A perennial discussion in the cauldron that is Middle Eastern politics concerns the degree to which a sovereign Palestinian state, should one ever be created, would be democratic.

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The democratic character of any state is determined in the main by three elements. First, the frequency and transparency of elections; second, limits on the power of elected officials and defined boundaries between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary; and third, the extent to which basic civil rights like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are respected.

An independent Palestine would probably host elections on a regular basis, although the integrity of these would always be a subject for debate, as would the ever-present prospect of armed conflict between rival Palestinian factions. As far as an honest, accountable government that subordinates itself to the rule of law is concerned, there is very little evidence to suggest that a future State of Palestine would be administered in this way.

To the contrary, throughout the existence of the Palestinian Authority – now in its 28th year – there has been a constant stream of news stories regarding corruption, political violence and violations of core civil rights by Palestinians against other Palestinians. The latest example occurred last week when the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah removed artwork depicting the late PLO leader that loyalists deemed "offensive." The principle underlying this act of censorship is one that Arafat himself would have appreciated; a client of the Soviet Union who spent much of his time meeting with dictators in the Communist bloc and in the Arab world, Arafat was an admirer of those systems of government where the state is the ultimate regulator of what the people living under its jurisdiction see, hear and read.

In totalitarian states, artistic depictions of leaders are by definition sycophantic. From the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin to North Korea's Kim Jong-un, from "Chairman Mao" of China to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the official portraits of those who wield near-unlimited power invariably show them as steely-jawed and commanding the love of their people; as strong and paternal; and as courageously unwavering in their convictions. In Arafat's case, his 1974 address to the UN General Assembly, when he wore his pistol bolted to his waist, or any of the numerous occasions when he flashed a victory sign at photographers would be appropriate subject matter for this style of art.

Less so was the case with the portraits of Arafat chosen for display at the museum in Ramallah. Photographs of some of them were shared on Twitter by the Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, and the selection on display might be described as underwhelming. There is a drawing of Arafat with an olive branch clenched between his teeth, another showing him adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and another of Arafat wearing a carefree grin beneath his keffiyeh. One might conclude that there is some gentle mockery in these caricatures, though nothing that could be considered insulting, and certainly nothing that could be construed as a slur on either Arafat's Arab nationality or his Muslim faith – a marked divergence from the antisemitic tropes and Nazi imagery that routinely accompanies Arab and even some Western caricatures of Israel's elected leaders.

But when the Ramallah exhibition, unimaginatively titled "Palestine and Yasser Arafat," opened to the public last Sunday, not all the works met the loyalty standard such art demands. The exhibition's purpose – "solidarity with Palestine and the roots of Yasser Arafat's memory in the international community" – didn't preclude less conventional artistic representations, but that made no difference. A row duly broke out, manifesting on ideological and party lines, and reflecting the fractured personal relations between some Palestinian leaders.

The exhibition lacked "honesty in representing Yasser Arafat," said Nasser al-Kidwa, a veteran Palestinian diplomat and former head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation before he was sacked last year following a bitter disagreement with the Fatah movement. On this occasion, though, Fatah agreed with al-Kidwa's assessment. "The insult to Yasser Arafat is an insult to all the Palestinian people," it declared, before delivering a threat: "We therefore call upon the Yasser Arafat Foundation to remove all the insulting works and apologize, or we will have to remove them ourselves."

Mohammad Sabaanah, a Palestinian cartoonist, told The New Arab media outlet last week that he had turned down an invitation to participate in the Arafat exhibition because he didn't trust the organizers. "When I found out that some prominent artists were not invited to participate, I doubted the criteria behind the exhibition, and I withdrew from it," he said. Sabaanah then explained that there was a "clear confusion" between political cartoons and caricature portraits, which are "basically a satirical representation of a personality." It was those latter representations of Arafat that were judged unacceptable, according to Sabaanah.

