Egypt
Egypt’s World Press Freedom Index moved from bad to worse in 2020 remarking a steady decline since the shift in governmental power in 2013.
The index that represents the freedom of expression made by the organization Reporters without Borders (RSF) now puts the country in the 166th (163 in 2019) position placing it behind countries like Burundi, Tajikistan, and Equatorial Guinea.
Reporters without Borders (RSF) is a non-profit NGO that evaluates the degree of press freedom in countries around the globe. The organization takes into account key identifiers for a healthy journalism environment and based on them creates the index. Currently, the RSF team has correspondents who operate in more than 130 countries.
The index of the republican state of Egypt has been falling ever since the nation overthrow its old government in 2013 in a coup. Following the new president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule the state introduced a tight media law targeting online activists. With it, the country has legally become one of the world’s largest prisons for journalists.
The media law introduced in 2018 made it possible for the state to ban and close websites and to press charges against social media profiles who share and create content against the governmental interest. In the law’s lines, individuals with more than 5,000 followers are considered independent media outlets and are susceptible to be arrested by the secret services with the pretext of spreading “fake news” and “anti-governmental acts”.
The International Press Institute (IPI), a global association of professional journalists which aims to advocate and promote quality journalism also indicated Egypt’s oppression over the free press. In their annual ranking of most imprisoned journalists by country, Egypt takes the 3rd position only behind China and Turkey. The country has more than 60 reporters imprisoned. However, not all of them have been convicted. The case of the freelance reporter Mahmoud Hussein illustrates that. He has been 4 years imprisoned since being arrested by the secret services, without having his trial even started yet, until he finally got released on February 4, 2021, due to the international intervention of Human Rights organizations.
In an interview contained in the IPI website, human rights lawyer Karim Abdelrady dived deeper into the imprisoning process in the country: “These cases never go to court. The State Security Prosecution is not an independent prosecutor and journalists are kept detained illegally for a long time. They can be imprisoned for up to two years without getting a trial. And after two years the prosecutor charges them with new cases.”
###
Ivaylo Ivanov is a student at the American University in Bulgaria and he is majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. He is passionate about reviewing exciting cases for his readers.
