Egypt

Relying heavily on vague antistate charges, authorities jail 145 journalists worldwide. Eritrea, Burma, and Uzbekistan are also among the worst jailers of the press. A CPJ special report

As CPJ has previously documented, journalists in Egypt have faced a deterioration in press freedom in the run-up to the parliamentary vote on Sunday. Editors have been fired, TV shows suspended, and regulations over SMS texting suddenly tightened. In the final few days, a new forum found itself caught up in this attempt to control the media message--the social networking site Facebook.

• Egyptian blogger Karim Amer is finally free after four years in prison.
• Iran launches yet another police force to deal with the Internet, headquartered with the Revolutionary Guard. Its commander says the state plans to quadruple its Internet control budget.
• Google lobbies U.S. policymakers to consider online censorship a free trade issue.
• Is breaking into Yahoo e-mail too easy? The Sarah Palin hack revealed flaws in the webmail system's security that can still be exploited.
• Yet more malicious attacks on computers connected to the Nobel Peace Prize. As with CPJ and other groups, the Nobel Institute's director, Geir Lundestad, received a personalized, but fake e-mail containing malware.
• Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over "moral concerns"--then immediately unblocks it, claiming an "error."

• Omid Memarian gives insight into the Iranian hardliner in-fighting that led to "blogfather" Hossein Derakhshan's arrest and sentencing.
• Pakistan blocks Facebook, but doesn't block militant jihadi sites.
• What happened when the authorities shut down the Internet in China's Xinjiang province.
• "Deleted" Facebook photos can stay available for years (from the excellent Ars Technica, now banned in Iran).
• Quote of the week, courtesy of Index on Censorship's Free Speech Blog. When asked about Egypt's new pre-election restrictions on mass SMS messaging, government adviser Mahmoud el-Gweini told reporters "We are not making life difficult. We are making life organized, that is all."

New York, October 7, 2010--The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the deterioration of press freedoms in Egypt ahead of November's parliamentary elections and next year's presidential vote. In particular, CPJ is concerned over the firing on Tuesday of Ibrahim Eissa, the editor-in-chief and founder of the independent daily Al-Dustour.

New York, July 13, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence a jailed opposition leader to a year in prison for defaming a former minister more than 14 years ago.

He's young,
unemployed and carries himself with the innocence of a man who hasn't spent
much time outside his own village. But Egyptian blogger Tamer
Mabrouk is the real deal. Appearing at an international media conference in Bonn, Mabrouk's description of chemical dumping into a
brackish lagoon on the northern Nile Delta near the Mediterranean Sea was
punctuated by photos of unmistakable filth. He won over the audience when, in
response to a question on how one travels with sensitive material, Tamer deftly
removed a memory card secreted in an electronic device and held it in the air.
That, he said, is where he had carried documents for this trip.

New York, June 23, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Egyptian Minister of Finance, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, to drop charges against Wael al-Abrashy, the editor-in-chief of the weekly Sawt al-Umma, and Samar al-Dawi, a reporter for the weekly.

New York, May 20, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a criminal defamation lawsuit filed by Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit against independent journalist Hamdi Kandil. He faces up to six months in jail and a discretionary fine if convicted.

Judging by what’s transpired in recent weeks, press freedom in Egypt is in a deplorable state. To hear that Egyptian police abused and illegally detained peaceful protestors who took to the streets on April 6 is par for the course. To read that police and plainclothes thugs also beat and detained journalists, confiscating and destroying video footage and notes, is revolting but, unfortunately, quite predictable. But to learn that elements of the state security apparatus may also have posed as journalists to monitor civil society and opposition activists marks a new low for the Egyptian state.

New York, April 29, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an campaign of harassment and intimidations against imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdel Karim Suleiman, known online as Karim Amer. 

New York, April 7, 2010—Uniform and plainclothes Egyptian security forces assaulted and obstructed journalists trying to cover protests in Cairo on Tuesday, according to news accounts and interviews. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the actions and calls for authorities to stop harassing journalists reporting from the scene of news events.

New York, March 17, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned about the arrest of an Israeli journalist on assignment in Egypt. Yotam Feldman was arrested Sunday near the Egyptian-Israeli border while reporting on African immigrants illegally crossing into Israel, according to news accounts. 

New York, March 1, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Egyptian authorities to drop the charges against blogger Ahmad Mostafa, who is facing up to one year in prison pending the outcome of his ongoing trial in a military court.

Naziha Rejiba, editor of the Tunisian online publication Kalima and a 2009 International Press Freedom Awardee, helped us launch the new edition of Attacks on the Press at a press conference today in Cairo.

New York, February 4, 2009—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns an Egyptian criminal court’s decision on Tuesday to sentence a journalist to one year in prison and a fine of 60,000 Egyptian pounds (US$10,500) on criminal charges filed by another journalist who is also a member of parliament.