.
Al Hayat, one of the most widely read Arabic-language dailies, is owned by Prince Khaled bin Sultan, son of the Saudi defense minister. It is printed in several countries, including Saudi Arabia.
The censors are looking for articles critical of the government and may halt the paper's distribution in Saudi Arabia if they find any, al-Shirian said.
He said subjecting Al Hayat to censorship "is not in the interest of the kingdom, harms the country's budding press freedom and sheds doubt on any talk the government intends to open up."
A senior Information Ministry official, Misfir al-Misfir, declined to comment about Al Hayat specifically but said all newspapers published outside the kingdom are subjected to censorship.
Al-Shirian, however, said Al Hayat should not be censored. He said a royal decree issued a year ago stipulated that it should be treated like a domestic newspaper.
Newspapers in Saudi Arabia are privately owned, but their content is guided by the government. While they are not usually reviewed by censors before publication, the rarely criticize the authorities.
However, Saudi dailies launched an unprecedented attack on two of the country's chief Islamic pillars — the religious police and the girls' education authority, which is controlled by strict Islamic clerics — after a fire at a girls' school in Mecca this month left 15 students dead.
Newspapers accused members of the religious police — the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice — of blocking rescue attempts by male firefighters and paramedics because the girls were not completely veiled.
The police and Interior Ministry denied the accusations, and the criticism has abated since Information Minister Fuad al-Farsi met with the chief editors of Saudi papers last week.
In his column, al-Shirian criticized the newspapers for not reporting the substance of that meeting and carrying instead a bland report about it by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Al-Shirian, who did not attend the meeting, said that what was not printed was a discussion about press restrictions that he said allow the government to control the content of articles.
He said the restrictions include the need to have religious edicts approved by a government-run committee before they are published and reports on major crimes checked by authorities for factual errors.
He also said that during the meeting, al-Farsi ignored some journalists' objections to a recent press charter that imposes a fine on newspapers for reports the Information Ministry finds in violation of new, unpublished guidelines.
"The issues that were taken up during the meeting are not military secrets and despite that, they were blacked out," al-Shirian said in the column. He said the fact that the substance of the meeting was not reported "gives a true picture of how the Saudi media treat news."