CSM: Arab TV feels the pinch of new broadcast limits

Arab TV feels the pinch of new broadcast limits

The Arab League has adopted new restrictions on satellite broadcasters warning them not to insult Arab leaders.

By Liam Stack Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
May 2, 2008

Cairo - Spread across the top of this city's crooked skyline like a field of mushrooms, satellite dishes absorb signals beamed from across the Arab world to send images of pop stars and politicians to the throngs of families living below.

Throughout the Middle East, where governments have long had a powerful grip on the media, satellite broadcasting serves as an important source of information – and entertainment – that has been beyond the traditional reach of the state censors.

But now, according to rights groups and media observers, Arab governments are slowly moving to extend their control of the media to satellite broadcasters, as well.

In February, the Arab League adopted the Satellite Broadcast Charter, a new package of tight guidelines for broadcasters, at the instigation of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which own two of the region's main satellites, Nilesat and Arabsat.

The document urges TV stations to "uphold the supreme interests of the Arab countries" and warns them "not to insult their leaders or national and religious symbols" or "insult social peace and national unity."

Weeks after adopting the charter, Egypt's Nilesat dropped Al Hiwar, a London-based network seen as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's main opposition group. Following that, Egyptian police confiscated the transmission equipment of the Cairo News Company (CNC), a syndicate that news agencies such as Al Jazeera and the Associated Press rely on to broadcast their footage live from Egypt.

Nader Gohar, CNC director, says the government raided CNC in April because it blames it for images broadcast by Al Jazeera of protestors destroying portraits of President Hosni Mubarak during two days of food riots.

Although Mr. Gohar says that his company did not broadcast the images, and that Al Jazeera correspondents bypassed him and sent their footage directly to their Qatar headquarters from their satellite phones, he says a service provider such as CNC is an easier target than a major network.

"The government doesn't like what Al Jazeera says in their broadcasts, but at the same time it won't shut down their office," he says. "So they bother people like me because I give Jazeera the technical facilities they need to broadcast. It is an indirect way of limiting Al Jazeera's work."

Both the new charter and the seizure of transmission equipment from the CNC are part of the same repressive trend, says Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo.

"It is all a symptom of the same reality, that this government and others in the region refuse to back away from the big brother mentality when it comes to the media," he says.

Egypt's media is freer than most in the Arab world. A number of independent newspapers and television channels have flourished here over the past several years, many of which were at their peak during a brief period of political openness that accompanied the 2005 presidential election.

President Mubarak handily won reelection in 2005, and his main challenger has languished in a prison cell ever since. As 2005 recedes further in to the past, the government has begun to move more aggressively against the press.

At the country's independent newspapers, editors, and journalists have been sentenced to jail for insulting the ruling party and speculating about the health of the country's leader, who turns 80 next month and has ruled Egypt for 27 years. Satellite broadcasters have started to feel the pinch, too.

Hussein Abdel Ghany, Cairo bureau chief for Al Jazeera, is concerned by the changing environment for satellite networks in the region, and in Egypt in particular. Al Jazeera was never consulted about the new guidelines issued in February, he says, but in particular he is "really worried about what is happening with our service provider," the CNC.

He calls the seizure of their equipment "a sneaky, indirect" way to attack freedom of the press.

"We rely on our cooperation with service providers, especially for covering live events," he says. "They are our only way to work here."

"If the government starts to close down service providers, or harass them to stop cooperating with independent media like Al Jazeera, the BBC, or the AP, then this is something that the international community and human rights groups that focus on freedom of speech should be paying attention to," he adds.

The state prosecutor has charged the CNC with violation of the 1960 Transmission Law, which gives the state-run Egyptian Radio and Television Union the sole right to transmit television signals out of the country. That law does not take into account the existence of technologies such as satellite broadcasting and the Internet.

The government has long promised to update the law, and will not renew the operating licenses of groups like the CNC until the law is changed.

Critics say the government has taken no action toward actually changing the law, and want to keep the media in a state of limbo.

