Freedom of speech in Egypt
Information is a valued commodity in the Middle East. Communication resources have traditionally been a monopoly of the state, be it print, telephone, radio or television. National security concerns guide the continued policies. Grey E. Burkhart, executive vice-president in United Press International, noted that

"National security concerns in these countries extend beyond the traditional definition of military threats from foreign countries. In effect they include anything that is a threat to the ruling institutions and their interests, such as their claims to the right to rule (e.g., as defenders of Islam and Arab cultural values) and their financial interests. Others include fears that international networks will be used by terrorists, the potential vulnerability of businesses becoming dependent upon information accessible via the Internet and the security of business communications, the spreading of propaganda (false or otherwise) by political opposition groups in exile, and foreign information warfare and intelligence operations."

These concerns have developed since the first printing presses arrived with the French expedition in 1798. Napoleon's newspapers, Courier de L'Egypte and La Decade Egyptienne, were in French, and it was not until Mohammed Ali established Al Wakae al Masreya and Jurnal al-Khadyu in 1827-8 that the region saw its first newspapers in the Arabic language. Mohammed Ali monitored the publications close, suggested articles and oversaw content before printing. Journalists were punished with flogging 300 times if they committed anything against his will.

Mohammed Ali's successor, Said Pasha, further limited press freedom, introducing a journalism office for prior restraint and making it illegal per se to criticise the government. Egyptian printing thus started in a restricted atmosphere. The fight against the British occupation in the 1880's unified Egypt under a common banner. Like in many other countries under imperialist rule, the nationalist media in Egypt played an important part in the independence movement. When Egypt was granted semi-independence in 1919, political parties emerged, as did party presses. By the end of King Farouk's rule in 1952, Egypt had 32 daily newspapers.

When the Free Officers took power the same year, Egypt's new president Gamal Abdel Nasser pioneered the propaganda potential of the radio. With it, Nasser overcame illiteracy and distance. Radio - and frequency space - soon became the monopoly of the state. For a brief period of time, the privately held media were trusted to support Nasser without censorship, but this failed miserably. The experiment was closed down one month after it was initialised in 1954. Six years later the press, too, was nationalised, and the remaining autonomy of the press disappeared under the slogan "social justice and equality".

The most devastating loss of Nasser - and his media - followed the conquest by Israel in the war of 1967. Print journalism and books were typing Nasser's poetry uncontested, but the radio had many voices. Watching Israeli air planes over Cairo while hearing about the victorious Egyptian army on the radio established the deliberate lies of the government.

"It has to be heard, to be believed", wrote C. Issawy about the Voice of the Arabs, "for sheer venom, vulgarity, and indifference to truth it has few equals in the world."

Egyptians soon learned to tune into foreign news broadcasts such as British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and the Voice of America (VOA) , establishing a trust to foreign media that was revisited for television during the Gulf War in 1991. Though Nasser offered to step down following the massive defeat, the Egyptian people took to the streets and demanded he continue as president. Yet the 1967 war marked the beginning of the end of Pan Arab socialism, only to disappear fully with the appointment of Sadat as President of the Republic in 1971.

Anwar Sadat promised to follow Nasser's path with the Corrective Revolution , but in effect started right away to reverse his predecessor's policies. 10 000 Russian technicians were asked to leave the following year, concluding the friendship with the Soviet Union. Soon after, he announced the "open door" policy, which was to guide the direction of Egypt to this day. Censorship was lifted on domestic publications in Egypt in 1974. The constitution states that "freedom of the press is guaranteed […] within the limits of the law."

The emergency law, however, which by some estimates has been in force since 1910 overrules "clauses contradictory to [the emergency law]." It is therefore misleading to view the lifting of censorship as anything but an empty gesture, as the emergency law opens for censorship, prior restraint and closing of publishing houses. Foreign publications, however, flourished in Egypt for the first time in thirty years, reflecting Egypt's warming relations with the west.

