Press conference to announce the issuance of the Annual Report of the Arabic Network for Human Right

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information stated today, that 2008 witnessed a great expansion in the use of the Emergency Law by the Egyptian authorities against a large number of journalists and bloggers, as well as a noticeable exacerbation in the pace of physical assaults and abduction committed against them, since the official authorities deliberately ignore investigating into these attacks; it is obvious that security men want to get away with their deeds with no accountability or punishment.

Despite the fact that the Network recorded a decline in the number of cases brought against journalists and bloggers in 2008, compared with 2007, however, the violations that took place in 2008 are characterized by being more violent and more severe; as the police have, in many cases, tended to impose extralegal punishments on those who hold different opinions, through abduction or physical abuses, and many of these practices occurred outside Cairo.

The Annual Report, issued by the Arabic Network on freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt, has monitored a number of examples of religious and political Hisba lawsuits; a growing phenomenon in recent years and the seriousness of which aggravates year after year, as a growing number of lawyers and religious men seek to gain fame or flatter the Egyptian government and the ruling NDP, through filing Hisba cases against creative writers and journalists.

The report addresses the unprecedented government persecution against satellite channels, which affected a number of Egyptian channels and programs as well as the American Channel “al-Hurra”, and the Iranian Channel “Al-Alam”, along with companies that provide direct broadcast service to a large number of Satellite Channels, such as the Cairo News Company.

The report also provides a big list of books and magazines that have been confiscated in 2008, and the bodies which confiscate literary works by legal means, and bodies that confiscate publications in violation of the law; noting with concern that the latter is the most prominent cases in the list of confiscated works.

The Arabic Network will announce its Annual Report in a Press Conference, held at the Press Syndicate, and hosted by the Syndicate”s Freedoms Committee, at 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday May 27.

A hard copy of the report will be available in both Arabic and English for journalists, simultaneous translation into English will also be available.

Event: Press Conference to announce the Annual Report on the situation of freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt in 2008.
Time: Wednesday, May 27, 2009- 12:00 p.m.
Venue: Press Syndicate.