"If you make a mistake the government will punish you for not having a license, but if you don't make any problems for them then you will be OK," says Gohar.

Critics say that those gray areas are the government's best weapon against the independent media.

Hussein Amin, the author of the Satellite Broadcast Charter, says that one of his goals for the document is to clarify those shades of gray. "Imagine you are walking in a dark room and someone turns on the lights," he says. "Censorship is that darkness and regulations are the lights."

He compares the guidelines to those of the Federal Communications Commission in the United States, and says it is meant to protect Arab youth from pornography, violence, and "hate campaigns" run by terrorist groups.

"It was obvious that some channels were really designed just to implement hate campaigns against Christians in general and Americans in particular."

He points to Al Zawra, a channel run by Sunni militants in Iraq that was pulled from both Nilesat and Arabsat last year.

Mr. Amin, who is chairman of the journalism department at the American University in Cairo and a member of the policy committee of the ruling party, which advises Mubarak, says critics of the document do not under "the difference between freedom and responsible freedom."

"People need to remember that this is not the United States or Europe," he says. "This is still authoritarianism. The government can ban any network they want if it is giving them a hard time. They can ban it. They are in control."

CSM: Amid violent riots, Egyptian elections fizzle

Amid violent riots, Egyptian elections fizzle

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood, facing repression, failed to harness growing public discontent.

By Liam Stack Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
April 9, 2008

Cairo - Finally, after a two-year postponement, Egypt's polls opened Tuesday for municipal council elections. But hardly anyone came.

In Cairo's Manyal neighborhood, many residents said they did not realize there was an election. Among those who were aware, many said voting was useless, with candidates loyal to President Hosni Mubarak running unopposed in 90 percent of the races.

"I voted last time but this time I won't because I don't think it is going to be fair," says Hany, a young man who declined to give his last name. "It makes all of us feel like the government is only doing what it wants, and doesn't care about what we want."

The elections are being held at a time of burgeoning economic unrest and ongoing political repression. Public discontent with the regime is widespread, and opposition groups appear unable to successfully mobilize this growing dissent.

The weeks before Tuesday's vote were marked by a systemic campaign to block regime critics from running in the contest, which had been postponed since April 2006. At the center of the crackdown were the arrests over the past several weeks of 1,000 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's main opposition group.

The Brotherhood, which holds a fifth of parliament's seats, says it had planned to support 10,000 candidates for 52,000 posts on local councils at the town, city and province level across Egypt. But faced with intimidation and bureaucratic technicalities, fewer than two dozen managed to get their names on final election lists.

On Monday, the Brotherhood pulled their candidates from the race and called on Egyptians to boycott the vote, saying that it would not reflect the will of the Egyptian people.

"The regime has adopted a strategy to keep us from competing with them in elections – they decided they would start arresting people, detaining people, and trying some of them in front of military courts," says Mohamed Habib, the group's deputy leader. "They want to have the security apparatus control the whole country, and put the Brotherhood on the sidelines of political life so it can not be an active participant in it."

The government also tried, through state-run media, to intimidate prospective participants in a general strike called by secular opposition groups over the weekend. In the first major attempt by opposition groups and intellectuals to coordinate actions with labor activists, the strike was planned to coincide with a worker's strike at the state-run Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla. The factory is the largest public-sector firm in the Middle East and a national icon.

But both strikes were thwarted by a combination of worker infighting and a crackdown by state security, which arrested 150 labor leaders early Sunday morning. Protests erupted in Mahalla late that afternoon when townspeople, including a large number of women and children, gathered in the main square to protest the morning arrests as well as a skyrocketing inflation rate, which has nearly doubled the price of many staple foods in the last three months. Nearly 40 percent of Egypt's 80 million people live at or near the poverty line of $2 a day.

The protest turned violent when thugs hired by security services, called baltageyya, began pelting demonstrators with stones, according to witnesses.

"One minute there was nothing, and then suddenly there were big crowds of people and state security officers and baltageyya," says Joel Beinin, a labor historian and professor of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo, who was present at the Mahalla demonstrations.