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In its own statement, the Yasser Arafat Foundation, which staged the exhibition, forlornly insisted that the offending artworks did not "insult Yasser Arafat's personality or symbolism." However, it continued, "all works exhibited have been removed due to lack of acceptance by the Palestinian public." Unquestionably, what transpired in Ramallah was a victory for censorship.

It is also another strong reminder of the absence of a democratic culture in Palestinian politics. Even now, at a time when most Western societies are bitterly polarized and democracy is dismissed as overrated, our media outlets do not shy away from lurid cartoons of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Fauci or any of the other personalities that have dominated recent news headlines. Western publics do not expect their leaders to be treated with respect all the time, nor do they demand limits on what can be said about them or how they are depicted. But among the Palestinians, anything other than uncritical veneration of their political leaders is regarded with suspicion. Those Palestinian artists who forget to censor themselves can expect a visit from Fatah's enforcers in the not-too-distant future.

Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Iran's judicial authorities reportedly banned a newspaper Monday for publishing a front-page graphic that appeared to show Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's hand drawing the poverty line in the Islamic Republic amid widespread anger over the nation's cratering economy.

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The semiofficial Mehr news agency said Iran's media supervisory body shut down the daily newspaper Kelid after it published a front-page article titled "Millions of Iranians Living under Poverty Line" on Saturday.

Under the headline, the graphic shows a person's left hand holding a pen and drawing a red line across the page as silhouettes of people underneath are reaching up to the line.

The graphic resembled an earlier image of Khamenei writing on a piece of paper with his left hand, a prominent ring on one of his fingers. His right has been paralyzed since a 1981 bombing.

The Young Journalists Club, a group associated with state television, earlier reported that censors were examining the newspaper after the publication. The state-run IRNA news agency acknowledged Kelid had been shut down, without explaining the reason for the decision.

Kelid could not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Their website has been taken offline.

Iran, whose state-dominated economy has long faced trouble since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, has been under increased pressure since former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.

The Iranian rial is now about 281,500 to the dollar – compared with 32,000 rials for $1 at the time when the 2015 nuclear deal was struck. With US sanctions still strangling the economy, record-breaking inflation has hit ordinary Iranians where it hurts most. Stunned shoppers are cutting meat and dairy from their diets, buying less and less each month.

While radio and television stations are all state-controlled in Iran, newspapers and magazines can be owned and published by private individuals. However, Iranian journalists face constant harassment and the threat of arrest in the country, according to press advocacy groups.

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Last Monday's edition of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper was perhaps one of the most festive ever. It was the first edition following the announcement by the Nobel Prize Committee, which suddenly transformed the newspaper's editor, Dmitry Muratov, into an international star.

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He became the third Russian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, joining the scientist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov (1975), and the last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhael Gorbachev (1990). Surprisingly, however, the entire front page of the historic edition was devoted to the joint winner of the prize, the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa.

"You see that? You didn't guess!" Muratov joked over the telephone from Moscow, during an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom. "We thought about that front page at the editorial meeting on Saturday morning and decided to go with it. For us, it's a matter of principle: our faces aren't the story, our workers aren't the story, and especially not my face either.

The story is the wonderful face of Maria Ressa, because she is really a courageous woman: a person who on her own set out to destroy the dictatorship in her country. I'll tell you more: we invited her to Moscow to be hosted by us at the newspaper and so she can give a talk to students and the newspaper staff."

This neatly summarizes the Novaya Gazeta ethos: absolute self-awareness of public service rooted in an extreme sense of professional modesty. Even in the era of social media and journalists who are too focused on themselves, as chief editor of Novaya Gazeta and even as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, to never forget one basic principle: the journalist isn't the story.

