UAE bloggers protected by Journalists' Association

A new article says that UAE bloggers will be protected from prosecution by a union of sorts, provided (of course), they follow a code of ethics:

"Bloggers and "virtual" journalists have the right to be protected by the Journalists' Association, provided they abide by the ethics code, including stating of facts and sources of information, avoiding defaming without tangible proof, or provoking hostility arising from religious, sectarian or race discriminations," Yousuf said.

Mohammad Yousuf, President of the UAE Journalists' Association, also said that full-time, dedicated bloggers will be allowed membership of the association.

So the question is really, who is a "full-time, dedicated" blogger? Again, in previous debates regarding this, does it include personal blogs that ocassionally do political commentary and controversial topics, or only those that are "journalistic"? And what is considered "provoking hostility arising from religious, sectarian or race discriminations"? Expats whining about locals, or vice-versa, or both? Does all of this also include comments?

It seems like a step in the right directon for sure, but certain things still seem a bit vague to me.

The first legal action against a website owner in the UAE

Just because we blog, we should not think ourselves to be safer than other website users. Link here.

The court modified the charges pressed against the two Emiratis, the supervisor of the website and the writer, to public defaming crime from publishing news about people over the internet.

A few weeks later, another official complained against the same website.

Misdemeanour Court sentenced the supervisor to a year in prison. The website will pay Dh50,000 in fine and Dh20,000 in compensation to the official. The website was closed down.

This is extremely worrying to me as an Emirati, that our freedoms in this country, such as a freedom of speech, and tolerance for a different opinion is being eroded. And that it is being replaced by agressive and intolerant values such as these.

I advise those who have mentioned any officials in their blog to conduct an immediate edit of their posts and save whatever posts they intend to delete.