2 Nov 2011 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
Prolific Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah was detained on Sunday after refusing to be interrogated by a military investigator, insisting on his right to be tried before a civil court. Rasha Abdulla reports
Egyptian blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah (@alaa) was jailed on 30 October for 15 days pending investigation after refusing to be interrogated by a military investigator on charges related to the now infamous Maspiro events, in which over 20 people died and many more were injured after a brutal crackdown on a Christian-majority demonstration.
Alaa was called in for investigation last week. He was active in the aftermath of the event, having spent two days at the morgue alongside other activists in solidarity with victims’ families, while trying to convince them to agree to autopsies and ensure the reports of said autopsies were correctly documented. He detailed the experience in a piece for Al Shorouk newspaper (a translation of which can be found here), in which he reminded everyone that solidarity is the solution to Egypt’s problems. Alaa has been detained before, in 2006 he spent 45 days in jail, a piece he wrote from behind bars was published today entitled “A Return to Mubarak’s Jails.”
Alaa was in San Francisco when he was asked to report last week. His father, veteran human rights lawyer Ahmed Seif El Islam Abdel Fattah, appeared in court and asked for the case to be postponed. Alaa returned to Cairo on Saturday afternoon and appeared in court on Sunday morning. The military prosecutor filed five charges against him including demonstrating, inciting to demonstrate, assaulting military personnel, destroying public property, and stealing military weapons. Alaa, whose sister Mona Seif (@monasosh) is one of the founders of the No to Military Trials for Civilians campaign refused to recognise the authority of an civic judge. He pointed out that the army is facing law suits accusing it as a defendant in the same case, which constitutes a clear conflict of interest. As a result he was detained, pending further military investigation.
Alaa has been active on the blogging scene in Egypt since 2004, when he and his wife Manal Hassan (@manal) started the award-winner blog and aggregator Manal and Alaa’s Bit Bucket. Both bloggers fought the Mubarak regime online and offline, breaking cases of corruption and police brutality that were later picked up by the traditional media.
Many believe Alaa’s detention is a warning to other bloggers and political activists, a ratcheting up of the series of violations against free expression committed by Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF). The violations include summons sent to journalists Rasha Azab (@rashapress) and her editor, Adel Hammouda, over Azab’s coverage of a meeting between the No to Military Trials group and SCAF in which allegations that SCAF subjected female demonstrators to virginity tests were discussed. Later, when journalist and blogger Hossam El Hamalawy discussed SCAF on a popular Egyptian talk show, he and his show host, Reem Magued, were both called in before the military prosecutor. That visit was later described by the prosecutor as “a chat.” Other bloggers that have been interrogated and/or detained including Asmaa Mahfouz, Loai Nagati, and Maikel Nabil, who has been on a hunger strike since 22 August.
A military court sentenced Maikel Nabil to three years for “insulting the military & spreading false reports aiming to disturb public security.” The charges relate to a May blog entitled “The army and the people are not one hand,” in which he listed the army’s alleged wrongdoings, including the virginity tests claim. Maikel, who has a heart condition, was tried 12 days after being arrested on 28 March.
Other free expression violations have been committed on the satellite television front. In recent months, army police forces have raided the offices of Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr several times, as well as 25TV channel. Al Jazeera Mubasher has since been banned from broadcasting from Egypt, accused of incomplete licensing procedures. Most recently, popular television host Yosri Fouda chose to indefinitely suspend his highly-viewed political talk show because he felt he was under pressure to not report things as he sees them and did not want to force himself through “self-censorship.” He told the BBC that he did not want to “take the narrative of the army” and would rather step back in protest of the military rulers’ attempts to “stifle free expression.”
The No to Military Trials campaign, which has been actively lobbying on behalf of all military detainees, has published a press release condemning Alaa’s arrest in the strongest possible words, and asking for his immediate release, together with the other 12,000 victims of military trials in Egypt, who should at least be retried before a civil court. The group called upon Egyptians to refuse to cooperate with military interrogation and to support the cause of No to Military Trials for Civilians. You can read the press release in its entirety here. A press conference by the group is scheduled for tomorrow, 3 November, at 2pm Cairo time.
Rasha Abdulla is an associate professor at the Journalism and Mass Communication Department of the American University in Cairo. An advocate for freedom of expression, Abdulla has published several books and writings on Internet use and digital activism in Egypt and throughout the Arab World. You can follow her on Twitter:@RashaAbdulla
1 Nov 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, News
Elena Vlasenko reports on Russian state-owned television channel NTV’s move to censor a broadcast detailing a campaign for a fair investigation into the kidnapping and alleged torture of Chechen man Islam Umarpashaev
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1 Nov 2011 | Europe and Central Asia, Statements
As the London Conference on Cyberspace begins, Index on Censorship has joined leading media freedom groups and activists in calling on Foreign Secretary William Hague to reject censorship and surveillance techniques that undermine free expression.
Dear Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs,
World leaders will today converge on London for the London Conference on Cyberspace.
The conference will take place in the shadow of revolutions that have laid bare the relationship between technology, citizens’ freedom and political power. This has created a unique opportunity for the UK government to show leadership in promoting the rights of citizens online.
However, the government’s record on freedom of expression and privacy is less than ideal. Britain’s desire to promote these ideals internationally are being hampered by domestic policy.
