In her blog post, Sara Kezia Heinonen, a recipient of the Vikes travel grant, sheds light on the hidden forms of restrictions on freedom of speech in Jordan.
In the spring of 2025, I traveled to Jordan to meet local journalists and media experts. The country had changed somewhat since my previous visit in 2018—for example, infrastructure investments from Gulf countries were clearly visible in Amman’s cityscape. However, even at the airport, I encountered a new change in everyday life: my favorite app, TikTok, no longer worked without a VPN.
After a quick Google search, I learned that TikTok had been unofficially banned since the end of 2023, when truck drivers took to the streets to protest rising fuel prices in the Ma’an Governorate in southern Jordan. They streamed the protests live on TikTok, and three police officers and an assistant police chief were killed during the demonstrations. Shortly thereafter, the government announced a temporary ban on TikTok in the country, citing the platform’s role in inciting violence. Two years later, TikTok remains accessible only via a VPN connection.
However, the ban on TikTok is just one manifestation of Jordan’s increasingly tight control, and the shrinking of online space is not a new development. In 2023, King Abdullah II approved a new cybercrime law that allows for broader control over online media. The law criminalizes, in vague terms, the spreading of “false information” and attacks on “reputation,” “national unity,” or “public morality.” For example, the freedom of speech organization RSF considers the law to be one of Jordan’s key tools for online surveillance. The legal environment is fragmented and unclear: for example, cyber law and anti-terrorism law can be applied simultaneously without a clear distinction of their application, which increases legal uncertainty for journalists and exposes them to arbitrary interpretation.
Journalists are being surveilled in Jordania
Journalists in Jordan live under constant surveillance. Many have been unofficially banned from covering certain topics after interrogations – without any written decision ever being issued. At the same time, journalists are pressured to join the state-controlled journalists' union. Particularly difficult topics include women's rights and tensions between local communities. According to the Samir Kassir Foundation, there are independent media outlets in the country, but they keep a low profile. The influence of the state and security authorities is particularly strong in certain regions and subject areas, which limits the scope for critical journalism.
Journalists’ daily lives are driven by self-censorship, born not so much from fear of violence as from legal intimidation tactics: delayed trials, unclear interrogations and a sense of digital surveillance. “Jordan is not a particularly bloody country when it comes to freedom of speech,” commented veteran journalist Daoud Kuttab. “But the law is used as a deterrent, and the source of the surveillance is not always known.”
Although Jordan has also passed a data protection law, the conflict between it and other laws leaves journalists on weak ground. For example, the Criminal Procedure Code gives authorities wide powers to monitor citizens' media, even though the data protection law explicitly prohibits such a practice.
Crises expose the consequences of regulation
The tightening of regulation is also reflected in reactions to regional crises. After October 7, Jordan’s huge Palestinian diaspora became widely active: demonstrations, boycotts and social media campaigns targeted, among other things, American companies and chains, of which the country has a lot. The state’s reaction was not limited to online censorship. Several Palestinian activists have since been arrested, and self-censorship among journalists has increased even further. The 2023 Cybercrime Law is increasingly being used to arrest activists, especially for content that criticizes Jordan's policy towards Israel or the two countries' diplomatic relations. Jordan is one of the few Arab countries to have diplomatic relations with Israel. The two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994.
One way to understand the situation in Jordan is to view it as a “soft repression”: there is little violence, but freedom of expression is systematically abridged through legislation, creating a situation where journalists avoid certain topics before anyone has a chance to address the content.
In the Middle East, the crisis of freedom of expression is often understood only through the most blatant cases – arrests, murders, direct threats. Less often, attention is paid to the everyday mechanisms through which the space for freedom of expression is gradually shrinking. In Jordan and other countries (such as Tunisia, where a similar law was introduced in 2022), this is reflected in initiatives such as the Cyber Security Law, which not only restricts individual apps, but also seeks to create a new kind of everyday control – one in which free media must constantly adapt their methods to survive.
Text: Sara Kezia Heinonen
