Jordan: End Closure, Harassment of Opposition Political Parties

(Washington D.C., June 6, 2024): The Jordanian government should end its campaign to quash political opposition in the country by banning political parties and detaining, harassing and intimidating members of opposition parties, said DAWN today. 

A few months ahead of the 2024 parliamentary election, Jordanian courts have upheld the government's dissolution of 19 political parties, under the 2022 Political Parties Law, almost half of the country's political parties, under the guise of failed compliance with continuously changing administrative rules, while the government has shut down one party's media production studio, prosecuted party leaders for criticizing the government, and imprisoned some even after the completion of their sentences. 

"Jordanian authorities should end their efforts to hollow out the country's civic space by creating ever-shifting goalposts for compliance under the country's onerous, new  political parties law," said DAWN's Executive Director, Sarah Leah Whitson. "Allowing bureaucrats to arbitrarily shut down political parties is a deliberate strategy to preclude democratization in the country, depriving Jordanians of their political rights and heightening political polarization."      

Jordan is an absolute monarchy and all of the cabinet and the upper house of parliament are appointed by the King. However, the House of Representatives, the Jordanian parliament's lower body, has certain, limited legislative powers, subject to the King's approval. Prior to the current wave of party dissolutions, there were 45 political parties in the country competing for seats in the house of representatives representing a diverse range of political orientations; as of today, only 26 parties remain. No party, and no coalition of parties, has a majority in parliament. Some parties describe themselves as "opposition parties," meaning they are critical of the King's policies. 

The government passed the 2022 Political Parties Law, the fifth such law in 30 years. It gives the government unilateral power to dissolve parties under the guise of failed compliance with the law's continuously changing administrative rules. It creates onerous, arbitrary requirements on parties, demanding, for example, that any party have a minimum of one thousand founders, distributed over six counties, with at least 30 people from every county, 20% between 18-35 years old, 20% women, and one person with special needs. Paragraph B of Article 11 says that any dissolved party can continue operating as a party in preparation for registration and reapply for a license after six months of its dissolution. 

Although Article 4 of the law explicitly prohibits any person or entity from pressuring or compromising the constitutional and legal rights of any Jordanian who belongs to a political party, government officials have pressured party members to resign or face retaliation, as described below. The law imposes harsh prison sentences for groups that act as political parties outside the law. 

Closure of Political Parties

The government has moved quickly since passage of the law to dissolve a large number of the country's political parties. On May 16, 2023, the board of commissioners of the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), which regulates the country's political parties and organizes its parliamentary elections, announced the dissolution of 19 political parties, including the Partnership and Salvation Party, United Jordanian Front Party, and Modernity and Change party. The IEC, headed by Musa Ma'aytah, a former government minister, justified its decision by stating that the banned parties failed to comply with Article 11 of the law's convoluted, administrative rules. Although the law does not give the IEC power to dissolve any party, instead requiring it to seek an order from the Court of First Instance (Article 35), the IEC acted unilaterally without such a court order to dissolve previously licensed parties.

DAWN investigated the dissolution of several parties, reviewed court documents, and interviewed party members and their lawyers and family members who have faced harassment, threats, intimidation and prosecution by the government.

"Jordan's new political parties law is designed to give the government petty, administrative excuses, like requiring a party to have members from at least six counties in the country, to shut down political parties, which is exactly what the electoral commission has used it to do," said Jamal Al Tahat, DAWN's senior advisor. "There is no justification for conditioning the ability of the country's political parties to compete in elections on these arbitrary rules, instead of allowing voters to decide according to each party's political platform."

Among the parties dissolved by the government is the Partnership and Salvation Party (PSP), a moderate opposition party that was originally licensed on December 27, 2017, and whose members include a wide spectrum of civil society, including retired officers and former government ministers. The late Mohamad Al Hamoury, law professor, was its first Secretary General, and was succeeded by Salem Al Falahat, a former Inspector General of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood. The IEC justified dissolving the PSP because it has only 809 registered members, while the law requires a party to have a minimum of 1,000 members. The IEC also noted that the party had less than the required 20% youth membership and 20% founding women members.

According to one party official who spoke to DAWN on May 15, 2024, 50 members of the PSP tendered their resignation from the party last year, telling him that officers of the General Intelligence Department, the country's domestic intelligence agency, had summoned them between January and April 2023 and intimidated them into resigning their party membership by threatening them with loss of their or their family members' employment, or with vague, negative repercussions of harsh treatment at the hands of the authorities. 

Despite the King's frequent pledges not to harass or pressure any citizen active in a political party, Lo'ay Obaidat, a lawyer representing the PSP, told DAWN on May 28, that "the Jordanian security apparatus – including the General Intelligence Department, Preventive Security in the Public Security Directorate, and the Military Intelligence – have exerted exceptional pressure on hundreds of party members to force them to resign from the party since the the party was established in 2017." 