The government is currently considering greater controls over what legal material people are allowed to access on the Internet. This is clear from recent public support by the Prime Minister, and through Claire Perry MP’s ongoing inquiry, for plans to filter adult and other legal material on UK Internet connections by default. The new PREVENT counter-terrorism strategy contains similar proposals for the filtering of material that is legal but deemed undesirable. Earlier this year the Prime Minister suggested there should be more powers to block access to social media, a policy that drew praise from China and which the government swiftly backed away from. There are also plans for more pervasive powers to surveil and access people’s personal information online.
The government now has an historic opportunity to support technologies that promote rather than undermine people’s political and social empowerment.
We call for the UK government to seize this opportunity to reject censorship and surveillance that undermines people’s rights to express themselves, organise or communicate freely. That is the only way to both enshrine the rights of citizens in the UK and to support these principles internationally.
This government should be proud to stand up for freedom of expression and privacy off- and online. This conference should herald a new stage in which these principles are upheld in UK policy.
Yours sincerely,
Brett Soloman, Executive Director, Access
Dr Agnes Callamard, Executive Director, Article 19
Cory Doctorow, Fellow, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jonathan Heawood, Director, English PEN
Evgeny Morozov, author, ‘The Net Delusion’
Andrew Puddephatt, Director, Global Partners
Heather Brooke, author, ‘The Revolution will be Digitised’
Jo Glanville, Editor, Index on Censorship
Tony Curzon Price, Editor-in-Chief, openDemocracy
Simon Davies, Director, Privacy International
Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
14 Sep 2011 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
The Cairo offices of Al-Jazeera Mubasher (Direct), an affiliate of the Qatari-based Al-Jazeera International news network, were ransacked by Egyptian security forces early this week. In a raid on the channel reminiscent of an earlier raid on Al-Jazeera International’s Cairo offices by Mubarak’s security forces during the mass uprisings last February, equipment was seized and a studio engineer was detained. Transmission by the network — devoted almost entirely to live coverage of developments in post- revolutionary Egypt, including street protests — was abruptly brought to a halt. But programming resumed a few hours later from Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha.
The channel’s website quotes an unnamed security source as saying that, prior to the raid, several complaints had been filed by residents of the Giza neighborhood where the channel’s offices are located. The residents accused the network of being noisy and disturbing public peace. The source added that during an ensuing probe, it was discovered that the channel had been running without a license in violation of Egyptian media laws.
The channel’s lawyer defended the network, saying Al-Jazeera Mubasher had applied for a licence before it began operating in March, but had not received any response from the Egyptian authorities.
Earlier, Egypt’s newly appointed Minister of Information, Osama Heikal, had issued a stern warning that the government would deal firmly with stations that “endanger the stability and security of the country.” Media analysts fear the raid and the minister’s warning signal a slide back to the repressive ways of the Mubarak regime.
The decision was met with an outcry from journalists. “This is unacceptable in the new Egypt,” said Ibrahim Badawy, a journalist working for the independent El Youm El Sabe. “The raid is a serious breach of a basic human right — the right to free expression. If we remain silent, the government will not stop at this but will take more measures to curb media freedom.”
In the same speech broadcast on Egyptian State TV, Heikal announced that the government would discontinue the issuance of permits for new stations, citing concerns about broadcasts that incite violence. The announcement came after fiery protests in front of the Israeli Embassy last Friday turned deadly. Three protesters were killed and nearly 1000 others were injured after security forces fired tear gas and plankets to disperse the protesters.
Wealthy businessmen closely connected to the previous regime had a monopoly on ownership of independent satellite channels during the Mubarak era. They used their privately-owned channels to further their own business interests and stuck rigidly to the government line, spreading the same government propaganda disseminated by state-owned TV channels.
After the uprisings that forced Mubarak’s authoritarian regime out, there were small signs that Egyptian media was finally changing course, as independent TV and radio channels and publications began to emerge. Most declare “objectivity, clarity and free expression” as their stated goal. Some, like the January 25 channel launched by veteran producer Mohamed Gohar after the revolution, claim that their motive is the creation of a people to people channel — one that allows Egyptians to see themselves for the first time. “For a long time the underprivileged members of society were hidden and not given a platform to air their views. But no more,” Gohar told me.
The new January 25 channel — named after the date Egypt’s longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak was ousted — is almost completely run by young revolutionaries themselves. Although critics describe it as amateurish, the channel is as revolutionary in content and form as the young activists themselves who operate it. A live cooking show presented by a former cook and housemaid turned celebrity chef is just one striking example of how things are changing in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Meanwhile activist and media specialist Hisham Qassem — who is in the process of establishing a new media group that will produce TV and radio broadcasts, an online wire service and a daily newspaper — described the government decision not to grant licenses to new media outlets as a “disappointing development.” He added that, with parliamentary elections less than two months away, it was a knee-jerk reaction from Egypt’s tense military rulers who wish to avoid any kind of incitement.
Qassem however pointed out that the decision may have an opposite effect. With the mainstream media’s credibility at an all- time low, the crackdown may give the politicised social media the chance of creating the very tensions the SCAF is hoping to avoid. “The crackdown on media freedom could very well lead to an information meltdown where rumours dominate,” he warned.
Both Qassem and Gohar believe that the new atmosphere for free expression in the post-revolutionary era will prevail. “The trend is irreversible and with the fear barrier now broken, there is little the government can do to silence the ‘free voices’ or curtail free expression,” said an optimistic Qassem.
Journalist and television anchor Shahira Amin resigned her post as deputy head of state-run Nile TV on February. Read why she resigned from the “propaganda machine” here.
