• EGYPT
  • October 30, 2014
  • 3 minutes read

Journalists Against The Coup: Military Junta Creates Exclusionary Fascist Media

Journalists Against The Coup: Military Junta Creates Exclusionary Fascist Media

 In a statement, the Journalists Against The Coup (JAC) movement said: "Media and press freedom in Egypt made a powerful and unprecedented leap… backwards, plunging Egypt deep in the darkness of brutal repression and tightly-controlled media.



"This of course is the exact opposite of the freedom the people of Egypt and the January 25 Revolution demand. New ‘controls’ are imposed on all media workers under flimsy claims, as evident in the regime media henchmen’s recent dubious meeting at Al-Wafd newspaper, and the kind of fascist exclusionary media they announced, effectively killing press and media freedom."


JAC pointed that the participation of Diaa Rashwan, the Journalists’ Syndicate chief, in such a dubious meeting is a political act par excellence, especially since this meeting’s announced goal was to face up to "terrorism" in a "unified media discourse", which takes Egypt back to the era of government-controlled media.


"The Syndicate chief should not have attended such a meeting. He is entrusted with the defense of freedom of the press, not the muzzling of all media.


"In fact, the meeting called for more of the media muzzling already practiced since the July 3, 2013 military coup… This authoritarian approach is doomed to failure because it runs against the spirit of the times."


JAC stressed that freedom of the press begins with fair retribution for murdered journalists, the release of jailed journalists and the return to work of unjustly sacked journalists.


"Those journalists should be compensated for the abuse they have suffered as a result of military junta oppression. Journalists and all media professionals should be encouraged to tell their opinion freely without fear of physical or moral punishment, instead of passing fast-boiled half-cooked laws to muzzle mouths and kill more journalists."