New Arab Revolutions That Shook the World by Farhad Khosrokhavar

Author:Farhad Khosrokhavar [Khosrokhavar, Farhad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317255536
Google: ZQRZCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-08T02:52:01+00:00

Mistreated Journalists in the Post-Revolutionary Era

After the Egyptian revolution, during the period of turmoil preceding the elections of November 28 and 29, 2011, a new round of killing began (Copts but also Tahrir protesters) by the military, tightly holding power following the departure of Mubarak. Journalists in particular were targeted for their role in awakening public opinion in Egypt and worldwide. Some journalists became victims of repression, in particular those with Egyptian and Western identities, holding two passports and voicing their Western and Egyptian allegiances. These journalists are not merely from the diaspora and are not exactly identified as full-fledged Egyptians, at least by the people themselves. They wield an ambiguous identity through their ability to talk and argue according to Western and Egyptian value systems, sometimes supporting one against another, and sometimes using both to promote their view of the ideal society (for instance, in an article in the Guardian,45 Egyptian-American journalist and feminist Mona Eltahawy defended the Egyptian girl Elmahdy, who showed her naked pictures on Facebook46).

On November 24, Mona Eltahawy described via tweets what she saw across the street from the American University, a five-minute walk from Tahrir Square, as escalating chaos. When she went silent for a few hours, someone else tweeted: “Beaten and arrested in interior ministry.” Eight hours later she tweeted again, announcing that she had been freed and how she had been “subjected to the worse sexual assault ever.”47

These diaspora journalists mix with Egyptian colleagues who share their idea of freedom (many use Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other communication networks) and extend a helping hand to them by giving international coverage to their ordeals.

Maged Butter, a blogger accompanying Eltahawy on the night of November 24, was also arrested and detained and has not posted any updates on Twitter since then. His photos, bloodied and battered, were posted by fellow bloggers.

French Journalist Caroline Sinz was also beaten and raped by the mob on November 17 in Cairo.48 The same appears to have happened to journalist and filmmaker Jehane Nouhaim, who was said to have been arrested for filming protests in Tahrir Square on November 22. Maher Iskandar, a photographer for the Youm7 newspaper, was shot in the leg while documenting clashes in Cairo on November 18.

According to Reporters without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), there has been a steady stream of assaults against journalists in Egypt, ten in Tahrir Square and six more in Alexandria on and after November 20, 2011.49

The attitude of the security forces towards “unfriendly” journalists did not change much after the Egyptian revolution and the demise of Mubarak. The military establishment did not undergo a major transformation, and the old apparatus remains, similar to before the revolution. During the second protest wave in Tahrir Square in November 2011, 43 people were killed and 3,000 injured in clashes with the security forces.

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