FOREIGN POLICY (13/11/2022)
As she looked out the window of her bare, dimly lit living room in October, Mervat Hamda counted the days since the authorities took away her son Anas al-Jamal: 138. “He is more than my son—he is my closest friend,” she said as she showed me family photos in their home in Irbid, a city in northern Jordan. “Anas is our joy, our light, our laughter.”
Jamal, a 25-year-old street vendor and activist, came of age during the Arab Spring, a time that saw dictators toppled and wars break out in the region. Jordan was spared major unrest, but Jamal joined the wave of protests that did take place in the country, demanding greater freedoms for Jordanians and becoming active on social media. “He wanted to participate and to stand with the oppressed,” his mother said. Since then, Jamal has engaged with youth-based movements demanding reform and criticizing Arab countries’ agreements with Israel. He’s known for leading chants at protests, and, in late 2021, he joined an opposition party.
“Everyone in Irbid knows Anas. He is very popular and loved here,” said a young man at a cafe near where Jamal worked in Irbid’s bustling city center. (The young man’s name has been withheld due to the sensitive political situation.) “But he has been targeted by authorities because he is not afraid to speak out.”
Jamal has been detained five times in the last three years. He was first arrested in 2019, ostensibly for working as a street vendor without a license. Since then, he has been harassed, threatened, and detained for his political activities, said his lawyer, Loai Obeidat. Jamal’s most recent arrest was in May. He was accused of “disturbing relations with a foreign country” for a Facebook post he made criticizing the United Arab Emirates, a key Jordanian ally—an act the state classifies as “terrorism.” After three months of being held without a trial, Jamal went on a hunger strike. It lasted three weeks, his mother said, only ending when his health seriously deteriorated.
The government’s silencing of a poor street vendor sparked outrage among many Jordanians. In September, dozens of people demonstrated in Amman, the capital, in front of the headquarters of the country’s Independent Election Commission, a body mandated to conduct transparent elections and promote democratic processes, to protest the escalating harassment, repression, and silencing of dissidents. Holding photos of Jamal, demonstrators demanded his release. Online, activists have circulated lists with the names of dozens of other people they say were also detained for social media posts (…)
Photos by Sherbel Dissi