Omani Association for Human Rights
On Monday, April 15, 2019, An Omani private radio station called AlShabiba announced the cancellation of its weekly program “The Decision”, which previously hosted many Omani public figures. It was supposed to host the Omani writer and researcher Said bin Sultan Al-Hashimi. The radio channel did not mention the reasons for the cancellation, saying only on its Twitter page : “We apologize to you for not broadcasting today’s episode of “The Decision”, we will meet you next week in a new episode,”.
But friends of the writer confirmed from their pages in Facebook and Twitter that this attitude has been practiced for several years against Al-Hashimi who was one of the symbols of the protests in Oman in 2011, now he is banned from participating in public cultural activities, banned from appearing in Omani media and his books are banned in the Sultanate.
In 2011 Al-Hashimi was kidnapped and beaten by unknown persons. In 2012, he and a group of his colleagues were sentenced to one and a half years in prison after being arrested during a peaceful demonstration outside the headquarters of the General Police in Muscat. They were expressing their solidarity with a group of activists who had previously been detained and demanding their release. Al-Hashemi and his colleagues spent six months in prison and were released after receiving pardon from the Sultan. Al-Hashimi documented the Omani protests in 2011 in his book “The Omani Spring”. The book was banned by the Muscat International Book Fair in 2018 and 2019. Other books were banned by Al-Hashimi such as: Oman: Man and Power, the diary book “What the Cell Said to the Rose”, in which he documented the period of his arrest, and the book “Obeid Al-Omani Alive,” which documents the life of the Omani fighter and writer Ahmad Al-Zubaidi. Including other books.