Ironically, however, and even tragically, over the years the Novaya staff became the focus of coverage as six of them paid the price with their lives: Igor Domnikov was murdered in 2000 after he criticized a regional vice governor; in 2003 Yury Shchekochikhin was probably poisoned by radioactive materials after a series of threats; Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov, who investigated the extreme right in Russia, were murdered in the center of Moscow in 2009 by a Neo-Nazi activist and his girlfriend; that same year, Natalya Estemirova, an investigative journalist in Chechnya, was abducted and shot dead near the Kavkaz federal road in the Republic of Ingushetia; and, of course, Anna Politkovskaya, who was already a legendary journalist in her own lifetime, and was almost synonymous with the newspaper.

Despite being editor of Novaya Gazeta for 25 years (apart from a short break), Muratov is careful to clarify that, from his perspective, he is only the emissary. "The prize was not given to us, and definitely not myself, and therefore I relate to its award coolly," he says. "I am extremely grateful to the Nobel Committee. Thanks to them it can be said openly that the fallen and the living won one of the most humanistic prizes in the world."

Without doubt, Politkovskaya is the central figure in the burden of grief that the newspaper carries. Close to the entrance of the office at Potapovsky Alley 3 in Moscow is a large monument embossed with her face. The garden close to the entrance plaza carries her name. So does the annual prize that the newspaper awards to outstanding journalists.

Politkovskaya was a legend in her own lifetime, when she became the first journalist to expose the horrors that took place during the Second Chechen War – including and perhaps mainly those perpetrated by the Russian Army itself. In the incomprehensible hell that was the North Caucasus republic, Politkovskaya became the address for hundreds of Chechens whose authorities – both federal and local – didn't care about the kidnapping, murder, and rape of their loved ones.

In the newspaper's editorial office in Moscow the staff knew she was in her office if the corridor leading to it had 30-40 Chechen adults – injured, exhausted, crying. In 2004 she interviewed Ramzan Kadyrov, who was then deputy prime minister and is today the republic's "Sultan," in which he menaced her.

"I was expecting them to shoot me in the back at any moment," she said. Politkovskaya was also a known human rights activist, and since her name preceded her, she tried to negotiate – in vain – with the terrorist group that had taken control of the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow in October 2002. It is no surprise that, over the years, she accumulated many enemies in the corridors of power, for whom her uncompromising struggle – in the spirit of the newspaper's work – for human rights, was a spoke in their wheels.

In 2004, while she was on a flight to independently negotiate at Beslan, where Islamist terrorists held more than 300 hostages at a school, she was poisoned, but survived.

In October 2006 Politkovskaya's luck ran out. An assassin was waiting for her in the elevator of her building and shot her at point-blank range, killing her. Her murder became a shadow that clouds the Novaya Gazeta in particular, and the relationship between the Russian authorities and the free media in general.

The reason: for 15 years, every effort has been made to cover up the affair, maybe because it became clear – only thanks to an investigation by the newspaper itself – that one of the organizers of the murder was the head of the Moscow police surveillance department, who assisted the assassins in exchange for a bribe.

Following Politkovskaya's assassination, Putin had remarked that "her killing had caused greater damage to Russia than her writings."

Oct. 7 marked 15 years since her murder and the statute of limitations has now expired.

"The unsolved murders of our colleagues made clear that one can deal with journalists as one wishes if for any reason their work is inconsistent with the interests of the authorities," Muratov says in the film This is How They Murdered Anna, which was released last week. "What do the authorities care about public opinion? And also, for society itself it doesn't matter what happens with journalists. This lack of punishment only increases the feeling of subjugation; it transforms [Russian] journalism to a profession that is incompatible with everyday life."

Later, the officer in the Moscow police, who ran the surveillance division, pleaded guilty in the framework of a plea bargain, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The murderer – a Chechen youth – and his uncle, a senior figure in the underworld, were sentenced to life imprisonment. The uncle later died under unclear circumstances in jail. The big question remains open: who ordered the murder, which was a watershed moment in the annals of the newspaper and Russian journalism?

Q: Fifteen years have passed since the murder. Do you believe that the person behind the murder will still be uncovered?

