24 Apr 14 | Egypt, News and features, Politics and Society
Mayada Ashraf
While Egypt’s hugely controversial Al-Jazeera trial has been grabbing international attention, the recent death of 22-year-old reporter Mayada Ashraf – allegedly at the hands of the police – appears to have left more of a lasting impact on Egyptian journalists working amid the ongoing violence.
On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera “Marriot Cell” defendants again appeared in court to face charges of complicity in terrorism and “spreading false news.” Journalists at the hearing were temporarily booted out, while the judge in the chaotic session admitted he could not understand several pieces of audio evidence aired during the trial. The case has cemented in many people’s minds around the world the idea that Egypt is now a place of kangaroo courts; a dire environment for press freedoms, home to repressive anachronisms that everyone who remembers Tahrir Square in 2011 may be forgiven for thinking were a thing of the past. They’re not.
On March 28 Ashraf, a reporter with Al-Dostour, was gunned down while covering clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and police in Ain Shams, eastern Cairo. Videos showed her corpse being rushed to safety as blood poured over her face. She died soon after.
Ashraf became the fifth reporter to die while reporting on clashes in Egypt since June 30, according to Committee to Protect Journalists figures. And while it may have been a month ago, the death of a young female journalist (who purportedly wrote last August that “Morsi is not worth dying for but Sisi is also not worth renouncing our humanity for”) has had a lasting impact in Egypt.
Press freedom campaigners have been collecting testimonies and eyewitness accounts from the day Ashraf died, an attempt to establish what really happened beyond the claims of the security apparatus.
Forensics officials suggested the shooter was from the Brotherhood, offering a series of exacting distances, heights and perspectives on where the gunman was when Ashraf was hit. The gunman was a few metres away from Ashraf, and probably standing on a car or pavement when she died, claimed senior forensics physician Hisham Abdel Hamid. Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim defended the role of security forces that day.
However Journalists Against Torture, a group aiming to build solidarity and offer help among journalists, has spoken to two eyewitnesses who contradict the official account of that day.
“As a journalist, you usually rely on the first eyewitnesses,” explains Journalists Against Torture’s Ashraf Abbas, tucked away in a corner of a café in Cairo’s Boursa district. “And two eyewitnesses said [the shot] came from the security forces.” One of those eyewitnesses, another journalist, was close to Ashraf when the bullet hit her head.
Abbas believes these testimonies carry more weight. “For us, this is more credible than what the Interior Ministry says…They rush into lies before they’ve had time for a proper investigation.” Mohamed Ibrahim’s denial came just two days after Ashraf was shot.
The state’s response, often in the face of contrary evidence, has been used before to absolve itself of any possible blame from a string of controversial deaths.
In November, Cairo University engineering student Mohamed Reda was fatally shot with cartouche (birdshot) as police moved in on a campus protest. The Interior Ministry denied firing anything other than tear gas, before video evidence explicitly disproved that claim. The government then blamed “Brotherhood students” for Reda’s death.
Forensics and ministry officials subsequently claimed the police did not use–or even possess–the rounds which killed Reda. The shooter must have been a Brotherhood student, they argued.
Mohsen Bahnasy is a lawyer who contributed to the investigation into killings during the November 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud Street clashes, events now seen as a case study in disproportionate, lethal force by the Egyptian police. Bahnasy told Index in November that four-millimeter and 8.5-millimeter birdshot found at Mohamed Mahmoud has since appeared in the corpses of students (like Reda) killed in the post-July crackdown – deaths that have been blamed on the Brotherhood.
“Now they have something to hang all their problems on,” Abbas claims, referring to the Brotherhood bogeyman theory used by the authorities to write off deaths, terrorism and even a recent outbreak of tribal violence which left almost 30 dead in Aswan in southern Egypt.
“The killing of Mayada Ashraf was a real wake-up call for the journalistic community. And it has certainly raised serious concerns about how the journalistic community is taking action to protect its own people,” says Aidan White, director of the London-based Ethical Journalism Network.
Al-Dostour editor Essam Nawabi resigned in protest against the death of his colleague. Photojournalists have also launched a series of brief strikes and demonstrations to demand better conditions and protections. This growing anger amongst Egypt’s media community has often reached the doors of the Journalists’ Syndicate, long accused of not doing enough to protect journalists.
Journalists have claimed the police are deliberately targeting them. During clashes between students and police at Cairo University two weeks ago which left one student dead, two journalists were also seriously injured: Khaled Hussein was shot in the chest with live ammunition, while Amr Abdel-Fattah received birdshot wounds. Another photojournalist, Amru Salahuddien, claimed police “intentionally” targeted journalists inside the university: “I was hiding behind a palm which they kept firing at for at least one minute,” he tweeted shortly afterwards.