"The baltageyya started throwing rocks very carefully, like they were firing volleys. They aimed very high so they would arc up and then fall on people's heads."

According to Ahmed Seif, Director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, rioting spread across the city as police pursued demonstrators from neighborhood to neighborhood firing tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and live rounds of ammunition. Protesters responded with stones, bricks and Molotov cocktails.

Monday afternoon saw new clashes when a crowd of young men tore down a large portrait of President Mubarak in the city's main square. Demonstrators also burned banks, schools, buses and shops. Estimates of those injured in the violence range from 80 to more than 150. Local media reported up to five killed.

"Workers and people from the town came out in to the streets all around the factory without any organization, breaking things and setting them on fire," says Syed Habib, a Mahalla labor organizer reached by phone after the riots. "Everything has come to a standstill. The only thing working now is the factory."

Observers say the outburst of violence in an iconic factory town, as well as the inability of opposition movements to organize a strike, demonstrates both the disorganization of the Egyptian opposition and the deep frustration felt by many Egyptians across the boundaries of social class.

"The regime knew it could not let a general strike happen and that any movement that came from the working classes as well as [the] intellectual [classes] is not a good sign for them," says Mr. Beinin. "The regime reacted very, very strongly, judging correctly that this was a potentially very serious challenge to them," he added. "But what happened surely indicates that opposition movements are very disorganized."

CSM: Egypt targets Muslim Brotherhood moderates

Egypt targets Muslim Brotherhood moderates

President Hosni Mubarak's regime is clamping down on the banned opposition group ahead of next month's local elections.

By Liam Stack Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
March 26, 2008

Cairo - Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members waited under the hot spring sun on the Hikestep Army Base near Cairo on Tuesday to hear the verdict against 40 other influential members on trial for participating in the banned opposition movement.

Many traveled from far away provinces to hear the decision, only to be told that the verdict was being delayed – again.

It was a repeat of a similar scene in February, when around 1,000 Brotherhood members holding banners, photographs of the defendants, and copies of the Koran filled the parking lot of the base, only to be told then that the decision was postponed.

Members of the opposition group, human rights activists, and other reform advocates here see the 14-month-old military trial as part of the government's ongoing crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood to diminish its political prospects ahead of next month's polls in which more than 10,000 local council seats are up for grabs. They say the trial has targeted key moderates in the movement, as well as important financiers, in an attempt to push it further to the margins of Egyptian public life.

"The fact that they keep delaying the verdict means that this case is purely political and there are no actual, serious charges," says Mohamed Habib, deputy leader of the Brotherhood, who himself was sentenced to five years in prison by a military court in 1995 for membership in a banned group. "The regime is mainly interested in keeping pressure on the Brotherhood to prevent us from taking any action."

Detained, intimidated, on the run

More than 800 Brotherhood members who have been involved in campaigns for local council seats have been detained in recent months and many of its prominent members have gone into hiding around the country.

Thousands of aspiring Brotherhood candidates have been barred from filing their paperwork by a mix of bureaucratic trickery and violence, says Mr. Habib, who estimates that the group will not be able to field more than 15 candidates in next month's race.

While the Muslim Brotherhood is officially banned in Egypt, its members run in elections as independents. In parliamentary elections in 2005, the group stunned President Hosni Mubarak's regime by winning one-fifth of the seats in the country's People's Assembly.

The group renounced violence in the 1970s and focused on establishing a vast network of charitable activities for the country's poor, such as schools, clinics, and youth centers.

In recent years, it has emerged as a major advocate of democratic reform in Egypt, coupling calls for elections with its longstanding arguments for Islamic law.

Brotherhood members and outside observers say the crackdown has weakened the influence of the movement's moderates and empowered its more conservative ideological elements.

Ibrahim El Houdaiby, an editor of IkhwanWeb, the group's English-language website, says the government is cracking down on moderate Islamists because they are more willing to engage with the international community and to work across party lines with opposition groups of different ideological stripes.

