UN accused of censoring criticism of Saudi Arabia at flagship internet conference

Middle East Eye

06-02-2025

The UN removed criticism of the Saudi government from the official transcript of a key UN conference and threatened to eject a Saudi researcher from the gathering held in Riyadh in December, Human Rights Watch has said.
The organisation described the fallout from the UN Internet Governance Forum (UN IGF) as 'the latest example' of a repressive government hosting a major UN conference which saw civil society representatives censored and intimidated.
Deborah Brown, HRW's deputy technology, rights and investigations director, said: "The UN and its member states should put an end to a climate of intimidation and censorship toward diplomats, journalists, human rights advocates, and other civil society representatives at UN conferences."
"Restricting participants' ability to speak freely about internet policy issues, including issues relevant in the host country, undermines the IGF's purpose," she said.
The UN IGF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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In December, HRW, along with the UK-based human rights organisation Alqst, hosted a panel discussion at the UN IGF, an annual flagship event on internet policies.
The panel, which focused on the UN's new cybercrime treaty and its potential impact on transnational repression, included Saudi activist Lina al-Hathloul, one of few, if any, Saudi civil society leaders who spoke at the conference held next to the Ritz-Carlton hotel where Saudi royals, officials and business people were detained and tortured in 2017.
Hathloul, Alqst's head of advocacy, who spoke remotely over concerns for her safety, said that Saudi Arabia was 'a cautionary tale' that showed how the UN's cybercrime treaty could be weaponised 'in the hands of governments that are already using cybercrime laws to suppress dissent'.
She noted the existence of a Saudi state security watch list called 'Watch Upon Return', which she said monitors the accounts of Saudis abroad in order to target them upon their return home.
A moment of silence was held during the panel for human rights defenders across the region who had been punished for expressing themselves online, including Assad and Mohammed al-Ghamdi and Nora al-Qahtani, held in Saudi prisons on decades-long sentences over social media posts.
Deletion and removals
A day after the 18 December event, a video and transcript of the panel, links to which Hathloul and others had shared widely, were removed online. Hours later, a new video of the event was uploaded.
On 20 December, when asked if anyone had requested that the video and transcript be removed and on what basis they were deleted, a spokesperson for UN IGF told Middle East Eye there might be "several reasons" why they weren't on the website or reported.
"The secretariat will in the course of the next week or so (holidays not withstanding) be tabulating/correcting transcription errors, correctly titling and trimming videos to remove dead space etc. to make them more organised, and easily searchable," the spokesperson said at the time.
But HRW says that on 22 December, in response to the organisation's request for information about the removals, UN officials cited a section of the IGF's code of conduct which refers to participants focusing on remarks on issues rather than on particular actors, including individuals, groups, organisations or governments, and to refrain from personal or ad hominem attacks.
"The secretariat said the decision was 'non-appealable' and did not respond to specific questions concerning how and why this policy was interpreted," HRW said.
Then, on 13 January, HRW said the IGF published an edited version of the panel on YouTube in which significant portions of Hathloul's comments have been removed with a note in their place referring to the same IGF code of conduct cited in the 22 December letter.
The comments that now appear where many of Lina al-Hathloul's remarks were made during the 16 December panel at the UN IGF in Riyadh (YouTube)
Hathloul's now edited comments focused on cases of imprisoned Saudi rights defenders and the use of the kingdom's anti-cybercrime and counterterrorism laws to target peaceful activism and online speech.
The names and cases of the human rights defenders from the moment of silence were also replaced with the same note. The content removed from the video has also been struck from the online transcript. Latin American case studies cited alongside those from Saudi Arabia were not removed.
On Thursday, HRW said that UN officials told Joey Shea, the organisation's Saudi Arabia researcher who moderated the panel, that the Saudi government had complained and asked the UN to revoke her badge accrediting her to attend the conference.
According to HRW, the officials referred to an HRW video, citing the case of Mohammed al-Ghamdi "as the basis of the host country's complaint", and also said that Shea's naming of specific human rights defenders during the panel might have constituted a code of conduct violation.
The UN officials told Shea said they would discuss whether to revoke her badge with UN headquarters in New York, HRW said. Her badge was ultimately not revoked.
HRW maintains that Shea's mention of specific detained human rights activists did not comprise a 'personal or ad hominem attack' and that she did not mention which governments had imprisoned the activists.
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HRW and Alqst were not the only rights groups who reported difficulties at the event in December.
HRW said UN staff confiscated fliers on the cases of Manahel al-Otaibi, a Saudi fitness instructor, and Neth Nahara, an Angolan singer and mother of two, both jailed over social media posts, from Amnesty International's exhibit booth.
MEE also learned that another panel involving US-based digital rights NGO Access Now and Paradigm Initiative, a Nigerian digital rights NGO, was "zoom bombed" with streaming pornography several times, including after Jamal Khashoggi, the slain Saudi journalist, was mentioned.
Brown said: 'The UN and its member states should be working to defend freedom of expression and facilitate vibrant civil society participation at all of its conferences, not participating in abuses by host governments."
'With the IGF's mandate up for renewal later this year, it is all the more critical for the UN to ensure that civil society can participate safely in future annual forums and forgo using its arbitrary code of conduct," she said.