The Daily Star
BEIRUT: The dramatic events of “Arab revolutions” this year have yet to produce a revolution in freedom of expression and the media, according to activists and experts on the topic.
Egypt after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak is not very different, as one Egyptian journalist put it, expressing her pessimism about the possibility of freedom and democracy in the North African state.
“The police aren’t functioning today, but we do not have a guarantee that the police will provide us with the freedom we need once it starts operating again,” said Nora Younis. “I believe all the achievements which have been made so far could disappear at any moment.”
Younis spoke Wednesday during a discussion at the opening session of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange 17th strategy conference, hosted by media watchdog Maharat.
Representatives from IFEX’s 80 free-expression organizations from around the world, along with 20 international organizations dedicated to advancing freedom of expression, attended the conference.
The three-day event will discuss the main challenges facing journalists and means to strengthen the global network of IFEX.
Younis along with Tunisian activist Naziha Rejiba and Khaled Ibrahim from the organization Front Line took part in a discussion entitled “The Many Seasons of the Arab Spring,” chaired by journalist Pierre Abi Saab.
Younis said that Egypt’s ruling Military Council was “gradually” resorting to the same tactics used under Mubarak, such as fining people for participating in protests and arresting individuals for distributing fliers.
The Egyptian activist said the poor who carried out the revolution and sacrificed their lives have not witnessed any changes and the public administration is still mired in corruption.
Three weeks of protests in February ended Mubarak’s 30-year rule, just weeks after similar unrest toppled Zine al-Abidine ben Ali, Tunisia’s president. Anti-regime protests have also broken out in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain and descended into all-out war in Libya.
On a more optimistic note, Rejiba said that Tunisia’s uprising had effected a great change. “I hear people now discussing politics after [a time when] football was all that concerned them.”
But Rejiba also acknowledged that Tunisian society, which she described as having been humiliated for 60 years, needed time to change. “We are at the beginning of a dream and I acknowledge we are making some stumbles.”
She said that remnants of the old regime still existed, noting that a media channel owned by a relative of Ben Ali was still operating.
“We are still waiting for [the formation of] media bodies that reflect the revolution’s pulse,” she said, adding that media laws in Tunisia were in need of major reforms.
“The same media outlets that used to attack us are now attacking Ben Ali using the same insults,” she said.
Tackling the same topic, Younis said that because Egyptian journalists suffered from oppressive practices under Mubarak’s tenure, they were now unsure how to carry out their work.
“They used to receive a phone call from someone who dictated what they should write and what they should cross out, but how can they operate today?”
Younis said she did not fear Egypt’s Muslim brotherhood. “We know them and have worked with them.”
“However, we are not familiar with Salafists, they are a new group which was originally formed by the regime and [its members] are now out of prison. It is unclear how are they going to behave,” Younis added.
For her part, Rejiba said Ben Ali, who had presented himself to the West as resisting the Islamists, had exaggerated their political weight. “I do not think they will become the majority.”
Ibrahim, an Iraqi, spoke about Bahrain in place of Bahraini activist Maryam al-Khawaja, whom he said could not take part in the conference after receiving death threats from Bahraini authorities. He spoke on the harsh crackdown carried out by authorities on Bahraini activists and explained that scores of activists were arrested and deprived of basic prisoners’ rights.
Ibrahim said the Bahraini people had suffered greatly following the intervention of armies from the monarchy’s Gulf allies in support of the regime.
Prior to the discussion, a welcome address was delivered by the head of IFEX, Annie Game, and Maharat, Rola Mikhael.
Game outlined topics of the conference, including “pressures on journalists to abandon their efforts to change media, the pitfalls and pushbacks of access to information [and] the fact that journalists and media workers continue to be killed for doing their job with impunity.”
Mikhael said the conference had been planned prior to the wave of popular unrest that is sweeping the Arab world. “The accelerating events in the Arab world give this conference greater importance in terms of tackling issues of freedom of opinion and expression in the Middle East,” she explained.
Game told The Daily Star that attendees of the conference would tackle “how to do campaigns, write alerts and work with new Internet laws.”
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