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Babylon & Beyond

BAHRAIN: Authorities crack down on dissent on the Web, rights group says

By Alexandra Zaviswriter 

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

As demands for change spread across the Middle East, authorities in Bahrain are taking steps to prevent activists from using the Internet to encourage dissent, a human rights organization said Sunday.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights accused the government of blocking access to a Facebook group calling for protests inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. The center’s own website has been blocked for years, it said. Several prominent bloggers have also been arrested.

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Opposition activists in the small Persian Gulf island nation have been calling for a “day of rage” Feb. 14 against the ruling royal family. Bahraini authorities have taken economic measures to try to stave off the mounting anger, raising food subsidies.

— Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles and Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

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Babylon & Beyond
Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.

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