"It's not a question of faith," Muratov responds. "I can tell you that there is the official Kremlin position, according to which there is no expiry date [to the case]. That's good. The investigatory committee told us that the investigation is ongoing. They didn't even bother telling us who the investigator is. But we found the main witness in the case. And we will certainly discover him [whoever ordered the murder]."

Even today Novaya Gazeta is under threat. In March a motorcyclist wearing overalls came to the newspaper's offices and sprayed chemical materials at the entrance. After publishing another investigation about the horrors of the Chechen dictatorship, commanders of the Akhmat Kadyrov Battalion – for all intents and purposes the private army of the Chechen president – recorded a film with explicit threats to the newspaper, which according to them is slandering the battalion. The reason: a series of exposés about how members of the division are involved in torture in Chechnya.

Q: Six of your journalists have been murdered over the years. Have you been threated? Are you yourself not worried?

"We don't answer the question about whether or not we are worried. 'Not frightened,' an idiot would say, while 'Frightened' is how a stupid person would answer."

Muratov, 59, is part of a group of journalists who founded Novaya Gazeta in 1993 with the aim of exposing corruption, illegal detentions, torture, fraudulent elections and human stories, with an emphasis on the suffering of patients with incurable rare diseases who find it nearly impossible to get funding for medicines.

Over the years the newspaper – where 76% of the shares are held by the staff and the remainder are divided between businessman Alexander Lebedev and Gorbachev – exposed outrageous scandals in Russia: from the money laundering of 20 billion dollars to the rape and murder of a young Chechen woman by a colonel in the Russian army, from the failures of the authorities during operations to free hostages to the persecution of homosexuals in Chechnya.

The newspaper and its staff have won more than 40 professional and international prizes, including the US State Department International Women of Courage award, and now the Nobel Prize joins its ranks. An amusing anecdote there is that The prestigious Women of Courage award was given to the newspaper's Head of Investigations, Yelena Milashina, with whom Muratov was having an intense professional argument when the phone rang last Friday morning.

"I saw three calls from Oslo, I thought it was an unwanted call and I continued to talk," said the chief editor, who screened the call without knowing that it was from the Nobel committee.

The committee explained that, despite the oppression and the murder of its journalists, Muratov "has refused to abandon the newspaper's independent policy. He has consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism." The committee also lauded their efforts "to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."

Novaya's independence and freedom of expression became even clearer over the past year, in light of the tightening chokehold on the rest of the independent Russian media. Some of them were blocked on the internet, another was classified as an undesirable organization and was closed, others were classified as "inciting organizations," but most were classified with a stroke of a pen as "foreign agents" – a status that limits the financial possibilities of the media and is designed to sentence them to a slow death.

It's no surprise that, in the eyes of many, the awarding of the prize to a Russian journalist – and on the day after the anniversary of Politkovskaya's murder – is seen as a sign of protest against the Kremlin and a sign of support for the free media in the country.

The Novaya is also seen as a candidate for the blacklist, but it seemingly has two factors in its defense – the fact that six of its journalists were murdered for doing their job, and now its editor-in-chief boasts a Nobel Prize. Still, earlier this week, the Russian president noted that while Muratov was not considered a foreign agent, no achievement will help him escape said definition if he broke the law.

Muratov himself jokes that, if they are required to carry the fictitious "Mark of Cain" of "foreign agent" and attach the disclaimer required by the law to the newspaper's articles, he will be happy to add the words "Nobel Prize Laureate" to the official formulation of "This material is presented by a foreign agent."

"We will use the prize to fight on behalf of the Russian media, who they are trying to suppress. We will try to help people who have become 'foreign agents,' and are being persecuted and expelled from the country."

Q: You said that a portion of the prize money will be used to support persecuted journalists.

"Yes, we discussed this in the editorial meeting," Muratov says. "We've divided up the money that we haven't received yet. In relation to our colleagues who are being illegally censored and illegally persecuted, there will be two things. One of them is still a secret. The other is that the money from the prize will increase the amount that will be given to winners of the Politkovskaya Prize. This prize is awarded to a journalist chosen by the prize committee."