“A lot of the anger that we’ve seen among rank-and-file journalists in Egypt, particularly younger rank-and-file journalists, is being aimed not just at the authorities (for their failure to provide protection), but also the Journalists’ Syndicate,” White says.
The syndicate has since agreed to donate 100 bulletproof vests and helmets, and promises field reporters will be safe in the future. But are small acts of solidarity by journalists going to change things? “The momentum comes and goes,” Abbas admits, drawing parallels with the fierce debate over press freedoms after “Black Wednesday” in 2005, when mobs sexually assaulted female protesters and journalists during protests. “Now there is momentum again, but we can’t depend on this…we have to make solid gains, pass laws and build something solid.”
Until then, journalists in Egypt are still at risk. For some, Mayada Ashraf’s death is a case study in how the state responds to violence it is accused of carrying out with disregard and impunity. White argues the response could easily be different.
“Was this a killing by groups supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, or were these thugs working for the police?” he asks. “The only way to find that out is to have a proper investigation. That is what is required.”
Additional reporting by Abdalla Kamal
This article was originally posted on 24 April 2014 at indexoncensorhip.org
23 Apr 14 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
A shot from the trailer of Halawet Rooh (Image: Mohamed Elsobky/YouTube)
Just as Egyptian free expression advocates were celebrating the decision by Egypt’s State Censorship Board to allow the screening of Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical epic Noah, news of the withdrawal of Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe’s new film Halawet Rooh (Beauty of the Soul) from theatres in Egypt put a damper on their cautiously optimistic mood. The fact that the decision to suspend the screening of the controversial film was made by interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb — rather than by the censors — has added fuel to the fire.
On Wednesday, the premier ordered the film to be removed from cinemas and sent back to the State Censorship Board for re-evaluation. The move led Ahmed Awad, the head of the State Censorship Board to tender his resignation, saying he was “not consulted” and categorically rejects government interference in his work.
Former Culture Minister Emad Abu Ghazy reminded the prime minister of a court ruling forbidding interference in the work of the independent censorship board. “The Premier has no right to suspend the screening of the film,” Abu Ghazy told AFP.
Popular TV talk show host Ibrahim Eissa meanwhile, cautioned that the ban does not auger well for freedom of expression.”Those who ban films today for damaging public morality will in future, ban films for political reasons,” he warned in an episode of his show “Hunna Al Kahera” broadcast on the privately owned CBC Channel.
Rights activists and groups have also expressed concern over the suspension of the film’s screening, saying the move is part of a wider clampdown on artistic expression in Egypt. In his column in Saturday’s edition of the independent newspaper Al-Shorouq, film critic Kamal Ramzy chided the government for not having learnt history’s lessons on censorship. “Instead of focusing on problems of corruption and the rule of law, the prime minister is instead, more occupied with censorship,” he lamented.
Mehleb meanwhile, downplayed the criticism levelled at him. At a meeting with intellectuals and literary figures on Saturday, he insisted that “there is a clear cut distinction between freedom of artistic expression and creativity on the one hand, and infringement on moral values on the other”.
The premier’s decision to suspend the screening of the film came in the wake of an outcry from conservatives in Egypt who denounced the film on social media networks as “obscene” and “a threat to public morality”. Oddly enough, some “liberal” Egyptians too, have joined the online campaigns accusing Ahmed El Sobky, the film’s producer of “destroying an entire generation” and being “more dangerous than bombs and missiles”. El Sobky’s trademark films are often “low quality” productions characterised by a mix of violence, belly dancing and sexually explicit scenes. His target audience are generally the uneducated, low income youth who traditionally celebrate public holidays by going to the cinema.
Film critics have also decried the film as “sexually provocative,” lambasting lead actress Haifa for “revealing too much flesh”. “There is hardly a scene in which Haifa does not appear half nude,” scoffed critic Ramy Abdel Razak in his review published Thursday in the independent daily Al Masry El Youm.
Critics question how a particularly steamy scene in which Haifa’s clothes are ripped off by a rapist, got past the State Censor board. Overlooking the fact that the film was rated “Adults Only” — which meant it was inaccessible to children under 16 — Egypt’s National Council for Childhood warned in a statement released last week, that the film was “harmful to minors” and “violates public morality”.
The “raunchy” film had been in cinemas for two weeks before it was removed and had reportedly grossed some £84,100 in its first week in theatres. At the time of publication, a two-minute trailer for the film on YouTube had over 3,6 million views.