The PSP appealed the IEC's decision to the Administrative Court of First Instance on June 25, 2023. On January 22, 2024, the court upheld the IEC  decision, rejecting the party's appeal. The PSP appealed again, this time to the Supreme Administrative Court, on February 20, 2024, but this court also refused the appeal on April 16, 2024. The government previously had tried to dissolve the party in 2021, also citing administrative compliance problems; party members believe that this effort was in retaliation for the party's support for, and hosting a meeting with, the Teacher's Syndicate, which the government also shut down in 2020.  

Another of the dissolved parties is the United Jordanian Front Party (UJFP), which was previously licensed in September 2007. It is a centrist party whose first secretary general was formerly a minister and member of the parliament, Amjad Al Majali. The party learned of its dissolution from the May 16, 2023 IEC announcement, stating that the founding conference failed to include in attendance a majority of the founding party members, another arbitrary requirement.  

Farouq Al Abadi, the current Secretary General of the UJFP, told DAWN on May 16 that the party appealed its dissolution to the Administrative Court of First Instance in June 2023, which refused the appeal on October 16, 2023. The UJFP appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court on November 9, 2023,  which also rejected the appeal on December 26, 2023. DAWN reviewed the court's decision, which affirmed the EIC's power to dissolve parties, and cited the UJFP's failure to have a majority of the founding members in attendance at the founding conference.

"The court's refusal to overturn this ban on political parties is a dangerous precedent that gives the IEC – an unaccountable, unelected body – far too much authority to dissolve political parties," said Al Abadi, UFJP's head. 

The Modernity and Change Party (MCP), a pro-monarchy party originally licensed on April 17, 2017, and headed by Dr. Nayf Abed Al Jalil Al Hamaideh, is another of the 19 dissolved parties. A member of the MCP told DAWN that his party had submitted its documentation to the IEC on April 27, 2023, verifying that the party had met all of the administrative conditions for registration. DAWN reviewed a copy of this documentation, which showed the party had satisfied all required conditions of the law. However, the IEC  added a new condition, not mentioned anywhere in the law, ordering the party to hold its founding conference in Amman.

The party refused to comply with this new condition and held its founding conference in Karak, Jordan. It appealed its closure before the Administrative Court of First Instance on June 14, 2023. The court upheld the EIC decision on October 16, 2023, which was later affirmed by the Administrative Supreme Court on December 26, 2023. 

Six parties refused to apply for registration under the new Political Parties Law, including the National Unity, National Reform Current, Progressive Arab Ba'ath, Jordan Ahrar, Democratic Nature, and the Call Parties. In addition, some are organizing political groups that are not operating as political parties under the law. Former Labor Minister and former UFJP head Amjad Al Majali, who now chairs the "National Follow up Committee" (NFC), an informal political gathering established on October 6, 2018, told DAWN on May 16, 2024 that the NFC will not apply for a political parties license, because he was "not convinced of the usefulness" of the political parties' law and the elections' law.

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Marwan Al Muasher who currently serves as vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, worked to organize a party in Jordan in 2016, called the Civil Alliance party, but left in 2019, in part because of "clear intervention by the authorities, which prevented the party from growing naturally and organically. He told DAWN on June 2, 2024, "the problem is not in the law, but how the government applies it." He added, "the government should leave political parties to grow naturally and organically without continuous attempts to engineer them." 

Censorship, Intimidation, Arrests, and Imprisonment of Party Members

The government also has resorted to harassment and intimidation of political party members, and censorship of their media outlets, in order to quash independent, organized criticism of the government's policies in the country and curb their support among the public ahead of the upcoming elections this year.

In one particularly shocking incident, on May 7, 2024, more than fifty police personnel raided Al Yarmouk TV station, a media outlet established in 2012 by the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated political party, the Islamic Action Front. The police ordered the station's closure and confiscated its computers and televisions, according to the general director of the station, Khidher Al Mashaykh. He told DAWN on May 20 that the raid followed a complaint by the Jordanian Media Commission on May 5 to the Amman Prosecutor, Rami Al Tarawneh, that the station was broadcasting without a license. Al Mashaykh said that Prosecutor Al Tarawneh charged Al Yarmouk TV with violating the 2015 Audio-Video Law and referred the case to the Amman Court of First Instance for a hearing on May 20, 2024. Bassam Fraihat, the station's lawyer, told DAWN that Prosecutor Al Tarawneh also told him on May 9 that he did not order the station's closure, but the court nevertheless confirmed the closure during a May 20 hearing.

Al Mashaikh told DAWN that the station is licensed under Audio-Video Law, but only to produce and prepare content. He said that the station does not actually broadcast from Jordan and has no capacity or equipment to do so. Instead, it receives content from affiliates in Gaza, including Hamas-tied Al Aqsa Channel, and sends the content it produces to a sister company that broadcasts from Kuwait. 