Three opposition parties were created by the President in 1977; the Right, the Centre and the Left . A governmental committee was set up to review new applications for political parties, as every party was required to have a unique platform. To this day the political parties committee has only approved one single application, to a party for "nuclear armament." The remaining 11 political parties created since the 1977 have all been legalised after the courts have overturned the committee's decision.

Registered political parties are given a printing licence for a party organ. The paper must present the official party line. The government retains the sole right of publishing in the country, giving the authorities the advantage of knowing beforehand of opposition activities and the opportunity to stall printing. William A. Rugh wrote in The Arab Press that Sadat's creation of a higher press council and the establishment of party newspapers represented "changes in form, but not in basic substance." According to Ochs, 1986, the opposition newspapers were "yanked in and out of business like yo-yos."

Following Sadat's visit to Israel the same year, Egypt was politically isolated in the Arab world. Pan Arab relations did not warm by Egypt's signing of the Camp David accords either, and a boycott of Egyptian media products was launched following the Arab League meeting in Baghdad in 1979. The great number of Egyptian production companies and professionals operating abroad blurred the borders as to what content was actually made in Egypt. This fitted well with regional programming purchasers, who had grown semi-dependent upon programming from Egypt. The boycott was consequently an ineffective affair, rendering "no evidence" that Egyptian program sales to region decreased as a result of the boycott.

In 1980 Sadat introduced what the Encyclopaedia of Censorship described as "the main vehicle of control" ; the Law of shame. The law, which has been renewed by current President Mubarak, stipulates that it is the duty of each citizen to uphold the basic social values. Failure to do so represents shameful conduct. It maintains further that it is illegal to deny the "truth of Sunni Muslim teachings", that it is prohibited to "attack the state", to "corrupt youth", to publish or broadcast "scurrilous material that might offend the state", forming any "unauthorised organisation", to publish or broadcast information abroad, that "might undermine the state's political or economic system". The Encyclopaedia of Censorship was written before the new press law of 1996, which may rival the law of shame as the main vehicle of control. For comparison, see the Appendix for the Egyptian Radio and Television Union's code of ethics.Though Sadat liberalised the press, allowing non-governmental entities to publish, the total number of publications licensed to operate in Egypt was only 77. Since the 1980s more than 300 publications have been licensed.

The assassination of Sadat in 1981 paved the way for Hosni Mubarak's intensive regional diplomacy, resulting in a return of the Arab League headquarters to Cairo and re-admittance to the Arab League itself in 1988. Mubarak renewed the emergency law following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981. It is the president's exclusive right to announce and terminate the state of emergency, and Mubarak has exercised this right consecutively throughout his term. The emergency law was renewed again on March 26, this year. The emergency law functions as a security option for the government, which can be invoked at will.

This is not always necessary, as the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) noted in 1990: "[The government has] invented a series of means and procedures that turn … press censorship [into] a stable and deep rooted fact that makes the continues recourse to a press censor or to emergency law unnecessary." In addition to the press law of 1996, such laws include the Egyptian penal code. Under the chapter "Crimes of the Press" it is stipulated that it is illegal to "insult the President", the president of a "foreign country", "government officials", "the armed forces" or the parliament."

President Mubarak is internationally held in high regard for his economic reform programmes , but his human rights and freedom of speech record is less renowned. He has generally followed the path of his predecessors, introducing extra legislation where needed. Special press protection for public officials, harsh libel laws, licensing and restricting the funding of newspapers and NGOs are all examples of Mubarak's dedication to freedom of speech.

Terrestrial broadcasting is a government monopoly, which, with the onset of satellite, makes less and less sense. Current chairman of the Egypt's Radio and Television Union (ERTU), Abdel Rahman Hafez, related to the TBS journal a concern for bandwidth and the expenses of investors, when he explained why the government did not allow terrestrial broadcasting. "It is undesirable from a technical standpoint for ERTU to add any channels on the terrestrial systems because of interference of signals […] It's also incredibly expensive to add a new terrestrial network. Anybody who wants to invest in terrestrial would have to invest at least LE500 million, and would not generate any profits."