Q: How do you explain the increased pressure on Russian journalists? The number of "foreign agents" has tripled in the last year.

"I have an unpopular theory. The issue is this: In our parliament we don't have legislators who represent people with different positions about the future of the country. And people like that, with a different point of view, number 10-15 million, maybe 20 million. It's the minority. Because there are no legislators to represent this minority, the independent media will represent them.

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"The small and independent media, which increased, expressed different positions. But because the authorities stopped cooperating with this minority, they tried to liquidate their independent media, so that the positions of the representatives of this minority won't be expressed in public."

Q: One of your colleagues recently said: "In Russia, journalism that doesn't defend human rights is not journalism at all."

"I support her, of course. You have to understand, the controversy over whether journalism is just observation or an intervention in life has continued for over 100 years. We are totally convinced that journalism is intervention in life. That before taking a picture of an injured child you dress his wounds. That's our position."

Q: So a journalist in Russia is more than a journalist? He's a public figure?

"I don't know; I don't like the expression 'public figure.' Simply put, the journalist has to change the world for the better. And for the sake of this he needs not only to write but also to change the world. It's true, it contradicts objectivity, it contradicts the perspective of the observant journalist. But I can tell you that this newspaper participates in events and we will help sick children with serious illnesses, and we will demand that people who poisoned the Arctic Ocean will pay a fine."

Q: What's does "for the better" mean? How do you decide what issues will improve the world and what to be involved in?

"Everything that's connected to human rights, the rights of human beings to live, to breathe clean air, for pure water, for the same living conditions that we call human – that's the whole criterion."

The humanistic approach has been a part of the newspaper since its founding and it isn't coincidental that most of its staff also work in the area of defending basic human rights, that are so easily trampled on in Russia. But from Muratov's perspective, this approach has another clear anchor. "It's the humanistic tradition of Russian literature. For example, in his travel diary to the island of Sakhalin, Chekhov writes that he isn't merely conducting a survey of the population but he is also a nobleman who aids those who toil in backbreaking labor. That's us. That's our story."

Q: Do you see yourselves as continuing in the tradition of Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy?

"Yes, that's the line and essentially even more than that: we share a common field. Look, until now we have placed – and maybe we are outdated in this regard…do you remember what the title was of the Nobel Prize speech given by Andrei Sakharov? 'Peace, progress and human rights.' That was the main thesis of the speech. Progress and human rights. There is a point of view that thinks it is possible to have progress without protecting human rights, and that's the totalitarian version, while we think that progress and human rights cannot be disentangled."

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A Saudi court sentenced a Sudanese journalist to four years in prison for social media posts critical of the kingdom, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

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Ahmed Ali Abdelkader, a 31-year-old media personality and journalist, was jailed for "insulting the state's institutions and symbols," "negatively speaking about the kingdom's policy ... and speaking on (media platforms loyal to parties hostile to the kingdom) in a way that is harmful to the kingdom," among other charges.

The charges are linked to tweets and media interviews he shared on Twitter in which he criticized Saudi actions in Sudan and Yemen and expressed support for Sudan's 2018-2019 revolution.

"This and other similar prosecutions demonstrate just how determined Saudi authorities are to stamp out even the most minor criticism or questioning on social media and deter all dissent under threat of long prison sentences," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

The Saudi government media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Abdelkader was arrested at Jeddah airport on April 19 and held at a police station for 20 days before his transfer to al-Shumaisi detention center near Mecca, HRW said. He was interrogated twice during his detention and accused of behavior on Twitter that was harmful to Saudi Arabia, HRW said, citing a source.

He was denied access to a lawyer, including legal representation at trial, HRW said, which consisted of two short sessions in which Abdelkader was not allowed to defend himself.