According to the station's lawyer, Bassam Fraihat, Al Yarmouk had previously applied for a broadcast license in 2013, and again in 2014. Fraihat said that Wael Al Saqa, the former Chairman of the Al Yarmouk's Board, told him in 2014 that then prime minister Abdullah Nsour and media minister Mohmad Hussain Al Momany told him that the ministry had approved the application but needed final approval from the cabinet, but the cabinet never approved it.

Al Mashaikh and Fraihat believe that the decision to shut down the station is political, as the Jordanian government is trying to stifle media coverage of the Gaza war, which the station prepares content about based on footage it receives from the war there.  

A former minister who spoke to DAWN on condition of anonymity explained on May 18, 2024 that the government is deliberately using the law and the judiciary in these cases as a cudgel to curtail political parties in the country. Banned parties and stations have no meaningful opportunity to challenge their closure because courts rubber stamp the decisions of prosecutors and the election commission. 

Jordanian authorities have also detained at least two members of PSP, charging them with violating the Cybercrime Law. The PSP's Secretary Ayman Sandouqah, a mathematics teacher and also member of the Teachers Syndicate, has been in detention at Tafielah prison since December 17, 2023. Lawyer Mohamad Al Majali was detained for three days, from April 22 to April 25, 2024, but released on bail while his case is pending.

On December 17, 2023, Thaer Nassar, an Amman prosecutor, charged Sandouqah  with "defaming an official body" under articles 15 and 17 of the Cybercrime Law because he criticized Jordan's cooperation with Israel. On January 24, 2024, the Amman Criminal Magistrate Court sentenced Sandouqah to three months in prison. On March 26, 2024, Amnesty International sent a letter to King Abdullah II calling for Sandouqah's immediate release.   

In a second related case, on December 21, 2023, Major Mohamad Obadah, the prosecutor of the State Security Court, the military court that hears cases about a wide range of security and terrorism cases, also summoned Sandouqah and issued a second detention order, apparently in response to a letter to King Abdullah II he published on Facebook in October 2023 criticizing Jordan's diplomatic relations with Israel. On February 12, 2024, Prosecutor Obadah added additional, more dangerous charges against Sandouqah, including "undermining the political regime or inciting opposition to it," under Article 149 of the Penal Code, a vague provision that broadly criminalizes speech critical of the government and has been used to jail and try dozens of peaceful political activists. Sandouqah remains detained under the detention order tied to this case. 

On April 22, 2024, Prosecutor Nassar detained another member of the party, Mohamad Al Majali, a lawyer, and charged him with "inciting strife" and "defaming an official body" under Articles 15 and 17 of the Cybercrime Law, which include punishments of up to three years imprisonment and financial fines of up to $28,000. Al Majali, who was released on bail on April 25, 2024. The Amman Magistrate Court sentenced Al Majali on June 5, 2024, with the minimum fine of $7,000. 

Obaidat explained that party members facing harassment and intimidation have few judicial remedies. Citizens can only file complaints against security officers before special courts, instead of going to the police. Intelligence officers keep their identities secret when threatening citizens, so it's very hard to identify them in order to file a case against them. Victims of these government threats are also terrified from initiating litigation, particularly because security officers direct their threats not only against party members but their family members as well, including some who may have jobs with the military or government.  Often, intelligence officials direct their threats to a relative of a party member, who then urges the party member to resign from the party, which, in many cases, instigates family disputes.      

Recommendations

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, people and political parties have rights to freedom of association, and to take part in public affairs, including through political parties. Governments are prohibited from imposing any conditions on the formation and operation of political parties that are not objective, reasonable and narrowly construed for the purposes of security and maintaining order.  

Jordan should amend its Political Parties Law to remove arbitrary restrictions on political parties, such as rules requiring quotas for membership and participation, or minimum numbers of members, to qualify as parties. The IEC should suspend any dissolution of parties based on the arbitrary provisions of Article 11 of the Political Parties Law until the law is amended, and should seek approval from a Court of First Instance before moving to dissolve any political party.

Jordan's security and intelligence authorities should end their harassment and threats against political party members to pressure them to cease their political activities. Most importantly, Jordan's prosecutors should dismiss their charges and end their suits against party officials for protected free speech and end entirely any prosecution of civilians in military courts such as the State Security Court. 

The Jordanian government immediately should release Mr. Sandouqah from detention, and should restore the operating license of Yarmouk Station.

 The United States should end its political and military support to Jordan in light of the government's persistent abuse of human rights of Jordanian citizens and refusal to grant their right to choose their form of government.

LIST OF BANNED PARTIES:

The nineteen dissolved parties.