Egypt, not Al Jazeera, to blame for Fahmy’s plight
This week’s court hearing for Al Jazeera’s journalists Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed was unacceptably adjourned yet again, further delaying their deserved freedom because prosecution witnesses didn’t turn up.
The previous adjournment two weeks ago was overshadowed by another crime against freedom: the five-year jail term given to Alaa Abdel Fattah and many fellow activists — their crime was to protest without permission. Tens of thousands of other political prisoners languish in jail in Egypt, some having been sentenced in large cases involving hundreds of people at a time. According to Reporters Without Borders, there are a dozen Egyptian journalists in jail, while others estimate the figure is much higher.
Our journalists, who were arrested on December 29, 2013, are therefore a smaller part of the larger crisis of justice facing the Egyptian people.
It’s been surprising then that some recent media reports have diverted the narrative in the case of our jailed journalists away from an issue of fundamental press freedoms and onto the conduct of Al Jazeera or the Canadian government.
This lets the Egyptian authorities off the hook. They have the power to end this situation at any time of their choosing. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has repeatedly said he wished it never happened saying that he wants the #FreeAJStaff case ended, only for interviewers not to followup and remind him that he can finish this whenever he wants. (He has indicated that he will likely release the journalists after the trial, whatever the outcome, but why wait?)
Al Jazeera cannot go back in time and change things. Those criticizing our very presence reporting news in Egypt in late 2013 misunderstand the basic tenets of free speech. Yes, we faced intimidation from the authorities. Mohamed Fahmy very well knew this, and knew what he thought were the risks. Nobody thought the authorities would go as far as they did, and it’s incumbent on all those who uphold the basic right to free speech to maintain the course and defend the fundamental precepts of press freedom.
Press freedom should also have been extended to our former channel Al Jazeera Egypt Live. It was the second-mostwatched channel in Egypt before it went off air, even though it had no official correspondents on the ground. The reason for its popularity stemmed from the fact that it was the only channel willing to challenge the government’s narrative. Unfortunately, basic journalism is not appreciated by many governments in the Middle East, and they confuse giving coverage to opposition movements with support for them.
It was hated by the Egyptian authorities because it shone a light on what was really happening on the streets of Egypt when other Arab media had stopped doing that. If you want to control the flow of information in the Middle East, the authorities think that they have to crack down on Al Jazeera.
What the case of our jailed journalists represents then is an attempt to make an example of Al Jazeera. To tell Arab journalists that if we can jail Al Jazeera, none of you local journalists should step out of line. When respected western outlets parrot the lines of the Egyptian authorities about things like press credentials, whether Al Jazeera should have been present in Cairo at all, and whether Al Jazeera network channels share footage with one another, they become the toast of repressive authorities across the region.
It damages journalism in the Middle East because it removes responsibility from the Egyptian authorities and provides them excuses for prevarication. It is like saying Alaa Abdel Fattah is to blame for his plight because he didn’t fill in some forms and wait for the authorities to allow him his fundamental rights.
All governments have media they don’t like. But governments respecting the freedom of the media and basic human rights don’t put them in jail. It’s irresponsible to say that Al Jazeera uniquely should depart the scene when the going gets a bit tough.
We would do virtually no important reporting in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter, if we followed this advice. Rather, we all have to continue to focus our energies in the right direction and urge the Egyptian authorities to do the right thing.