The climate for free expression in Egypt has worsened since Hosni Mubarak was ousted a year ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement issued this past weekend. HRW urged Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) “to end assaults on journalists by security forces, cease prosecutions based on laws violating media freedoms,” and recommended that the country’s newly elected parliament should promptly repeal those laws.
In one recent example, a Cairo misdemeanor court on December 26, 2011, sentenced a democracy activist, Gaber Elsayed Gaber, to a year in prison for handing out leaflets at a public rally in Cairo. Security forces have engaged in brutal beatings and used excessive force against demonstrators in Cairo and tried to stop journalists from reporting on them. Actions like these were hallmarks of Mubarak’s 30-year rule, but they also have been used repeatedly in the year since the SCAF assumed control on February 11, 2011, Human Rights Watch said.
“The past year has seen a disturbing assault on free expression,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Not only are direct critics of the military under physical and legal threat, but so are those who deliver these critical voices to the public.”
Violations of the right to freedom of expression have included military trials of protesters and bloggers, interrogations of journalists and activists for criticizing the military, the suspension of new satellite television licenses, and the closure of an outlet of Al Jazeera television. In two high-profile cases, the telecommunications entrepreneur Naguib Sawiris and the veteran film comedian Adel Imam have faced charges of insulting religion under vague and arbitrary laws dating from the Mubarak administration.
Human Rights Watch has documented a number of assaults on journalists by security forces during demonstrations and destruction of news media property since the SCAF took power. These efforts to hinder broadcasts of demonstrations follow several months of efforts to curb activities of independent media outlets.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reported 50 assaults on and detentions of journalists in November and December alone – actions that “are effectively censoring coverage of ongoing protests in Cairo.” Reporters Without Borders ranked Egypt 166th in its press freedom index in 2011, a steep decline from 127th in 2010, because “the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces … dashed the hopes of democrats by continuing the Mubarak dictatorship’s practices.”
State security forces have also used excessive and sometimes deadly force to break up a series of demonstrations and sit-ins in which people were trying to exercise their rights to free speech and assembly.
“The SCAF seems to be unjustly prosecuting journalists to obscure repeated brutality against the media by security forces,” Stork said.
The Mubarak government frequently used overly broad provisions in the penal code to crack down on criticism of the government’s human rights record or the political situation. In the past year, editors, opposition leaders, and activists have been tried in both military and civilian courts for “insulting the authorities or “insulting public institutions.”
Curbing Activities of Independent Media Outlets
On September 9, then-Information Minister Osama Heikal announced that the government would grant no new satellite television broadcast licenses. Two days later, security forces raided the offices of Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr in Cairo, suspending its operations. Mubasher maintains a bureau in Cairo but currently broadcasts from Qatar, the home base of its mother channel Al Jazeera.
On September 12, Heikal told the official Middle East News Agency that “it was unacceptable for channels to use equipment for real time coverage of events without receiving state permission,” and that Al Jazeera Mubasher had committed several violations.
Soldiers and police raided and shut down two television channels – TV25 and US government-funded Al Hurra – the night of October 9, as they broadcast a violent military assault on demonstrators protesting the burning of a Christian church in Upper Egypt.
Prosecutions for Exercising Right to Free Expression
On December 26, a Cairo district misdemeanor court sentenced Gaber Elsayed Gaber to one year in prison with labor for distributing, according to the court’s written decision, “publications that disturbed public security and drove a wedge between theEgyptian people and the Egyptian army and harmed the reputation of the Egyptian ruling military council.” A group of men in civilian clothes detained him at a pro-SCAF rally in the Abbassiya district of Cairo on December 23 and turned him over to police as he was distributing a pamphlet critical of SCAF and calling for the continuation of the Egyptian revolution, said the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, whose lawyers are defending him and appealing the verdict.
On January 25, the SCAF released Maikel Nabil, a blogger, from prison after almost 10 months of incarceration. A military court had sentenced him in April to three years in prison for “insulting the military establishment,” under article 184 of the penal code, and “spreading false information,” under article 102. In December, the military court reduced the sentence to two years. The SCAF pardoned him and more than 1,900 prisoners on the eve of the first anniversary of the anti-Mubarak uprising.
Nabil, in a video message after his release, rejected the notion that a pardon was adequate, given that he should not have been tried, convicted, and imprisoned in the first place.
“All charges against those implicated for expressing an opinion must be revoked,” he said at a news conference in Cairo on January 28.
Laws Inhibiting Free Speech
Egypt’s penal code includes numerous provisions that violate international law by providing criminal penalties of imprisonment for “insulting” public officials and institutions, including the president (article 179), public officials (article 185), “foreign kings or heads of state” (article 180), and foreign diplomats (article 182).
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the expert body that provides authoritative interpretations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Egypt is a party, states in General Comment No. 34, on Article 19 on Freedom of Expression, that “States parties should not prohibit criticism of institutions, such as the army or the administration.”
By this standard, article 184 of the Egyptian penal code, which criminalizes “insulting the People’s Assembly, the Shura Council or any State Authority, or the Army or the Courts,” is incompatible with international law and should be amended accordingly, Human Rights Watch said.
General Comment No. 34 continues: “The mere fact that forms of expression are considered to be insulting to a public figure is not sufficient to justify the imposition of penalties, albeit public figures may also benefit from the provisions of the Covenant. Moreover, all public figures, including those exercising the highest political authority such as heads of state and government, are legitimately subject to criticism and political opposition.”
Laws that criminalize “contempt” of religion or religious groupings are incompatible with norms of freedom of expression, the Human Rights Committee said. General Comment No. 34 notes that it is impermissible for “prohibitions of displays of lack of respect for a religion or other belief system, including blasphemy laws…to be used to prevent or punish criticism of religious leaders or commentary on religious doctrine and tenets of faith.”
