Cairo August 22, 2012

ANHRI is severely annoyed of the increasing of the Monitoring and confiscation policy imposed on the Egyptian newspapers. Algomhuria stopped a page deal with the freedom of speech and confiscation in Egypt which is the culture page. El-Mosawr Magzine stopped publishing the rest of the series of the book “returning from the Brotherhood’s paradise”. In the same time, an edition of El-Shab newspaper was confiscated, which was prepared to be distributing due to an article of the Egyptian Intelligence body.

The monitoring and confiscation increased after the expansion in following journalists and  writers like the journalist “Abdelhalim Qandeel”, editor in chief of Sout Al-Omma newspaper, “Adel Hamouda” editor in chief of Alfajr newspaper and “Osama Afify” editor in cheif of “El-Dostor” newspaper as well as confiscating the newspaper due to allegations of insulting the president. “Alfareen” channel was stopped for two months due to accusations of threating the president and inciting on violence.

This is the most violent attack on the Egyptian newspapers and media after the 25th revolution and after Dr. Mosri became the president, such attacks contradicted with the president Morsi speech of respecting the freedom of speech as a guarantee to the civil state.

ANHRI said “the previous monitoring on Newspapers is refused in any democratic country. The rule of law means any citizen or any journalist who violates the law shall be punished. The Egyptian journalists struggled a lot to obtain the margin of the freedom of the press and called with the civil society organization to stop the criminal and confinement prosecution in the publishing cases and using only the civil judiciary. The attempts to justify the confiscation, monitoring and the criminal prosecution bring the journalists back to square zero and threatens of an era free from criticizing and fears of jail or oppression due to a word and an opinion”.

ANHRI views that the changes made by the Shoura Council to the leaders of the national newspapers and the ignoring the radical solutions represented in establishing a council or an organizing committee for media are predicting of more floundering and confusion. It also declares the absence of the political well to fix the Egyptian media, which suffers from a long decades of improfessionality and the lack of impartiality and was the reason of several crimes against the revolution and the revolutionaries, such as incitement against the Egyptian Christians which known as “Maspero”.