Described by critics as a “poor imitation of Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore’s widely-acclaimed Malena”, the film tells the story of a young boy’s obsession with a beautiful nightclub singer. The woman, whose husband is abroad, is pursued by the men in her working class neighbourhood and her ardent young admirer subsequently takes it upon himself to protect her.
Fifteen year-old Karim El Abnoudi, who plays the role of the boy infatuated with Rooh, has reportedly been verbally harassed at his school and on the streets, with his classmates and some laymen — angered by what they had read or heard about the film — hurling insults at him and calling him “an infidel”.
The withdrawal of the film from theatres has fuelled fears among some secularists and rights organisations that increased censorship is stifling freedom of artistic expression and creativity in Egypt. In March, the State Censorship Board banned 20 music videos from Egyptian TV Channels for allegedly containing “explicit content”. In another sign that the interim government is putting the lid on artistic expression, a misdemeanour court in the Southern Egyptian province of Bani Suef in March upheld a verdict against Egyptian author and rights activist Karam Saber, who eight months earlier had been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison and LE1000 in bail for “blasphemy”. In June 2013. Saber was convicted on charges of “contempt of religion” and “inciting sedition” in a collection of short stories he wrote two years earlier titled Where is God? Both Al Azhar (the country’s highest Islamic authority ) and the Coptic Orthodox Church had earlier concurred in the opinion that the book was “blasphemous” and “ought to be banned”.
In a joint statement released in September (in the wake of the sentence handed down to Saber), 46 Arab Human Rights Organisations expressed concern for the diminishing space for free artistic expression and creativity. The Arab Network for Human Rights Information also said the verdict against Saber “belies any notion of respect for human rights by the state and violates provisions in the new constitution guaranteeing freedom of creativity and artistic expression”.
A provision in the new charter, endorsed by an overwhelming 98% of voters in a popular referendum in January, guarantees freedom of thought and opinion stipulating that any individual “has the right to express his opinion and to publicise it verbally or in writing or by other means”. Another provision in the 2014 constitution guarantees freedom of literary and artistic creation, stating that “the state shall promote art and literature, sponsor creators and protect their creations, providing the necessary means to achieve this”.
Many artists and writers had joined the mass protests in January 2011, hoping that the revolution would bring an end to decades of repression. For a short period after the fall of authoritarian president Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s artists and literary figures capitalised on their new-found freedoms, tackling subjects long off limits to them — like sex and religion.The rise of Islamists to power in 2012 , however brought new limitations to the short-lived free flow of artistic and creative expression. New legislation was introduced by the Islamist-dominated parliament, banning art with obvious sexual references as well as concerts featuring female singers. The downfall of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in July 2013 rekindled hopes for an end to censorship and suppression of creativity. But in the new restrictive cultural atmosphere — reminiscent of the Mubarak era — these hopes have been quickly dashed, giving way to disappointment, frustration and fear.
“It is ironic that the ban on Wehbe’s film would come from the interim government that replaced the ousted Islamist regime,” prominent blogger Zeinobia wrote last week. Many of the liberal Egyptians who joined the uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood president in July last year had said they were protesting against “religious fascism” and had hoped the new government would be secular and more democratic.
“The interim government has demonstrated that it is more Islamic than the Islamists,” lamented Sameh Kassem, culture editor at the independent Al Bawabh news website .
“The withdrawal of Wehbe’s film from theatres and the verdict against Saber are attempts by the interim government to appease the ultra-orthodox Salafis ahead of presidential elections scheduled on 28 and 29 May,” he told Index.
Egypt’s Salafis, the ultra-conservative Islamist movement that had initially backed ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi, later decided to side with the military and lent its support to the military-backed interim government after his deposition.
“The military-backed authorities are trying to woo the Salafis to guarantee their votes for former military chief Abdel Fattah El Sisi in the upcoming elections,” Kassem said.
This article was originally posted on 22 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
15 Apr 14 | Academic Freedom, Egypt, Middle East and North Africa, News and features
Egyptian demonstrators chanting for the army and police and raising flags and banners bearing images of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. But since the military-backed removal of Mohamed Morsi in summer 2013, academic freedom has been further corroded. (Image: Adham Khorshed/Demotix)
Since the military-backed overthrow of Mohamed Morsi’s government last summer, censorship of journalism in post-revolutionary Egypt has become an urgent concern of human rights and freedom of expression organisations. A quieter and more gradual undercurrent to the question of censorship, however, has been the continued corrosion of academic freedom of expression in post-revolutionary Egypt.
