Mimi Chakarova, a social documentary photographer and lecturer at UC Berkeley’s JSchool.
Tag: journalists
Mubarak’s crackdown on free press continues
The pro-US dictator continues his crackdown on the opposition and independent press:
Reporters Without Borders today condemned a sentence of one-month’s forced labor imposed on editor of al-Wafd, Anwar Al-Hawari and Younes Darwish, the daily’s correspondent in Assiut, 380 kms south of Cairo, for “publishing false news” about fraud by two members of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP).
Darwish wrote an article that appeared in March 2007 based on a meeting of the regional municipal council in Assiut, during which two lawyers, both NDP members, were accused of illegally obtaining land belonging to the ministry of Islamic affairs.
The correspondent said that he had made no judgement about the two complainants but the local court nevertheless sentenced Anwar Al-Hawari and Younes Darmish to a month of forced labor. They will remain free while awaiting the outcome of their appeal, which is due to open on 5 January 2008.
“The growing number of court cases brought against Egyptian journalists is in complete contradiction with Hosni Mubarak’s electoral programme,” the worldwide press freedom organization said. “He promised at the start of his new mandate to decriminalise press offences.”
I received also a statement from HRINFO, which you can read here.
Egypt receives low ranking in annual press freedom index
From the Daily News Egypt:
Egypt came in at the bottom of the rankings in this year’s World Press Freedom Index, an annual rating published by Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) measuring the level of press freedom around the world.
Coming in at number 146 out of 169 countries evaluated, Egypt dropped 13 spots from number 133 last year.
Eritrea features last on the index, replacing North Korea who took bottom spot last year.
“There is nothing surprising about this. Eritrea deserves to be at the bottom. The privately-owned press has been banished by the authoritarian President Issaias Afeworki and the few journalists who dare to criticize the regime are thrown in prison. We know that four of them have died in detention and we have every reason to fear that others will suffer the same fate,” RSF stated.