Egypt: Campaign to Crush Artistic Freedom

Restrictions, Blanket Censorship, and Prosecutions in Military Courts

2018-08-16

The Egyptian authorities have arrested over a dozen people in a crackdown against artists, apparently prosecuting them for exercising their freedom of speech, Human Rights Watch said on Aug 16, 2018. The government also has issued new decrees to severely curtail freedom of expression. Security agencies and recently created government entities have added layers of censorship to silence criticism of the government on television and in movies, theaters, and books.

Since February 2018, authorities have arrested or prosecuted an Egyptian poet, a prominent pop singer, a playwright, a belly dancer, and several actors and filmmakers solely for their work. The Supreme State Security Prosecution (SSSP), which oversees terrorism cases, or the military prosecution unit, have summoned these artists, some of whom face terrorism-related charges. New regulations have heightened barriers for independent artists and nongovernmental organizations to organize public art events, and the main state censorship authority is expanding its offices around the country.

“The obsession with prosecuting artists for expression authorities simply dislike shows what a farce President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s claim is that his administration’s priority is ‘fighting terrorism,’” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “It seems a key aim of al-Sisi’s government today is to brutalize and bully Egypt’s entire society into silence and submission, including the country’s creative class of artists.”

On July 31, a military court sentenced Galal al-Behairy, a poet, to three years in prison for “spreading false news” and insulting the military establishment.

Security forces arrested him on March 3, and held him incommunicado until he appeared before the SSSP on March 10. His lawyers said that he showed signs of severe torture. The charges against him stem from his unpublished book, The Finest Women on Earth, which is critical of Egypt’s security forces. An investigation in a separate case before a civilian criminal court is ongoing against al-Behairy because of a satirical song he wrote, “Balaha,” which Ramy Essam, a singer who has publicly opposed the government, performed and which gained popularity on Egyptian social media networks. An arrest warrant in this case has been issued in absentia against Essam, who lives outside Egypt. They face charges under the abusive 2015 counterterrorism law of “joining a terrorist group” and “abusing social media networks.”

On July 25, 2018, a military court for minor offenses sentenced a theater director, Ahmed al-Garhy; a playwright, Walid Atef; and four of their colleagues to two-month suspended sentences over a play at the Shooting Club in Cairo in February. The play featured the story of Suleiman Khater, an Egyptian soldier who shot and killed seven Israelis, including four children, near the Egyptian-Israeli border in Sinai in 1985.

Minister of Culture Inas Abdel-Dayem said that authorities did not grant permission for the performance, and that the ministry was investigating. Military prosecutors had ordered al-Garhy, Atef, and four of their colleagues detained since March 6, 2018, on charges of “spreading false news,” a source told Human Rights Watch, but the full verdict has not been made public yet.

On July 26, six United Nations special rapporteurs and experts condemned al-Behairy’s arrest and alleged torture and demanded that the government end its crackdown on artistic expression.

The arrests and prosecutions came after al-Sisi said in a March 1 speech that insulting the army or the police was “high treason” and ordered “all government agencies” not to allow such statements. “It’s not freedom of speech,” he said, without naming any specific incident.

The government recently has issued a raft of new decrees that establish additional layers of state censorship. On July 11, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly issued decree No. 1238 of 2018, which imposes severe restrictions on organizing “any cultural or artistic events… local or international, organized by government or non-government entities.” Article 2 of the decree obliges all event organizers to obtain an advance “license from the Ministry of Culture, following coordination with the relevant authorities in the State.”

On March 12, Abel-Dayem issued a decree to establish eight new offices for the Central Authority for the Censorship of Works of Art (CACWA) in seven governorates. CACWA is the decades-old censorship agency that reviews and censors cultural productions, especially television shows, films, and theater productions. Before the decision, which was made following the pro-government media uproar against the play about Suleiman Khater, CACWA had offices only in Cairo and Alexandria.

The Supreme Council for Media Regulation, a media oversight body established in April 2017 whose head al-Sisi appoints, also possesses broad censorship authority, and established a “drama committee” in December 2017 to oversee and censor television dramas on Egyptian TV networks.

Article 67 of Egypt’s Constitution obliges state institutions to protect and support artists and creative expression. It explicitly prohibits jailing artists for creative expression and stipulates that only the public prosecution is allowed to initiate lawsuits that seek to suspend or confiscate an artist’s work or to prosecute artists. But in al-Garhy’s and al-Behairy’s cases, prosecutions began following complaints by pro-government lawyers to the prosecutors.

Egypt is a state party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The ICESCR states that any limitations should be “determined by law only in so far as this may be compatible with the nature of these rights and solely for the purpose of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society.” The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that the right to artistic expression includes “the right of all persons to freely experience and contribute to artistic expressions and creations, through individual or joint practice, to have access to and enjoy the arts, and to disseminate their expressions and creations.” International law on freedom of expression prohibits laws that criminalize criticism of state bodies and institutions like the army or police.

“Al-Sisi’s government is bulldozing Egypt’s rich cultural and artistic community into cowed acquiescence,” Whitson said. “Egyptian artists have produced films, literature, and music respected and loved not just in the Arab region but across the globe.”

Source:Human Rights Watch