Under Hosni Mubarak’s regime, academic freedom within Egypt was notoriously limited, not least by the fact that since 1994, deans and presidents of public universities were appointed by the state, and professional career progress in academia frequently depended on compliance with the state line. Political activism was prohibited on campus and police units were stationed inside universities to “maintain order”. However, the dramatic increase of Egyptians in higher education in the last fifteen years of the Mubarak era – without the improvement of either higher education facilities or graduate employment prospects – is widely held to have been a central factor in the popular uprising that overthrew the regime in 2011.
Activist academics played a pivotal role in the 2011 revolution. In particular, the March 9 movement, founded in 2004, acted as a complement to the more clandestine student activist April 6 movement, and was comprised of politicised professors and academic administrators who were focused on protesting the impingement of academic life by the state.
As such, the post-Mubarak era was heralded by many as new “window“ for academic freedom in Egypt and “an opportunity to revive the Egyptian universities’ founding ideals as autonomous institutions seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake.” Like freedom of the press, however, none of the “stages” of the post-revolutionary period have allowed this to come to fruition. Under the immediate, post-revolutionary, interim SCAF period, and under Morsi’s short-lived presidency, university reform was never substantively addressed, whilst activism on campuses splintered along the increasingly polarised lines of post-revolutionary political discourse. Moreover, many of the student activists of the 2011 uprisings were concerned at the possibility of Islamist encroachment on academic freedom of expression, and the policing of secular and female students’ activities at universities.
Since the military-backed removal of Morsi in summer 2013, and the mass violence that accompanied it, academic freedom has been further corroded both by the discourse and strategies of the new ruling powers on the one hand, and by the return of university premises as physical sites of political violence. The return of state security to campuses has been met with resistance from student activists and those who see it as a return to Mubarak-era surveillance of the university space. This has, however, been framed as a necessary step to prevent further violence as that witnessed since late 2013, which saw intense clashes at Al-Azhar University and an engineering student shot dead on the Cairo University campus.
Alongside the physical space of the university, the discipline of academic practice has been significantly impinged by the increasingly fractious and polarised political situation. Like journalists, academics have been caught in the political cross-fire of the post-July 2013 government’s campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, who the government declared a terrorist organisation in December. Over the summer, two Canadian academics were detained for nearly two months despite no independent proof that they had engaged with the Muslim Brotherhood or taken part in “terrorist activities”.
As Ursula Lindsey has noted in The New York Times, political scientists working on the subject of contemporary Egyptian politics have faced particular difficulties. The 2011 revolution is itself now the subject of academic study, yet its protracted aftermath impedes research, and academics such as Nathan J Brown, a leading scholar on Egypt’s constitutions and judiciary, have noted that foreign academics are now cautious against travelling to Egypt for research. The military-backed government that overthrew Morsi has engaged in both a physical clampdown and a war of narratives with the Muslim Brotherhood, quick to frame all association with the Islamist organisation as collusion.
This presents particular problems for academics who wish to conduct interviews for the purpose of academic research. After all, this time last year, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-backed regime was the official government, and, as such, academic researchers would likely have had contact with the group — not out of political allegiance but in order to conduct their studies. Yet such “contact” can now find scholars isolated, silenced, or even accused of “espionage”, as in the case of Professor Eman el-Din Shahin. Professor Shahin’s colleagues have spoken out in his defence, arguing that he is a well-respected and thorough researcher whose contact with political enemies of the new regime would have been in his legitimate capacity as a researcher. Such a climate is naturally conducive to self-censorship on the part of other academics, a loss for all of us who wish to understand and engage with contemporary Egypt. As an academic, you may not be politicised, but the state is very interested in politicising you.
The March 9 movement, formed in the Mubarak era by scholars seeking freedom of academic expression, marked its anniversary last month in sombre circumstances — these new challenges for academic freedoms overlay the continuing, unresolved issues of the pre-2011 period, from workplace nepotism to underfunding in public education. The uprisings of 2011 were ignited in part by the March 9 movement’s campaign for academic freedom of expression, yet in the various incarnations of the post-revolutionary order, this dream is still far from being realised.
This article was posted on 15 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
14 Apr 14 | Egypt, News and features
Political activists rallied in front of the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate in Cairo to demand the immediate release of detainees. (Image: Khaled Basyouny/Demotix)
Within the next few days, Egypt is expected to put into effect a new counter-terrorism law that rights groups warn could “severely erode civil liberties” and “reinstate the old police state that existed under deposed president Hosni Mubarak”.
Earlier this month, three bombs exploded outside Cairo University killing a police general. The attacks — the latest in a string of bombings targeting security forces — prompted the government to speed up review of the stricter security bill that the authorities say is necessary “to better protect citizens against the terrorist threat”. The bill contains provisions that would significantly broaden the definition of terrorism and would give police and prosecutors more power to deal with “terror suspects”. If passed, the new legislation would also allow for stricter punishment of perpetrators of “terrorist crimes”.