Abdelkader, who lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for five years between 2015 and 2020, was convicted by a Jeddah criminal court for tweets and statements to the media during and after February 2018, most of which were posted while he was in Saudi Arabia. Emails to international human rights groups, in which he inquired about membership, were also cited in the conviction.

Human Rights Watch reviewed the content of the social media postings cited in the conviction and "determined that none of them incited violence, hatred or discrimination". Several tweets referred to Saudi relations with Sudan, including one in July 2018 in which Abdelkader accused Saudi media of targeting Sudan and Saudi Arabia of financing ISIS.

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A prominent Lebanese Shiite publisher who criticized Hezbollah was shot dead in a car in southern Lebanon on Thursday, the first such killing of a high-profile activist in years.

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A judge said the body of Lokman Slim had four bullets in the head and one in the back. A security source said his phone was found on the side of a road.

They said the motive was unclear.

Slim, who was in his late 50s, ran a research center, made documentaries with his wife and led efforts to build an archive on Lebanon's 1975-1990 sectarian civil war.

He spoke against what he described as the Iranian-backed, Shiite Hezbollah's intimidation tactics and attempts to monopolize Lebanese politics.

His sister suggested Slim had been murdered because of this. He was last seen after visiting a poet friend. His wife said he had gone missing overnight.

Hezbollah said it condemned the killing, which Lebanese officials, including the president, called an assassination.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken termed it a "heinous assassination" and called for Slim's killers to be brought swiftly to justice.

"It is cowardly and unacceptable to resort to violence, threats, and intimidation as a means of subverting the rule of law or suppressing freedom of expression and civic activism," Blinken said in a statement.

Human rights groups, the United Nations and other Western diplomats all demanded an investigation. "We deplore the prevailing culture of impunity," EU ambassador Ralph Tarraf tweeted.

A Lebanese press freedom center, SKeyes, said it feared a cover-up of the crime and more attempts to eliminate "symbols of free political thought."

The center was founded after a car bomb killed journalist Samir Kassir in 2005, at a time when a series of assassinations hit Lebanon targeting critics of Syria's 15-year domination.

At Slim's family home in Beirut's southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway, relatives sat in shock. Some wept in silence. One relative said they had found out about his death from a news alert while at a police station.

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"What a big loss. And they lost a noble enemy too ... It's rare for someone to argue with them and live among them with respect," his sister Rasha told reporters, without naming Hezbollah.

She said he had not mentioned any threats. "Killing is the only language they are fluent in," she added. "I don't know how we will go on with our work ... It will be hard."

In an interview last month on Saudi Arabia's al-Hadath TV, Slim said he believed Damascus and its ally Hezbollah had a role in the port blast that ripped through Beirut in August, killing 200 people and wounding thousands.

Hezbollah has denied any links to the explosion.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun, a political ally of Hezbollah, said he had ordered an investigation into Thursday's crime, which came exactly six month since the port blast. The official investigation into the explosion has yet to yield results.

Former premier Saad al-Hariri, whose father's assassination sparked regional turmoil in 2005, said Slim had been clearer than most in identifying the source of danger to the nation.

Slim's criticism of Hezbollah faced rebuke from its supporters, who called him "an embassy Shiite," accusing him of being a tool of the United States.

"His murder is a very big loss for Lebanon, for culture," said Hazem Saghieh, a well-known Lebanese journalist. "He was one of a few who only knew how to speak his mind."

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Former US President Donald Trump's hand-picked chief of US international broadcasting has quit amid a burgeoning staff revolt and growing calls for his resignation.

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Michael Pack resigned as the chief executive office of the US Agency for Global Media just minutes after President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. The agency runs the Voice of America and sister networks.

Pack had created a furor when he took over the agency last year and fired the boards of all the outlets under his control along with the leadership of the individual broadcast networks. The actions were criticized as threatening the broadcasters' prized editorial independence.

