Rights group: Less freedom of expression in post-Mubarak Egypt
Author: Nehal El-Sherif
Cairo (dpa) - A human rights group said on Sunday that emergency law - recently reactivated by the Egyptian government - had resulted in repressive practices and a decline in freedom of expression in the country.
“Freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt is experiencing a serious turning point, especially with the insistence of the Military Council to enforce emergency law and even expand its competencies,” said the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
The government said this month that emergency law was being applied to fight terrorism and anarchy, and to prevent people from "publishing false news."
The rights organization said the Sunday issue of Sawt Al-Ummah newspaper had been confiscated by authorities, without giving reasons.
The newspaper's editor Abdel-Halim Qandil said that issue included a report on the country's intelligence body, which was led for years by Omar Suleiman, a confidante of former president Hosny Mubarak.
The Cairo-based rights group also reported that a prominent researcher, Amr al-Shobaky, was harassed by airport security officials on Saturday, on his way back from Beirut.
However, airport officials on Sunday denied targeting al-Shobaky, and said that a technical failure had delayed procedures for a while.
French journalist Marie Josette Duboc was denied entry to Egypt on Saturday. Her name was on the airport security list of persons banned from entering because she had written articles that "harm Egypt’s reputation."
The Arabic Network said that Duboc was an activist who had resided in Egypt for three years, during which time she wrote a number of articles on labourers and social movements in Egypt.
A Lebanese blogger was also denied entry few weeks ago and was deported to Beirut, without official explanation.
The group demanded that the ruling military council "immediately cease the application of the flawed emergency law, and give logical reasons for the oppressive practices that took place recently."
Lifting the 30-year-old emergency law was one of the main demands of protesters who took to the streets in January, calling for the ouster of Mubarak and his regime.
The military council had promised in March that emergency law would be lifted prior to the parliamentary elections, scheduled for November. However, in September it said emergency law will be in effect until June 2012.
Emergency law was imposed following the assassination of president Anwar Sadat in October 1981.
