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The true meaning of freedom of expression in Egypt: An open letter from Abdullah Al Fakhrani
Abdullah Al Fakhrani
Tuesday, 03 February 2015
Below is the translation of an open letter written by Abdullah Al Fakhrani, an Egyptian journalist and the founder of Rassd News Network who is currently imprisoned in Egypt.
My friend, you ask me to talk about freedom of expression in Egypt and what it means to me?
Before I begin to even talk to you about freedom of expression in Egypt – more specifically post-coup – allow me to draw your attention to a certain point: there is a difference between freedom of expression and the freedom to transmit news. For true freedom of expression to exist it must be preceded largely by knowledge of facts and occurrences about the world around us on which we later build later opinions that we can then express in various ways. On that basis, the freedom to transmit news precedes freedom of expression; it is a necessary condition for freedom of expression to even exist in the first place.
In Egypt, you have a country that neither respects journalists nor allows them to portray the reality on the ground to the nation's citizens. In Egypt, the search for freedom of expression is akin to being a filmmaker who owns no camera or film: impossible to enact.
For a year and a half I have been left in an underground cell charged with the crime of "journalism"; charged with the dissemination of news – and, believe it or not, for admitting to belong to a newspaper! And yet, despite this, as a journalist in my country, I know I am lucky. Others have been killed for carrying out their work with no one asking about them or bringing their killers to justice. No one has held their killers accountable for the charges of murder, of restricting freedom, of targeting journalists – the world has forgotten or neglected them, my friend.
For the past year and a half I have been imprisoned with many journalists, Egyptian and foreign alike, from various press organisations. I was with Abdullah Al-Shamy, the Al Jazeera journalist who was arrested whilst doing his work the day of the dispersal of Rabaa – the same day that Habiba Mohamed, a member of Abdullah's press team, was killed doing his job. Many people are unaware that the actual numbers of detainees from Rassd News has exceeded 40 journalists, and that the organisation withholds their names for fear of endangering them. For in Egypt it is better for a journalist upon being arrested covering such events to be charged as a protester than to be charged as a journalist.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/16760-the-true-meaning-of-freedom-of-expression-in-egypt-an-open-letter-from-abdullah-al-fakhrani
5 replies
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This man is an authoritarian presiding over prison camps and state violence. So why is he the toast of Davos?
Rula Jebreal
Debates in Washington and London about the desirability and compatibility of democracy in the Arab world were shushed in the spring of 2011 by the Egyptian people themselves. The courage and determination of their 18-day uprising in which 900 gave their lives to bring down the Western-backed tyrant Hosni Mubarak inspired supporters of democracy everywhere. Millions of ordinary men and women dared to demand the dignity of citizenship, the sovereign power of an electorate to shape a country’s destiny and to hold its leaders democratically accountable. And, as if finally relieved of the burden of being tethered to Mubarak’s dysfunctional autocracy, his erstwhile Western backers applauded.
Four years later, however, in an amnesiac about-face, Western elites now applaud a new Egyptian despot who has unleashed state violence more intense than anything Mubarak did with the same goal of smashing his citizens’ democratic spirit. Now, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest iteration of the Egyptian strongman, is the toast of Davos, where conventional wisdom holds that the Arab Spring is dead. But if Western elites have changed their minds about Arab democracy, Egyptians have not — and Sisi’s authoritarianism offers no solution to the grievances that brought millions to the streets to oust Mubarak.
Egypt remains a corrupt, repressive police state riddled with mass unemployment and the grinding burden of poverty and despair. It was that volatile combination that brought people onto the streets to oust Mubarak, and some of the same issues were used to mobilize opposition to the first democratically elected government of President Mohammed Morsi. Nothing that Sisi has done since ending the democratic interlude in 2013 has changed those basic facts, which will surely, sooner or later, ignite a new phase of revolution.
The hopes of the rebellion of 2011 remain in limbo, bloodied but neither defeated nor assuaged, as the old regime – with new faces – has been restored in Cairo. Mubarak has been freed from prison by Sisi, a general-turned-politician like himself. Instead, Sisi has imprisoned Egypt’s first freely elected president Morsi, and launched a crackdown on all political opposition so vicious that Mubarak’s regime looks tame by comparison.
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/03/a_corrupt_repressive_police_state_the_wests_deplorable_love_affair_with_egypts_despot/
Rula Jebreal
Debates in Washington and London about the desirability and compatibility of democracy in the Arab world were shushed in the spring of 2011 by the Egyptian people themselves. The courage and determination of their 18-day uprising in which 900 gave their lives to bring down the Western-backed tyrant Hosni Mubarak inspired supporters of democracy everywhere. Millions of ordinary men and women dared to demand the dignity of citizenship, the sovereign power of an electorate to shape a country’s destiny and to hold its leaders democratically accountable. And, as if finally relieved of the burden of being tethered to Mubarak’s dysfunctional autocracy, his erstwhile Western backers applauded.
Four years later, however, in an amnesiac about-face, Western elites now applaud a new Egyptian despot who has unleashed state violence more intense than anything Mubarak did with the same goal of smashing his citizens’ democratic spirit. Now, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the latest iteration of the Egyptian strongman, is the toast of Davos, where conventional wisdom holds that the Arab Spring is dead. But if Western elites have changed their minds about Arab democracy, Egyptians have not — and Sisi’s authoritarianism offers no solution to the grievances that brought millions to the streets to oust Mubarak.
Egypt remains a corrupt, repressive police state riddled with mass unemployment and the grinding burden of poverty and despair. It was that volatile combination that brought people onto the streets to oust Mubarak, and some of the same issues were used to mobilize opposition to the first democratically elected government of President Mohammed Morsi. Nothing that Sisi has done since ending the democratic interlude in 2013 has changed those basic facts, which will surely, sooner or later, ignite a new phase of revolution.
The hopes of the rebellion of 2011 remain in limbo, bloodied but neither defeated nor assuaged, as the old regime – with new faces – has been restored in Cairo. Mubarak has been freed from prison by Sisi, a general-turned-politician like himself. Instead, Sisi has imprisoned Egypt’s first freely elected president Morsi, and launched a crackdown on all political opposition so vicious that Mubarak’s regime looks tame by comparison.
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/03/a_corrupt_repressive_police_state_the_wests_deplorable_love_affair_with_egypts_despot/