Biden had been expected to make major changes to the agency's structure and management but Pack's early departure signaled those may be coming sooner rather than later. Though many presidential appointees resign when a new administration comes in, Pack was not required to do so. His three-year position was created by Congress is not limited by the length of a particular administration.

In resigning, Pack cited the incoming administration's desire for new leadership at the agency. Shortly after his departure the Biden White House announced that a veteran VOA journalist, Kelu Chao, would helm USAGM in on an interim basis.

"I serve at the pleasure of not one particular president, but the office of the president itself," Pack said in a resignation letter sent to staffers. "The new administration has requested my resignation, and that is why I have tendered it as of 2 p.m. today."

The letter said that "a great amount of much-needed reform was achieved in the past eight months, some of this work is outlined in a series of recently-released agency statements." Yet those statements were seen by many, including Republican and Democratic lawmakers and a significant number of employees, as being antithetical to the agency's mandate to provide international audiences with unbiased, uncensored and nonpolitical information.

VOA was founded during World War II and its congressional charter requires it to present independent news and information to international audiences.

Pack is a conservative filmmaker and former associate of Trump's onetime political strategist Steve Bannon. Pack's moves raised fears that he intended to turn venerable US media outlets into pro-Trump propaganda machines. His actions had done little to dissuade those concerns and had attracted a large amount of criticism from supporters of the agency's mission.

Indeed, just on Tuesday he appointed new conservative members to the boards of Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.

Only last week, Pack attracted new criticism when one his top aides demoted a VOA White House reporter after she asked a question of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. That reassignment prompted a new round of criticism and demands for VOA chief Robert Reilly to resign. In addition to Republican criticism, the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez. D-NJ, demanded changes in leadership.

Biden's team had made clear it was not pleased with Pack's record on the job and had sent numerous signals that he should go.

Pack's appointments to specific networks and boards of directors may be more difficult for the Biden administration to rescind without congressional action. Some appointees now enjoy federal employment protections.

Transition officials said last week they were looking into ways that legislation could be amended or replaced to make dismissals of certain personnel easier.

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A Chinese court on Monday handed down a four-year jail term to a citizen-journalist who reported from the central city of Wuhan at the peak of this year's coronavirus outbreak on the grounds of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble," her lawyer said.

Zhang Zhan, 37, the first such person known to have been tried, was among a handful of people whose firsthand accounts from crowded hospitals and empty streets painted a more dire picture of the pandemic epicenter than the official narrative.

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"I don't understand. All she did was say a few true words, and for that she got four years," said Shao Wenxia, Zhang's mother, who attended the trial with her husband.

Zhang's lawyer Ren Quanniu told Reuters: "We will probably appeal."

The trial was held at a court in Pudong, a district of the business hub of Shanghai.

"Ms. Zhang believes she is being persecuted for exercising her freedom of speech," Ren had said before the trial.

Critics say that China deliberately arranged for Zhang's trial to take place during the Western holiday season to minimize Western attention and scrutiny. US President Donald Trump has regularly criticized Beijing for covering up the emergence of what he calls the "China virus."

The United Nations human rights office called in a tweet for Zhang's release.

"We raised her case with the authorities throughout 2020 as an example of the excessive clampdown on freedom of expression linked to #COVID19 & continue to call for her release," it said.

Criticism of China's early handling of the crisis has been censored, and whistle-blowers such as doctors warned. State media have credited the country's success in reining in the virus to the leadership of President Xi Jinping.

The virus has spread worldwide to infect more than 80 million people and kill more than 1.76 million, paralyzing air travel as nations threw up barriers that have disrupted industries and livelihoods.

In Shanghai, police enforced tight security outside the court where the trial opened seven months after Zhang's detention, although some supporters were undeterred.

A man in a wheelchair, who told Reuters he came from the central province of Henan to demonstrate support for Zhang as a fellow Christian, wrote her name on a poster before police escorted him away.

Foreign journalists were denied entry to the court "due to the epidemic," court security officials said.

A former lawyer, Zhang arrived in Wuhan on Feb. 1 from her home in Shanghai.

