Attacks on the Press in 2010 - Committee to Protect Journalists

Middle East and North Africa: Country Summariesof insulting Islam and the president. Amer, the first blogger in the MiddleEast to be imprisoned explicitly for views expressed online, was harassedand beaten by authorities throughout his time in prison, CPJ sources said.Egypt enjoys a diverse and fast-growing blogosphere. Journalistic bloggershave been instrumental in uncovering public corruption and the tortureof detainees in police custody. But bloggers who express controversialviews or are openly critical of government policies are routinely harassedby security agents. The government has numerous tools at its disposal tosilence critical bloggers, including the 1996 Press Law, which criminalizesthe vaguely defined offense of “spreading false news,” and the penal code,which bars material deemed insulting.Security forces continued a long-standing practice of obstructing journalistscovering street protests. Officers harassed journalists working forAl-Jazeera, Dream TV, Al-Masry al-Youm, Nahdet Misr, and Al-Karamaduring protests in Cairo organized by the April 6 Youth Movement,according to news reports. Al-Jazeera correspondent Samir Amr told CPJthat “security officers surrounded us, seized our cameras, and ordered usto leave the scene.” Ibrahim Kamal Eldeen, a photographer for Al-Masryal-Youm, told CPJ that two officers grabbed him by the neck and pushedhim violently. “I showed them my journalist credentials,” he said, “but theytold me they didn’t care.”IranDefying international condemnation, the government sustained itswidespread crackdown on the press, prosecuting journalists arrestedin the aftermath of the disputed June 2009 presidential election and detainingadditional critical reporters and editors throughout 2010. More than100 journalists in all had been detained at various times since the crackdownbegan, CPJ research showed, a campaign of intimidation unparalleledworldwide in more than a decade. The repression came at a time ofgreat global significance that included disputes over Iran’s nuclear programand tightening international sanctions.Journalists were repeatedly sentenced to harsh prison terms—oftenof five or six years, but many of more than 10 years—on vague antistatecharges such as “propagating against the regime.” News of these casestrickled out in brief online reports; authorities often pursued the prosecutionsunder cover of secrecy in closed courts, sometimes denying detaineesaccess to counsel. Human rights defenders documented numerous credible235