Digital technology has elsewhere compressed analogue systems, increasing capacity by a factor of eight. Bandwidth should not be a problem. The major attraction for investors in terrestrial TV, is an advertising audience of perhaps 40-50 million people. Satellite reaches only a few; there are at best 1 million antennas in Egypt. Showtime operates with a break-even number of 200 000 subscribers for the whole Middle East. They have now about 150 000. If terrestrial television channels have a 50 percent viewer-ship during prime time, the potential increase in audience is 150-fold. In terms of advertising revenue, the potential might even offset the subscription fee, and still be profitable.

Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and C.E.O. of Orascom Telecommunications, a contender for terrestrial broadcasting in Egypt, said to Al-Ahram Weekly that he thought the reasons for the continued government monopoly of terrestrial television was "Economical, and not political" He further added that, "The government says: I'm going to allow you to have a satellite channel. [But] I don't need the approval of the government to do that. I can do that anywhere in the world. The [question] is, why does the government keep the monopoly of terrestrial broadcasting to itself? […] They keep the terrestrial channels because these are very cheap, and they tell you go and invest in satellite. I can do that anywhere."

The Egyptian government's attitude to the media is today very much what it has always been. Printed media is controlled through licensing, funding or subsidies and possible libel in retrospect, while terrestrial television still is firmly in the hands of the government. Broadcasting to the region via satellite is expensive, and the audience is limited.

It is important to note here, that for the average Egyptian, with an annual income of 1,180 US dollars or less - human rights and free speech is a secondary issue to managing from one month to the next.

Transnational communication in Egypt
Transnational broadcasting in Egypt started after the revolution in 1952. President Gamal Abdel Nasser was quick to realise the potential of radio, and invested heavily in broadcasting equipment. The long range of radio enabled the voice of Cairo to be received throughout the Middle East, and beyond. Free radio sets enabled both Yemenites and Egyptians to tune into the gospel of Pan Arabism and later the non-aligned movement. The rest of the world could also tune in, often in their native language.

The broadcasts were of high technical and programming quality, a property that was enhanced by the ability of the journalists in Cairo to compare with other radio stations available on short wave. Terrestrial television, with a range of about 50 kilometres, did not have this property. Television became the natural step for the government to promote next. Though not the first country in the Arab world to start a television service (Iraq was), Egypt was an early contender when it launched its multi-channel service in 1961.

National coverage was facilitated by the fact that most of Egypt's population is concentrated along the Nile basin. The government could "get away" with building re-transmitters in a straight line across the country, rather than making a much more expensive national grid. The only disadvantage was that the few people living outside the Nile basin, did not get television until 20 or 30 years later.

Egypt's new multi-channel television service utilised the country's rich motion picture library to fill the broadcasting hours, making the country less dependent on foreign programming than other Arab countries. In time Egypt began to export television series to the rest of the region, though this trade did not "take off" until Sadat's open door began to take effect in the mid 1970's. The 1973 war with Israel changed Egypt's media policy dramatically. While the international press corps was operating under strict regulations, their reports did have more credibility than the domestic news services. Having international media present to report on the Egyptian advances "proved" beyond doubt what was indeed happening - at least for the first two weeks.

While it is disputed who subsequently won the war, it can certainly be argued that Egypt won the media war. The lesson taught Sadat in particular to open up the Egyptian media. However transparent it became, however, it was - and still is - restricted by the emergency law imposed by Nasser and renewed by Sadat and in turn Mubarak.

Censorship was officially lifted from the constitution the following year. Plans materialised for a permanent satellite ground station. A number of independent production companies were established. Egypt started producing television series explicitly for the regional market. The programming, while regionally superior, was still significantly lacking in any international sense.