He points to the recent arrest of a senior IkhwanWeb editor, Khaled Hamza, who was detained on a busy street just hours after meeting with visitors from an international human rights group.
Moderates increasingly targeted

"People with a greater ability to reach out to those with different ideologies and backgrounds, like secular opposition groups in Egypt and the international community, are at a higher risk of being detained," he said.

That view is shared by Zahraa El Shater, the daughter of Khairat El Shater, the movement's No. 3 leader and a lead defendant in the case.

Ms. El Shater says it will take "a miracle" for her father and her husband, Ayman Abdel Ghani, who is also on trial, to be released.

If the regime wanted to give them a fair trial, she says, it would abide by the multiple acquittals they received in civilian courts.

Instead, she thinks the regime wants to punish the men for their moderate views and openness to the West.

"My father was taken because he was moderate and liked to open dialogue with Western people, with American people," she says. "The government here hates that. It does not want the Muslim Brotherhood to talk to Western people.

The imprisonment of Mr. El Shater and other moderates has had "a tremendous effect on the internal workings of the group" by upsetting the balance between pragmatists and conservatives, says Joshua Stacher, a fellow at Syracuse University who specializes in Middle Eastern politics.

This case is the first time the government has gone after the finances of Brotherhood members, says Samer Shehata, a professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.

That is significant, he says, because it strikes a blow at the charitable activities that draw in many of its supporters, and also sends a warning to the movement's donors.

"If the government goes after its funding, then this stops the money used to fund these activities," says Shehata. "Now the government is not only jailing people, but also threatening their families' well-being."

CSM: U.S., Egypt disagree over Suez shooting, fueling suspicion

U.S., Egypt disagree over Suez shooting, fueling suspicion

A US Navy-chartered cargo ship fired on a small Egyptian boat Monday night. Egypt says at least one man was killed, while the US initially reported no casualties.

By Liam Stack Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
March 26, 2008

Cairo - Egypt and the United States issued conflicting accounts Tuesday of a shooting incident involving a US cargo ship and a small boat in the Suez Canal, feeding into the deep distrust here of American motives in the Middle East.

The Global Patriot, which was under short-term charter to the Navy's Military Sealift Command, entered the canal from the Red Sea after dark Monday, when it was approached by several small boats, US and Egyptian officials say.

According to the Egyptian government and local reports, the vessel opened fire on one of the motorboats as it transited through the canal, killing an Egyptian man and injuring two others.

Two men on the boat were injured and one man, identified as Mohamed Moqtar Afifi by Agence France-Presse, was killed.

The US Navy has been particularly alert to the activities of such small boats near its warships since Al Qaeda's 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen killed 17 sailors.

"The Americans come to the Middle East and deal with everyone like they are Al Qaeda," says Essam el-Erian, a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's most influential opposition group. He says that it is "well known in the area that these people sail beside big ships and sell things."

"It is terrible to kill poor people like this without any warning and it reflects the foolish American policy of treating everyone like an enemy," he said.

But US officials say preliminary reports from the ship indicate there were no casualties.

According to the US Embassy in Cairo, the small boats approaching the ship were warned to move away from the vessel by an Arabic speaker on a bullhorn. The ship then fired "a warning flare" at one boat that did not change its course.

"One small boat continued to approach the ship and received two sets of warning shots 20 to 30 yards in front of the bow," reads the statement. "All shots were accounted for as they entered the water."

The motorboats in the Suez Canal incident are believed by many Egyptians to have belonged to mamboutis, local vendors who peddle simple goods such as cigarettes, tea, and snacks to ships passing through the canal.

Pending the results of an investigation, there has been no ready explanation for why the American account is so different from the one reported in the Egyptian local and state-run media.

Nabil Abdel Fattah, the deputy director of the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, also attributed the incident to an American "obsession" with terrorists.

"The American soldiers who come to the Middle East see a threat in everything," he said. "They think so much about terrorist groups, Al Qaeda, nationalist groups. There are many phantoms and obsessions in their minds.

"Egyptians are angry," he added. "There are many nonviolent ways that the American soldiers could get these people away, who were just trying to sell them some simple goods."