Concern in New Egypt as Police Raid Al-Jazeera

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Posted on Sep 11, 2011

Al-Jazeera English (CC-BY-ND)

Egyptian police raided the Cairo offices of the news network Al-Jazeera on Sunday in what is being interpreted by some of Egypt’s revolutionaries as a crackdown on free expression and a continuation of some of the autocratic practices of the regime of ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak.

McClatchy reports that security police confiscated equipment and detained an engineer. Officials for the interim military rulers of Egypt blame the incident on bad paperwork, but the excuse isn’t flying and there are fears among some of the Tahrir Square protesters that their hard-fought freedom is threatened by this and more serious incidents.  —PZS

McClatchy Newspapers:

The contradiction of government policies put us in a complicated situation,” said Safwat el Alem, a professor of political media at Cairo University. “Am I supposed to believe the media minister when he confirms the protection of freedoms, or should I fear him when he announces laws banning the press from tackling vital issues and denying permits for media workers?”

[...] A blogger who’s been charged with spreading false rumors for publishing a lengthy article on torture by Egyptian police and soldiers said she was uncowed by the military’s hostility.

“I will publish on the Internet, on the walls of Tahrir Square; I will write my stories on my shirts and stand in public for people to read it,” said Rasha Azab. “You will never be able to suppress us, not anymore.”

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TAGS: al jazeera arab spring cairo egypt free speech government hosni mubarak journalism media military

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By OzarkMichael, September 12, 2011 at 10:39 am Link to this comment

From a month ago, a dispatch from Lauren Unger-Geoffroy:

“The participation of well-organized Islamist forces, as well as Wafd Party, have made the 29 July demonstration look much stronger than former ones,” claimed Maj. Gen. Mohamed Abdellatif Tolba. Yet military officers asserted on Friday that the Egyptian people will not accept a state governed by religion.

I pointed out at the time that the military seems to be the news organization reporting on the meetings in Tahrir. That did not bode will for a free press inthe future

Also, it is less than optimal that the military is deciding what the Egyptian people will and will not accept in their government, per the quote above.

Now the military is perhaps eliminating a rather trusted news service.

Yes, i know that this is a unique point in Egypt’s history, so one ought not to expect all the functioning of a democracy as we in the West understand it. I also know that what Egyptians want for themselves is far more important than what we want for them.

But I would like to see some discussion here because
i dont know what to make of this of all this.

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