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Ten months in a tiny prison cell with padded walls and flickering lights have done little to alter 26 year-old Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil’s views on the military government running Egypt in the transitional phase. Instead, his confinement appears to have only strengthened his resolve to continue the fight against what he describes as a “corrupt regime” that he hopes, will soon be toppled.

Maikel was released on 24January after the military rulers announced they would pardon 1959 political detainees (who had faced military tribunals) ahead of the first anniversary of the 25 January Revolution. The move was seen by skeptics as an attempt to appease a public that has grown increasingly weary of heavy handed military rule. Maikel had been charged with allegedly “spreading rumours about the army and insulting the military establishment” but insists these were “trumped up charges” to punish him for publicly criticising the military in his blog posts.

Leading a protest through the streets of downtown Cairo on Saturday, Maikel chanted anti-military slogans and beckoned to fellow Egyptians on the street to join the rally. “Are you not Egyptian?” he cried. “Have your rights not been violated?” Scores of young activists — many of whom had themselves been subjected to torture and abuse at the hands of security forces — chanted after him. Their cries of “Down with military rule!” and “Yes, we dare to chant against the military” were met with nods of approval from pedestrians and commuters, some of whom signaled a thumbs up in agreement.

Earlier in a press conference at the Journalists’ Syndicate, Maikel shocked journalists with a graphic account of his jail experience. He recalled having endured verbal abuse and mockery by prison guards and interrogators, being forced to watch fellow convicts being tortured and having had chemicals sprayed up his nose and drugs infused in his meals in attempts to manipulate his thinking. Maikel was then transferred to El- Abbasiya Mental Health Hospital for checks on his sanity. Doctors had resisted pressure from authorities to declare him psychologically unstable for refusing to stand trial, he said.

Samira Ibrahim, a protester who had been detained and subjected to a forced virginity test on the 9 March for camping out in Tahrir Square joined Maikel’s march from the Journalists’ Syndicate to Tahrir Square. She challenged the military council, filing a lawsuit against military rulers for humiliating checks performed on 17 female protesters by a male doctor in the Cairo Museum grounds. She lamented that despite a ruling by a Cairo Adminstrative Court in December declaring an end to the practice, “attempts are underway to change the charge from rape to indecent assault.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Egyptians took to the streets Saturday to commemorate the “Friday of Rage” — the worst day of violence in last year’s mass uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak. The biggest rally was held on Kasr El Nil Bridge, scene of last year’s bloody clashes between security forces and pro-democracy activists.The protesters demanded justice for the victims and their families, vowing to continue the revolution until their demands are met.

Joining the Kasr el Nil protest, Maikel warned the revolutionaries that their struggle against the military dictatorship must continue “lest the revolution be aborted and they all end up behind bars.” He and the other activists pledged they will not rest until the military returns to the barracks, handing over power to a civilian government.

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The article, entitled “Is Tantawi reading the public pulse correctly?”, said that Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who leads Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), could share the same fate as former president Hosni Mubarak and find himself in jail as a result of popular discontent with his management of the revolution’s transition process.

“Many in the military resent the reputation of their institution being abused by the Field Marshal and his 19 colleagues on the SCAF … the present rumblings of discontent among junior officers, Chief of Staff General Sami Anan’s greater popularity than the Field Marshal in the military and among Egyptians as a whole, and intensified pressure from the US could all result in the Field Marshal sharing President Mubarak’s fate,” Dr Springborg wrote in the
original version of the article.

Dr Springborg concluded by saying that “discontented officers not in the SCAF might decide that a coup within the coup would be the best way to save the honour of the country and their institution.”

This open critique of the military and implications of rumblings within army ranks crossed a major red line in Egypt’s press freedom: criticism of the military.

After the opinion piece was censored and toned down, the distribution of 20,000 copies of Egypt Independent’s second issue, due to come out on 1 December, was still prevented.

Egypt Independent was the new name adopted for Al-Masry Al-Youm’s English language edition, which has existed online for two years. Its management is affiliated with the privately-owned Arabic language daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, a widely read and popular newspaper in Egypt.

The printed version has been put on hold for now. But, the life of its daily online version, Al- Masry Al-Youm English, continues.

Press freedom under SCAF

The whole experience has brought to the fore the fact that overt criticism of the military remains a red line with serious consequences that few are willing to cross.

Magdi El-Galad presumably has close ties with the military as he was recently offered, though turned down, the position of information minister in the cabinet of SCAF-appointed Prime Minister Kamal El-Ganzouri.

An old-fashioned mentality also remains about the power of the printed press versus its online counterpart. Some think that had Dr. Springborg’s piece been published online, it may not have been censored.

This is ironic given the fact that the internet, especially Facebook and Twitter, played important roles in initiating the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt last winter, and continue to be essential information-sharing tools.

But it was a newspaper article published in the Arabic-language daily, Al-Shorouk, written by activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah that landed him in jail in October.

He wrote about the death of activist Mina Daniel during the army’s attack on peaceful Coptic protestors at Maspero, an area of Cairo known for housing the state television building. This left at least 29 people dead.

Alaa remains in a military jail, alongside blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad, whose critical writings of the military also led to his imprisonment. He has been on a hunger strike for over 100 days.

Dina Abdel Rahman, a television presenter on the privately-owned Dream TV, was also fired in July for reporting on a newspaper article, which was critical of the SCAF.

Dina’s incident, as well as that of Egypt Independent, raise fears among journalists, and those concerned with freedom of the press that while under Mubarak it was mainly the state that intervened to curb criticism in the press, now the owners of private media, supposedly the freest in Egypt, and editors themselves are practicing self-censorship at the behest of the military.

But “self-censorship has always existed”, Naila Hamdy, assistant professor at the American University in Cairo’s department of journalism, told Index. “There were a couple of months of real freedom after 25 January, and although some may have reverted back to self-censorship, journalists are still bolder than they were before the revolution.”

She added: “Media professionals might hold back, because they decide it is better than getting shut down completely. It might be better to push the envelope slightly, than with no publication at all.”

And, how far the envelope can continue to be pushed depends on the success of the transition process from military to civilian rule, a process underway as Egypt conducts parliamentary elections.

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