Why I defend Jordan

Why I Defend Jordan?
By Radi Radi - August 30, 2004

I have been postponing this article for quite a while and I think it's due now. The Amount of e-mails I received condemning me for claiming that jordan has " the highest civil liberties "ceiling" in the region" was surprising to me as I always thought it was common knowledge.

I will write this article in a Q&A format for my readers to answer the most common questions I received. (The format of the question is my own although the essence is from the received e-mails)

Q: Why do you use the term "ceiling" when referring to liberties?

A: I believe that no country has reached the absolute optimum in Human Rights, just look at Amnesty International's Website to confirm that. Countries with considerable reform strategies have recently started what has become known as the "ceiling" strategy. Basically, they find a limit which suits them and pleases the pressure groups and countries, then let it be known that this is as high as someone can go.

Q: Israel has no "ceiling" for civil liberties, is that your way of claiming a fallacy while trying to be politically correct?

A: I will answer in three parts:
Israel has a long history of censorship and violations of Journalists' rights. The most recent incident was the detention of Peter Hounam the man who broke the story of Israel's nuclear weapons capacity in an interview with Mordechai Vanunu 20 years ago. Just for speaking to Mordechai Vanunu, Peter Hounam was held in detention. The IFJ (International Foundation of Journalists) had said that the detention of Hounam, a close associate of Vanunu, was evidence of "continuing hostility" within the Israeli security and political establishment against journalists trying to report on the Vanunu story.

Israel has thousands of Palestinians in prison, many arrested under the 'secret evidence' system, in which Israel has a way to have someone sent to jail without telling them what they are there for and therefore can have no way of getting out of jail because you simply can't challenge something you don't know. This is against the most basic rights for a trial: know the charges.

Discrimination in many laws including the most recent Residency and Family Unification Law has rendered Israel one of the most discriminatory countries in the region. The Israeli government doesn't believe that all of its citizens have the right to equal treatment and it has it shown very commonly. This is against the most basic human right: All humans are equal

This is sufficient to show Israel is along way from achieving a respectable "ceiling" of civil liberties.



Q: Jordan treats people horrendously, with an exceptionally severe record on Palestinian Originated people. How do you defend such a country?

A: Again, I have to divide my answer into parts:
People are highly respected in Jordan and that's my personal opinion and although a lot of people seem to complain in Jordan because they think their rights aren't given to them, I would like to add a theory I evolved through my short years in Jordan. Dealing with such people always led me to the same conclusion. Everything is Relative.

Allow me to elaborate; I always thought that people who are contented in Jordan are those who actually tried living somewhere else. Jordan, suffering from unemployment and having an educated and skilled work force, was prepared to fill the vacuum of neighboring petroleum-exporting nations. The people who moved there in search of work always complained of the lack of civil rights. Those countries for example do not allow freedom of speech, right to assembly and most horribly they have a second tier treatment to what is in most cases more than half of their population.

I personally remember our fear to criticize the Government of the country I was born in, and we had to be very secretive about anything critical of any of the local population for fear of transfer from that country back to Jordan. That was the case with my father being a very connected and influential man there, I can't imagine how it would be if he wasn't such. P.S. they don't grant citizenship for people born on their land (i.e. me), treat them like second-class inhabitants and allowing them to be treated as dispensable.

Many Jordanians -mostly of Palestinian Origin- who worked in the neighboring petroleum-exporting nations understand that was the kindest to Palestinians. They only country in the region to grant them working Passports, Ownership rights and full equality.

Jordan has the highest literacy rate amongst the Arab world with an astonishing 91.3% and that includes a comparison with countries that have much higher budgets and more capabilities, in the region it's only rivaled by Israel. Which brings me to another point Jordan measures the literacy rate of all of its inhabitants while in Israel, the literacy rate is that of citizenship holders so that makes it very unfair to compare results.

On the human level things are always looking good. While in 1950, water, sanitation, and electricity were available to only 10% of Jordanians, today these reach 99% of the population. In 1960 only 33% of Jordanians were literate, in 1996, this number climbed to 85.5% and up to 91.3% these days. In 1961, the average Jordanian received a daily intake of 2198 calories, and by 1992, this figure had increased by 37.5% to reach 3022 calories. UNICEF statistics show that between 1981 and 1991, Jordan achieved the world's fastest annual rate of decline in infant mortality—from 70 deaths per 1000 births in 1981 to 37 per 1000 in 1991, a fall of over 47% it now reaches 18 so that's a fall of over 75%.

The kingdom is internationally recognized as having the most exemplary human rights record in the Middle East, while recent reforms have allowed Jordan to resume its irreversible drive to democratization. In 1990, King Hussein appointed a royal commission representing the entire spectrum of Jordanian political thought to draft a national charter. Today the National Charter, along with the Jordanian Constitution, serves as a guideline for democratic institutionalization and political pluralism in the country. In 1989, 1993 and 1997, Jordan held parliamentary elections which were accredited internationally as among the freest and fairest ever held in the Middle East.


So, yes, in the region. Jordan is the best.

The way I see it what is past is past, I have many acquaintances who were at many points in armed resistances against the government of Jordan. They are now residing in Jordan and peacefully I may add as many of them left their migration states whether in Europe, North America or elsewhere. This only shows me one thing, Jordan is as good as a place gets.