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Legal and Lived Experiences of Media Crackdown Under Abdel Fattehal-Sisiof Egypt

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Legal and Lived Experiences of Media Crackdown Under Abdel Fattehal-Sisiof Egypt Legal and Lived Experiences of Media Crackdown Under Abdel Fattehal-Sisiof Egypt Presentation as part of the course: “Regimes in the Middle East and North Africa” (JWSH 681; POLS 661; GIST 503) Kara Fort 20 April 2020 1 To begin to understand how Egypt’s media landscape has changed, we need to have a basic understanding of the country. Egypt is a country in the northeast corner of Africa. Egypt is composed of the mainland, thought to be the portion of Egypt in Africa, and the Sinai peninsula, which is considered to be part of Asia. Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the North, the Gaza Strip and Israel and the Red Sea to the East, Sudan to the South, and Libya to the West. Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arab World with a projected July 2020 population of 104, 124, 440 people. Approximately 95% of these people live within 20km of the Nile River and its delta. This study focuses on changes to the media in recent history, so we will only cover the most recent political changes that occurred as a result of the Arab Spring in 2011. The Arab Spring which started in Tunisia after the self-immolation of fruit vendor, Muhammad Bouzazi, took the Middle East by storm with widespread demands for governmental reform and improved quality of life. The revolution spread to more than 15 countries, with only Tunisia successfully transitioning into a constitutional democracy. In Egypt, protestors began gathering in January of 2011. By February, President Hosni Mubarak resigned and transferred all power to the armed forces. Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was elected President on June 24, 2012. Protests erupted again in November of 2012, when Mubarak issued a temporary constitutional declaration that effectively granted the President unlimited powers. Morsi would annul his temporary decree in December of 2012, but the passage of the Morsi-backed Constitution of 2012 ignited a new wave of discontent. On July 3, 2013, the Egyptian Armed Forces released a statement announcing the end of the Morsi presidency and the suspension of the new Constituion. After a period of provisional government under Adly Mansour as interim president, Egypt held a new presidential election in May of 2014, which Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi would win with more than 97% of the vote. 2 Before becoming president, Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi had previously served as the Director of Military Intelligence, the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, and was appointed by Morsi as the Minister of Defense on August 12, 2012. Sisi retired from his military career in 2014 to run for the presidency, but the military has still seen increased power during his time in office. Many consider Sisi to be a dictator. He has consolidated power around himself and has passed constitutional amendments which extend the presidential terms, effectively allowing himself to stay in power until 2030. In his last election in 2018, after the arrest and enforced disappearance of his opponent Sami Hafez Anan, threats posed to opponent Ahmed Shafik, and insurmountable violations issued by the elections committee for opponents Khaled Ali and Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat, Sisi ran essentially unopposed, the only other candidate being a pro-government supporter. One of the many features of Sisi’s increasingly authoritarian regime has been a crackdown on media organizations. Egyptian media is known for being incredibly influential in the Middle East, one reason being that Egypt was the first Middle Eastern country to get its own satellite, allowing the country to broadcast its media across the region. But a once renowned industry has taken a hit in recent years, with a media blackout across the Sinai peninsula, a requirement that only official versions of terrorist attacks are reported, and websites being banned for inciting violence or harming the reputation and interests of the country. These provisions have allowed the government to control the narratives surrounding terrorism and power in Egypt, as opposition sources are often blocked for speaking poorly of the regime. Almost all state media is loyal to Sisi, and private media and journalists may be punished if they publish information that is deemed a threat to the country’s reputation, national security, or economy. These changes in freedom of the press have been quantified in rankings from Reporters without Borders and Freedom House. In 2010, before the Arab Spring, Egypt was ranked 130/196 in freedom of the press. By 2019, that ranking dropped to 163/196. Egypt is considered one of world’s “biggest prisons” for journalists according to Reporters without Borders. 3 Research Questions What changes in the law has Sisi’s regime made to crackdown on the media? How have media outlets been affected by or responded to these legal changes? Governmental Justifications for Crackdowns How is independent media finding ways to Importance of these questions: survive? How can we trust news coming out of Egypt? The fast pace of degradation of freedom of the press in Egypt made me wonder what legal changes had been made under Sisi’s regime that would allow the government to crackdown on the media. I also wondered how independent sources have been affected by or responded to these legal changes. Are there ways for outlets to circumvent regulation? These are important questions to answer because they will help to uncover whether action taken by the government is truly covered under Egyptian law or if these actions are extrajudicial. It will also help us discover how independent media is surviving in Egypt and if we can truly trust any information that is being released by state-sponsored sources. 4 The first major legal change instituted during the Sisi era was the adoption of the 2014 constitution. The constitution states that “Freedom of the press and printing…is guaranteed,” but later states that the law regulates ownership and establishment procedures for visual, radio, and online news publications. This wording ensures that the government still has the power to deny the establishment of an outlet. The constitution also states in Article 72 that the state will ensure that press and media outlets remain neutral and express all opinions (Egypt’s constitution of 2014). The vague language included does not specify how the government can ensure neutrality and essentially makes legal any number of actions. This language has allowed for the state to censor many media outlets as a way to ensure neutrality, but even still, Sisi has complained that outlets do not cover his activities fairly, often comparing the negative coverage of himself to the overwhelmingly positive coverage of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Saad, 2017). In its part, the parliament has responded to Sisi’s complaints by tightening the grasp of the state on media production. In 2016, parliament passed the Law for the Establishment of Press and Media Organizations, which established three new organizations: the Supreme Council, which creates standards which outlets must follow to protect national security, the National Press Organization, which manages state publications, and the National Media Organization, which regulates broadcast media. Sisi appoints the heads of each of the organizations, which ensures that the regulations that are created in these bodies are beneficial to Sisi’s reputation and public image. The parliament also instituted a state of emergency in 2017, which has since been extended 11 times, which allows the government to charge citizens under criminal statute based on what they publish in the press or on social media (Saad, 2017). The parliament also has limited the reporting on its activities by giving exclusive access to some stories to Al-Youm al-Sabaa, an outlet believed to be owned by the General Intelligence Services (Egypt Parliament watch: Session four report, 2019). One of the most threatening pieces of legislation passed under the Sisi regime is law No. 180 of 2018. This law redefined who could be considered a journalist, requiring that to be considered a journalist, a person must be registered with the syndicate of journalists or media professionals. These organizations have complex requirements which make entry difficult. This change stripped many people of the limited legal protections provided to journalists and further limited what is considered to be legitimate press (Shawqi et 5 al, 2018). The law also prohibits the publishing of false news, defines any social media account with more than 5,000 followers as a media outlet, and requires that outlets store any issued content for a 12 month period in which the Supreme Council has access to the content (TIMEP brief: The law regulating the press, media, and the supreme council for media regulation, 2019). 5 To answer these research questions, I performed two content analyses on two separate sets of sources: Egyptian constitutions from 2011, 2012, and 2014 and six articles from Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news source. For the first content analysis of Egyptian constitutions, I focused on differing language and attitudes regarding media and the press. I chose to use the 2011 version of the Constitution because it included some of the original demands of the protestors, while the 2012 version showed changes made under Morsi, and the 2014 version showed changes under Sisi. I used translated versions of the Constitutions, most of which were linked to the official Egyptian government document library. For the second content analysis using Mada Masr articles I focused on specific mentions of governmental actions against Mada Masr or about legal cases Mada Masr was involved in. I also looked at ways that Mada Masr was continuing to publish despite governmental action against them. Mada Masr is an online newspaper founded in July 2013.
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