A an oppressive censorship bill has been tabled in the Kenyan parliament targeting social media group admins and bloggers.
MP Malulu Injendi has tabled The Kenya Information and Communication (Amendment) Bill 2019 which specifically targets
group admins, who will be used to police the kind of content shared in their groups.
The Bill defines social media platforms to include online publishing and discussion, media sharing, blogging, social networking, document and data sharing
repositories, social media applications, social bookmarking and widgets. The bill reads;
The new part will introduce new sections to the Act on licensing of social media platforms, sharing of information by a licensed person, creates obligations
to social media users, registration of bloggers and seeks to give responsibility to the Kenyan Communications Authority (CA) to develop a bloggers' code of conduct in consultation with bloggers.
The Communications Authority will
maintain a registry of all bloggers and develop censorship rules for bloggers.
The proposed bill means that all group admins on any social platform will be required to get authorisation from CA before they can open such groups. The bill also
states that admins should monitor content shared in their groups and remove any member that posts inappropriate content. The admins are also required to ensure all their members are over 18 years old. Group admins will also be required to have a physical
address and keep a record of the group members.
A teacher in Kuwait has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for tweets that insulted the country's ruler and encouraged his overthrow.
Huda al-Ajmi received the longest known sentence for online dissent in the Gulf state, according to Kuwaiti
opposition groups.
She reportedly faced three separate charges that included insulting the Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, which carries a one-year sentence in itself. The other two five-year prison terms were given for inciting rebellion
against the regime and violating laws on public discussions.
Kuwait has not seen the same scale of pro-democracy uprisings as other Arab states but dozens of people across the Gulf region have been sentenced to jail for Twitter and blog posts in
the past year.
Ms al-Ajmi will be able to appeal her three sentences.
A Kuwaiti court has sentenced an online journalist to prison for supposedly insulting the ruling family on social media, according to news reports. Ayyad al-Harbi was ordered to begin serving the two-year jail sentence immediately, news reports said.
Police arrested al-Harbi on November 13 in connection with a series of posts he made to his personal Twitter account, starting in October, in which he criticized the government and called on authorities to stop oppressing Kuwaiti citizens, according
to news reports.
Al-Harbi's lawyer, Mohammed al-Humidi, said the journalist would be appealing, according to news reports.
Al-Harbi wrote opinion pieces for Sabr, a Kuwait-based independent website that publishes news and commentary. He
wrote extensively about local issues including corruption and freedom of speech in the run-up to the December parliament election. He has also written articles that have called on the Shia minority to revolt against corruption and criticized the
government in connection with their attitudes on freedom of speech and women's rights.
Al-Harbi wrote a post on Twitter on January 6, accusing the government of corruption. The same day, he posted a prediction on Twitter, in which he said he would
be indicted in the coming days for insulting the Alsabah ruling family, the same fate met by Kuwaiti opposition activist Rashed al-Anzi, who had been convicted on the same charge the day before.
CPJ is alarmed by the prison sentence handed to
Kuwaiti journalist Ayyad al-Harbi, said Middle East and North Africa Coordinator Sherif Mansour. We urge the Kuwaiti appellate court to reverse this conviction and uphold the nation's commitment to freedom of expression.
A an oppressive censorship bill has been tabled in the Kenyan parliament targeting social media group admins and bloggers. 
A teacher in Kuwait has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for tweets that insulted the country's ruler and encouraged his overthrow. 