Skeptics meanwhile, fear that the controversial anti-terrorism law would pave the way for more repression and greater rights violations as the authorities intensify and widen their crackdown on dissent of all stripes. In an interview broadcast on Al Jazeera, Dr. Abdalla El Ashaal, an Islamist thinker and professor of international law at the American University in Cairo stressed the need for a precise definition of terrorism. He cautioned that under the new law, government critics and opponents would likely be classified as terrorists.
The proposed bill defines a terrorist act as “use of force, violence, threats or intimidation to disturb public order or endanger the safety of the society”. It also lists a wide range of activities that would be considered “terrorist crimes” including harming individuals, intimidating them , putting their lives, freedom and security at risk; harming national security, harming the environment, monuments and public property and hindering the work of the authorities, judicial bodies, houses of worship, educational institutions and diplomatic and consular missions. The bill also extends the definition of “a terrorist act” to include behaviour that “damages or harms the communications or information system, financial sector or national economy”.
Under the draft law, “establishing, organising or heading a terrorist group is punishable by death”. Leaving no ground uncovered, the draft law further stipulates a two-year jail sentence or a fine of up to LE 10,000 (Egyptian Pounds) for anyone insulting a public employee verbally or with a sign.
The “loose definition” of terrorism in the bill has drawn denunciation from Egyptian rights organisations. In a joint statement released by 20 rights groups, they warned that “absence of the rule of law and resorting to repressive security measures and exceptional laws will undermine human rights and only lead to increased acts of armed violence and terrorism”. The broad provisions in the bill also pave the way for harassment of “peaceful political opposition members, rights activists, and pro-democracy groups,” the statement added.
The anticipated issuance of the new legislation comes as revolutionary groups in Egypt become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the draconian anti-protest law passed late last year. The pro-democracy groups have in recent days organised a series of events including a weekend marathon of runners and cyclists to bring attention to the plight of “political detainees” jailed for staging “unauthorised protests”. Three liberal activists and leading figures of the January 25 uprising are among the detainees. Last week, a Cairo appeal court upheld the jailing of activists Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel for three years for protesting without police permission and assaulting a police officer. In comments to Reuters, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch criticised the verdict against the activists as “another nail in the coffin of the January 25 Revolution”.
Both the anti protest law passed in November and the counter-terrorism bill — which will likely be signed into law before the end of the week — are part of the government’s efforts to stifle political activism and silence dissent. Revolutionary activists and rights campaigners fear the draconian laws will provide legal cover to extrajudicial killings, torture in prisons and unfair trials, allowing the authorities to clamp down even harder on the opposition.
Rights activists are also cautioning that the new law “may intensify violence and terrorism in Egypt” — a country wracked by political turmoil since the unseating of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by military-backed protests in July 2013. At least 1,400 people have been killed and thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have been arrested in a massive security crackdown on dissent in the wake of Morsi’s ouster. Most of the deaths have occurred in violent clashes between pro-Morsi protesters and security forces in which the latter have been accused by rights organisations of using disproportionate lethal force. The Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group which rose to power in Egypt’s first free and fair parliamentary elections, post revolution — and from which Morsi hails — was designated as a terrorist organisation in December.
Since the ousting of Morsi in July, there has been a surge in militant attacks targeting mainly military and police forces but also, the country’s minority Christian population and tourists. Initially concentrated in the Sinai Peninsula, the terror attacks — mostly claimed by the Sinai-based jihadi group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis — have in recent months spread to other parts of the country. Over the last few weeks, Egypt has also been rocked by a wave of student protests at state-universities across the country. Clashes between student protesters and security forces using tear gas and bird shot have resulted in the deaths of several young protesters and the arrests and detention of scores of others. The students are protesting a recent court ruling allowing police to return to university campuses and are demanding the release of student-detainees .The protesters are also opposed to former Defence Minister Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s presidential bid. Field Marshal El Sisi retired from the army earlier this month and announced his candidacy in the presidential elections, scheduled to take place on 26 and 27 May. In a televised address to the nation announcing Morsi’s removal from power last summer, the former army chief had promised an inclusive government, pledging a limited role for the army in politics .
“The proposed counter terrorism bill signals a reversal of the hard-earned freedoms gained after the January 2011 uprising and will take the country back to its pre-January 25 revolutionary state,” laments Gamal Eid, the Executive Director of the Arab Network for Human Rights.
This article was posted on 14 April 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
