The law is the latest clash between the country’s increasingly authoritarian government and what remains of independent civil society. Since the army ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi from the presidency two years ago, the government has used the pretext of combatting a wave of militancy that has left hundreds of policemen and soldiers dead to unleash a wave of legislation that legal experts say is the most restrictive since the 1950s.
Police have also arrested thousands of mainly Islamist opposition members, killed more than 1,000 protesters and curbed the activities of NGOs and political parties. After the assassination of Egypt’s chief prosecutor last week, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi promised to limit prisoners’ right to an appeal, a pledge billed as an honest attempt to speed up the punishment of terrorists, but condemned by rights campaigners as a backdoor attempt to curb basic legal rights.
As a widespread wave of nationalism has taken hold, large swaths of Egypt’s state and private media have backed the government, but journalists who have questioned its direction have been targeted in the crackdown.
There are currently at least 18 journalists in Egyptian jails, a figure the Committee to Protect Journalists said last week represented an all-time high. Three al-Jazeera journalists accused of terrorism have been released on bail, but remain on trial. Last month the Cairo correspondent for El País, the leading Spanish broadsheet, fled the country after Spanish diplomats warned that he faced arrest.
Since Sisi’s government took power, officials have regularly criticised foreign journalists for reporting narratives that conflict with its own. In the latest example, the foreign ministry criticised the terminology that correspondents use to describe Isis, and instead suggested that the group be described with epithets such as “slaughterers, executioners, assassins, slayers, destroyers and eradicators”.