Her short video clips uploaded to YouTube consist of interviews with residents, commentary and footage of a crematorium, train stations, hospitals and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Detained in mid-May, she went on hunger strike in late June, court documents seen by Reuters say. Her lawyers told the court that police strapped her hands and force-fed her with a tube. By December, she was suffering headaches, giddiness, stomach ache, low blood pressure and a throat infection.

Requests to the court to release Zhang on bail before the trial and livestream the trial were ignored, her lawyer said.

Other citizen-journalists who have disappeared in China without explanation include Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi and Li Zehua.

While there has been no news of Fang, Li re-emerged in a YouTube video in April to say he was forcibly quarantined, while Chen, although released, is under surveillance and has not spoken publicly, a friend has said.

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According to National Press Club President Michael Freedman and president of the National Press Club Journalism Institute Angela Greiling, the Department of Justice's decision "effectively says that the US government views Al Jazeera to be a propaganda arm of the Qatari government rather than the independent news organization that journalists all over the world know it to be."

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The statement from Freedman and Greiling points out that "FARA was developed during World War II to block Nazi propaganda from influencing Americans," and requires designated foreign entities to reveal their sources of funding and to file regular public disclosures about their activity.

"The classification of Al Jazeera under FARA seems wholly political. The Trump Administration has close ties to UAE and Saudi Arabia even as the United States shares long-term strategic interests with Qatar exemplified by the Air Force's reliance on the large air base at Al Udeid," the statement argues.

Freedman and Greiling's statement also calls the timing of the DOJ order, which was issued a day before the United Arab Emirates signed a peace agreement with Israel, "of note," and points out that the UAE has made it "one of its priorities" to "undercut Al Jazeera's journalism since it worked with Saudi Arabia in 2017 to impose a blockade on Qatar, which provide state funding to the news organization."

"We can only conclude that the Trump Administration is buckling to the demands of the UAE, which wants to suppress independent news gathering in the region – reporting that can expose the systemic inequality, corruption and incompetence of many of the region's rulers.

"While the Qatari government funds Al Jazeera, it does not control the network's editorial decisions," Freedman and Greiling said.

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The weekly magazine Seda was handed a suspension order Saturday by a court in Tehran, the reformist newspaper Arman reported.

Seda's most recent front page had shown a U.S. aircraft carrier fleet and the caption "At the crossroads between war and peace."

The magazine called for "high-level engagement" between the U.S. and Iran, warning that closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz, an occasional Iranian threat, would lead to "widespread war."

A third of all oil traded by sea passes through the strait, which lies at the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Recent U.S. military deployments to the Persian Gulf, including an aircraft carrier strike group, have raised tensions with Iran. Tehran has also begun setting its own deadlines over its unraveling nuclear deal that President Donald Trump pulled America out of a year ago.

The hard-line Iranian newspaper Kayhan criticized Seda's reporting as parroting the "voice of Trump through the mouths of reformists."

Also Sunday, Iran's parliament held a closed session to discuss recent developments in the Persian Gulf, state TV reported. The head of the elite Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, spoke about the increased U.S. military presence, but the broadcast did not give specific details.

After the session, a prominent lawmaker said Salami had assured parliament that Iran's military is strong enough to deter any U.S. threats, which Salami called "psychological warfare."

Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, who heads the influential parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, told the official IRNA news agency that Iran isn't looking to deepen the crisis. He said the U.S. position will weaken with time, and that there are currently no grounds for negotiations with Washington.

On Friday, Iran rejected a request by Trump for talks, after the president said he'd like Iranian leaders to "call me."

John Bolton, Trump's hawkish national security adviser, announced the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and its strike group on May 5 over "troubling and escalatory indications and warnings" that still have not been specified. Iran's Shiite theocracy views the presence of U.S. forces ringing its country with suspicion.

The U.S. reimposed sanctions on Iran in November after pulling out of the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

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