Egypt
Egypt has been ranked 166 out of 180 countries in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index (WPFI), making it one of the worst places in the world to be a journalist. In 2022 it was ranked two spots lower, at 168. The country has been placed in the bottom 20 for most of the last decade.
WPFI is an annually published ranking of 180 countries and territories composed by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — an international non-profit journalist organization. The index is calculated based on two main components: the number of documented abuses against media workers and the results of a questionnaire filled in by freedom specialists.
Currently, Egypt is governed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who came to be president after a military coup d’état in 2013. According to RSF, since then Egypt has become one of the biggest jailers of journalists. Their data states that during this period at least 24 media workers have been detained because of their work. As of right now, at least 18 are still behind bars as five have been released in 2023.
Unfortunately, those are not the only victims — data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) shows that since the coup on 30 June, 2013, six journalists have been killed. CPJ states the type of death as well: five placed on dangerous assignments, and one caught in crossfire.
Since his rise to power, Sisi has done everything in his power to establish media authority over the country. RSF says that more than 170 journalists have been jailed and more than 500 news sites have been blocked.
Media Ownership Monitor (MOM) also states that the government has major control over broadcasting services. Their article from 2018 says that six out of ten TV stations belong either to the state or to the Egyptian Media Group (EMG) — a state-owned investment firm linked to the country’s General Intelligence. Of the other four, three are owned by businessmen close to the government and one is owned by an international group based in Dubai.
The radio situation is very similar — seven out of ten stations are monitored by the state. Only one is privately owned, one got transferred to EMG without an official statement, and the last one is owned by a media company linked to military intelligence.
Print media is also dominated by the state: three state-owned dailies, one owned by EMG, one by a board member of the EMG, and the rest going to wealthy businessmen. The online sector mainly consists of digital versions of the existing print media. “Only two are independent from existing media outlets,” MOM’s data states. Other independent content is posted on non-Egyptian media outlets, such as blogs or international media sites.
IFEX says that in 2018 a law was passed that allowed the country to monitor people’s online presence. Anyone who posts something against the government, be it a satiric joke on Facebook or an independent journalist’s blog about issues, gets targeted and prosecuted, many get arrested and held in prison without trial or conviction of a crime.
An example of this is Mohamed Ibrahim Radwan (Mohamed “Oxygen”) who has been in solitary confinement since 2019 for covering anti-corruption protests. According to RSF, his mental health has gotten much worse because he has been subjected to torture and harsh prison conditions — in 2021 he went so far as to attempt suicide.
Freedom House and the Human Rights Watch (HRW) both confirm the harsh conditions people, not only journalists, have to live in. Fortunately, a national human rights strategy has been launched in 2022, HRW states, but it has a long way to go until results start to show up.
###
Aleksandar Zarbov is double-majoring in Journalism and Psychology at the American University in Bulgaria. He hopes to one day travel a world where journalists are not threatened when they do their jobs.
