Skip to content
3arabawy
3arabawy

Hossam el-Hamalawy

  • Home
  • About
  • Archive
  • Blog
  • Photos
  • Books
3arabawy

Hossam el-Hamalawy

EU policy seen more carrot than stick for Egypt

Posted on 08/03/200727/12/2020 By 3arabawy

From Reuters:

A policy plan signed by Egypt and the European Union, worth 558 million euros ($733 million) to Egypt over four years, has much more carrot than stick when it comes to politics and human rights, experts said on Wednesday.
Political analysts and politicians said they doubted the European Union (EU) would ever threaten to withhold any of the aid money to punish the Egyptian government for any abuses.
“The aim is not to penalize but rather to encourage. The European approach will be very patient, very incremental and very supportive,” said a diplomat who asked not to be named.
The European diplomat said the money was already allocated to sectors and programs agreed by the two sides and the Europeans had no intention of linking it to performance benchmarks.

Crackdown on Egyptian blogosphere continues

Posted on 08/03/200727/12/2020 By 3arabawy

I received the following message from blogger ِAmr Gharbeia:

Rumors have been reaching me for days now, and I received confirmation only today from lawyer Gamal Eid, executive manager of Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.
It seems that Judge Abdel Fattah Morad, head of Alexandria Appeal Court, has started a lawsuit against the government in Egypt’s Administrative Courts in order to block a number of Egyptian websites. The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya.
Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.

UPDATE: More details from Amr:

The lawsuit is started by Abdel Fattah Murad, one of Egypt’s most senior judges–and head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, where imprisoned blogger Abdul Kareem Nabil Soliman’s case is heard next week.
The judge is a self-claimed authority in internet issues. I was excited by the fact that he started a blog a while ago, and wrote him asking if he would mind me writing a review for a book he published recently on “the scientific and legal foundations of blogs”. He did not mind, until I published the thing. He obviously has copied tens of pages from the recent report by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information on Internet freedoms in the Arab world. I noticed this only because some of the figures and estimations were taken from an interview with me. He did this without citation, except for one link to in the endnotes, while putting footnotes to other books he wrote on text that he has not written.
Three things prove it is not a mistake: 1) he copied at least two other bloggers with no referencing at all; 2) he changed parts in the text copied from the report to mean the opposite, for example to indicate that Tunisia is a nice, liberal and progressive country; and 3) he published at the front and back pages of his book several warnings against plagiarism, and referred to laws, religions and scientific research methods. He does not allow anyone to cite anything more than two lines from his writings, and in the book he warns against bloggers who violate copyrights, associates them with international terrorism and other things, and claims he has written a reference on scientific methodology. To top it all, he annexes ready-to-fill complaint forms against bloggers who publish pornography (fitting someone’s head over a naked body, an imaginary case with no history in Egypt’s blogs) and publicizing news that could tarnish the country’s reputation.
I do not really care much for copy rights, and think they are over-rated and keep knowledge, medicine, and soon genetically-engineered food from the world’s poorest, and I would not have written anything if this was another blogger, or a journalist, or even a university professor. What worries me, however, is that this is a judge whose ruling cannot be appealed. He can silence, imprison or execute people, and he oversees our elections.
Once the blogs are found offensive by the court, then in light of the Egyptian’s regime reputation, it is automatic to prosecute the bloggers. This is an early warning. We are still gathering information, and HRInfo should be making a release and starting procedure Saturday next.

Al-Jazeera reporter trial lacks fair standards, rights groups say

Posted on 08/03/200726/12/2020 By 3arabawy

I received the following update from HR-INFO on the trial of Al-Jazeera’s Howeida Taha:

The session yesterday including watching small parts of the 16 tapes that were confiscated on 8 January 2007 claiming that these tapes included acting scenes that Al-Jazeera is planning to broadcast and destroy the reputation of Egypt. The court then asked to hear the witnesses presented by the State Security Prosecutor. The defense requested the session to be postponed for the defense to discuss some of the witnesses and some officers of the Ministry of Interior who were interviewed by Howayda Taha during here preparation for the documentary. In addition, the defense wanted to bring in some of the doctors who were interviewed. The judge refused any of these requests and postponed the case to 28 March to hear the defence statements and disregarding defense requests!
The three human rights organizations announced their fears that standards for a just trial would not be respected in this case. Without these fulfilling the requests of the defense team, it would be difficult to prepare a strong defense that is based on discussion with witnesses and experts. Their statements might change the way the case is heading. In addition, the court refused to watch the tapes completely in order to guarantee that the tapes really destroy the reputation of the country or not, especially that the material in the tapes is still unedited.
It is worth mentioning that while discussing the witnesses, it appeared that there has been contradictions in the statement of one of the state security officer who took the witness stand upon the request of the prosecutor. The witness is supposedly the one who carried the investigation for this case. His answers varied from a strong belief that the material on the tapes are fabricated to him saying in the same session that he was not sure of Howayda Taha’s time of travel and that he was surprised that the material in the tapes are fabricated after he watched it with millions of others on a Television after copies of the tape were leaked in a controversial manner!

  • Previous
  • 1
  • …
  • 1,916
  • 1,917
  • 1,918
  • …
  • 2,048
  • Next

Search 3arabawy

Follow 3arabawy

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Instagram
  • Bluesky
  • X
  • YouTube
  • Spotify
©2026 3arabawy