You've been warned!

[newcastle]

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi warned Egyptian media outlets on Thursday from spreading information that may defame the army or police forces, saying that such acts should be considered “treason.”

He added during his inauguration to development projects inside the New Alamein City located on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast that he will call on state’s apparatuses to respond with charges to ‘treacherous’ people who insult army and police.

“Army and police forces are representing Egyptians,” said Sisi. “For nearly four years there are martyrs from both entities who sacrificed their lives to save Egyptians, this means that if anyone insulted both entities, they are harming all Egyptians,” Sisi explained.

http://www.egyptindependent.com/insulti ... nion-sisi/

The warning is not new and has been repeated in various guises before.

Note he doesn't say that the information has to be demonstrably false. The message may have lost something in translation but it appears to cover the simple repetition of any news article, maybe even from the state controlled organs, which could be construed as casting aspersions on the army or police . Time and experience will tell.

The recent furore over the BBC programme "The Shadow over Egypt" has resulted in the authorities locating Zubeida, the victim of alleged torture and enforced disappearence and getting her to categorically deny it on TV :

phpBB [video]

You can take it at face value - or not - as you wish. One mystery remaining is why Zubeida should suddenly cut herself off from her mother a year ago. She was unable, or unwilling to explain.

Or, as Egypt Today puts it :

"She appeared in a fabricated report aired by the BBC on alleged cases of forced disappearances in Egypt.

Then, in a TV interview conducted by renowned anchor Amr Adib, Zubeida Ibrahim refuted claims by a BBC report about her "forced disappearance".

The 25-year-old woman added that she is living in the Giza neighborhood of Faisal and did not know anything about the story made about her. She is currently living with her husband and son and has no contact with her Muslim Brotherhood member mother."

https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/44 ... false-news

Meanwhile. Zubeida's mother, appears to be in hot water :

"CAIRO — A mother who angered Egyptian authorities by accusing the police in a foreign news report of torturing her daughter has been arrested and was ordered detained on Friday, while the human rights lawyer who first publicly mentioned the mother’s detention has gone missing."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/mi ... 95cf15ea74

The Egyptian government seems to be focusing heavily on the Zubeida Affair, hoping, no doubt, to undermine the credibility of the programme as a whole. The programme contained other interviews with victims of alleged torture as well as repeating the claims of Amnesty International and others that the practice is, and always has been, endemic in Egypt.

These claims are repeatedly denied by the Egyptian authorities who regard AI as no more than an arm of he CIA/MI6, no doubt with Jewish overtones, whose raison d'être is the subversion of the Egyptian state.

Why the security apparatuses of the US/UK would wish to do so, whilst their political masters show absolutely no sign of making Egyot pay for alleged human rights abuses, remains an inexplicable contradiction.

Egyptian society remains deeply polarised with regard to the current regime

It's supporters deny the existence of human rights abuses, or if not, consider them an acceptable price to pay for stability.

It's opponents are cowed and rendered powerless by the state control of media outlets, draconian emergency laws, and the threat - real or imagined that they will face dire punishment for voicing any opposition.

It's a win-win situation for the state so long as outside actors remain compliant.

[Dusak]

A face can speak a thousand words.

[Hafiz]

I've got a view on it which is so obvious it doesn't need mention.

What I can't understand is the BBC team. Surely, if they had any experience, they would have guessed the chances of backlash - they were covering an out of control police state - and should have photographed her in a very dark room or used technology to erase her face and distort her voice before screening. These are techniques widely used to protect people and journalists with a conscience always try to protect their sources.

I think the BBC should convene a disciplinary hearing.

[crewmeal]

It seems the BBC has turned amateurish in their approach to reporting news lately. Their approach is so left wing and they are all for the downtrodden regardless of who they interview. In the UK they protect faces and voices, outside they don't bother and as Hafiz says, in this case, they shouldn't have shown her face and should have distorted her voice. We know what happens in Egypt and trying to uncover these stories for the home market is not going help anyone's cause.

Look what happened to the journos from Al Jezerra, maybe the same could happen to the BBC.

https://biasedbbc.org/quotes-of-shame/

[newcastle]

I think it's obvious that Umm Zubeida was happy to have her identity disclosed - and take the consequences. From recollection, she said something to this effect when interviewed by Orla Guerin.

“I wish they would take me, and let her go,” she says. “Take me, arrest me instead. What danger might we pose to those in power? If my daughter is disappeared and they’ve taken her and tortured her, how can I not speak out? Even if my words lead to my hanging, I will still speak."

Her outspokenness , to my mind, makes it unlikely that her story was fabricated.

What she may not have anticipated was her daughter disclaiming her mother's story....voluntarily or otherwise.

The Egyptian authorities are used to discrediting reports of torture from "anonymous" sources. Well, here they have someone brave enough, or foolish enough, to speak out.

The BBC programme also contained the testimony of Mahmud Mohamed Hussein - again he appears to have spoken freely and without disguise.

“There are many people suffering what I have been through,” he says. “I saw many people in prison who asked me to convey messages about what they faced. I can only stop talking about torture when it comes to an end.”

The authorities have not, as yet as far as I know, arrested him. In fact their condemnation of the BBC report seems solely focused on Umm Zubeida.

"Mahmud is not the only torture victim to share his story with me. Another young man - who asked us not to reveal his identity - described being subjected to every kind of abuse."

I think Orla Gurin knows what her responsibilities are.

[Hafiz]

Agree with a deal. but journalists are supposed to be tough minded and cynical and when they interview an emotional simple person from the sticks whose judgement of political, police and judicial matters is likely to be deeply flawed and twisted by emotion everyone in the jouno world in a bad third world country knows that you must insist. In such cases the choice of the local is flawed. Its like some contract signing in the west - the choice is not fully informed or the person's state of mind is not capable of proper consent.

Crewmeal is right - never in 50 years has the whole region been populated with kids with no language skills, no academic training, poor writing skills, poor research skills, fixed positions, few local contacts and a serious disability - inability to travel outside a capital city. The good ones have left, driven out or dead. On the other hand there have been long time old hands in the region with only one eye for Assad and did his propaganda for him in The Independent - the awful Robert Fisk.

In any event local conditions are poor and you would think the main agencies/media would send their toughened types.

Reuters continues to do a brilliant job straddling its responsibilities as an accurate press agency whilst occasionally blowing the whistle with an investigative piece. They can also write well.