A YEAR AFTER WINNING A PRESIDENTIAL REFERENDUM in which he was the sole candidate, President Hosni Mubarak dashed hopes that his fourth sixth-year term would bring any loosening of official restraints on the media. Censorship and the jailing of journalists persisted, and there was a disturbing rash of violent police and other attacks against members…
EIGHTY-ONE JOURNALISTS WERE IN PRISON AROUND THE WORLD at the end of 2000, jailed for practicing their profession. The number is down slightly from the previous year, when 87 were in jail, and represents a significant decline from 1998, when 118 journalists were imprisoned. While jailing journalists can be an effective means of stifling bad…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in EGYPT. New York, April 19, 2000—A Cairo criminal court sentenced five journalists working for the opposition weekly newspaper Al-Ahrar to six months in prison on April 16 for allegedly libeling Muhammad Fahim al-Rayyan, the chairman of Egypt Air.
By Joel CampagnaRoyal succession and rubber-stamp elections set the tone for a year in which Middle Eastern and North African governments continued to restrict press freedoms through a combination of censorship, intimidation, and media monopoly. Ballots in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen produced few surprises as longtime rulers stayed in power and maintained formidable obstacles…
Each year on World Press Freedom Day (May 3), CPJ announces its list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Those who made the list this year, as in the past, earned the dubious distinction by exhibiting particular zeal in the ruthless suppression of press freedom. They were singled out for their unrelenting and…
For the second consecutive year, President Hosni Mubarak’s government ignored vocal protests against the state’s use of criminal and libel laws to muzzle journalists. At least 11 reporters and editors were investigated or tried for libel and other alleged publications offenses. According to Egyptian human-rights organizations, dozens of criminal cases were pending against members of…
Click here to read more about press freedom conditions in Egypt. New York, April 1, 2000 —The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the New York-based press freedom watchdog, today condemned an Egyptian criminal court’s sentencing of three opposition journalists to prison terms of up totwo years for libel.
New York, N.Y., December 6, 1999 — Three Egyptian journalists jailed for libel in August were freed late Sunday night after an Egyptian appeals court overturned their sentences. Magdy Hussein, editor in chief of the opposition biweekly Al-Sha’b, Saleh Bedeiwi, a reporter for Al-Sha’b, and Essam Eddine Hanafi, a cartoonist for the paper, were convicted…