Write Like an Egyptian
By admin • Dec 16th, 2008Media in the land of the Pharoahs are pushing free speech, but they may be missing how the local newspaper market is changing.
For journalists, Abdel Halim Qandil and Wael Alebrashy, Dec. 6 could mean packing their bags and heading to Egypt’s vile prisons. Both will hear an appeal verdict against a 2007 court order sentencing them to one year in jail for libeling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his son Gamal, deputy secretary-general of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
“Prison is fonder to me than Muba-rak’s pardon. He holds the right to pardon us and we seize the right to criticize him,” says Abdel Halim Qandil, ex-editor-in-chief of al-Karama, the Al Karama Political Party’s weekly newspaper, and the spokesperson of the anti-Mubarak Kefaya (Enough) movement.
To Qandil, one of the most vocal critics of the Egyptian President, Mubarak’s pardon is both humiliating and deceptive. “[He] wants to beautify the image of the regime but proves [his] critics right. It is more dignified for the public prosecutor to suspend the imprisonment until the case reaches the Egyptian Supreme Court, the highest judicial institution.”
Qandil’s imprisonment would not come as a surprise to Egyptians. “It is bound to happen,” is a commonly-heard response to their predicament. Qandil’s columns have embarrassed Mubarak for engineering a fifth term of office and leaving the presidency to his son Gamal.
Alebrashy was not kidnapped, badly beaten or thrown half-naked, bruised and bleeding onto a motorway in 2004, as Qandil was. But he still remains a target of the undemocratic regime. Why? He published a blacklist of judges responsible for manipulating the results of the 2005 presidential elections.
“What do I expect? The law knows no expectations. I assume the worst. On the night of Dec. 6, I will pack my personal belongings in a bag and prepare myself for prison,” says Alebrashy, ex-editor-in-chief of Sawt al-Ummah, an independent weekly newspaper.