This is attributed to the short range of television signals, which disabled Egyptian journalists from comparing programming with the international scene. Egyptian television was therefore inferior to the Egyptian Radio, which had the ability to compare to the rest of the world. In addition, high taxes and strains on creativity led a great number of production personnel to move abroad. Douglas Boyd cites an editorial in the Egyptian Gazette from 1977 when he attempts to describe the service:

"Talented Egyptians are nowhere to be seen. The vast majority have fled to other Arab states where the pay is good and where their talents are appreciated and put to good use. No one should be surprised if films made in the Gulf by Egyptians are sold to Egyptian TV and this will be the rule rather than the exception if TV continues to be run like an agricultural co-op." The results of this mass emigration of talent had dire consequences, according to the same editorial:

"[The production of television programmes] seems to be written by the mentally retarded, for the mentally retarded, and in order to promote mental retardation growth rates in the country"

In spite of this brute description, the average Egyptian seems to have enjoyed the service. Maybe because there was no alternative. Besides, television sets was by themselves a status symbol (much like a satellite dish is now). Coffeehouses were reported to get television sets in order to attract customers, so the programming must have aroused some interest.

It was not until the beginning of the 1990s that satellite started arousing an interest in the Middle East. There were until then "very few" of dishes in Cairo, and a "near absence" in the region. Cable News Egypt had just received permission to retransmit CNN over antennae (UHF) in Egypt, and offered free access during the Gulf War as a promotional effort. Unfortunately, as co-founder Abdullah Schleifer observed to Judy Mishinski in 1990, "Once the Gulf crisis has been resolved, how many Egyptians will be interested in what's happening on an ordinary day in China or Ecuador? Not too many."

In addition to the lack of interest in a package consisting of only one channel, there was a growing awareness of the services offered by satellites. By satellite, CNN was offered for free, plus an almost unlimited number of other channels. Satellite dishes were eventually legalised by the government, making satellite reception the major (but expensive) alternative to Egyptian state broadcasting. CNE and the unprecedented live coverage of the Gulf War paved the way for a smooth transition to satellite TV technology in Egypt. Saudi Arabia and Syria, by far more restrictive countries than Egypt, both banned satellite dishes, only to find that the equipment was illegally imported with relative ease and hidden with same similar ease.

Given that satellite television often provided the only "second opinion" to the governmental truth, it was an unstoppable development. Hussein Amin and Leo A. Gher estimates that there are 800 000 Direct To Home (DTH) satellite dishes in Egypt today. Over 30 satellite networks have developed in the Arab world over the past ten years.

Domestic television in the Arab world has become bolder as a result of the competition from satellite broadcasting. The Cairo Times, for instance, described in its May 17th issue how government television dealt with a riot at the Al-Azhar University; "State television included footage of the riots in its 8 May evening broadcast. Until recently, such events were normally excised from the news - but widely available via satellite or radio. Lately, however, the government is trying to pre-empt the international networks, allowing them the first chance to spin"

This new environment has also made Arab journalists working for satellite stations more confident. Criticism, or implications thereof, is now being uttered, something that was unheard of before satellite television. Moataz Demerdash, anchor and producer for MBC, commented under a Columbia University gathering for Middle Eastern journalists that: "Ten years ago no one in this room would have had the opportunity to question an Arab leader about his performance in office on live television".

Reception equipment is still expensive, however, and while the cost has decreased as a result of technology improvements and domestic production, the overall outlay puts satellite dishes far from the rooftops of ordinary Egyptians. Satellite programming is available on video, and extensive piracy has helped spread access to the programs

The Internet
In order to understand the developments of the Internet in the Middle East, it is important to understand why the region has been so sceptical to it. The net developed for fifty years outside the region, and then pounded the existing communication systems in the beginning of the 1990s.

It may have sounded like science fiction when Vanevar Bush published an article in Atlantic Monthly about the first origins of the World Wide Web in 1945. He described a photo-electrical-mechanical device called a Memex, for memory extension, which could make and follow links between documents on microfiche. Yet, perhaps as a result of Bush' position as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, it took little more than ten years before the United States government actively started promoting such a network.

The first research began when the United States formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, in 1957. The Soviet Union had just launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite, and the United States wanted to speed up its technological innovation. In 1961, the first visions of present-day internet surfaced, with the publication of Information Flow in Large Communication Nets, by MIT's Leonard Kleinrock . Development for packet-switched networks continued throughout the 1960s. The world's first email program was emerged in 1971, following up the next year with the introduction of the @ sign.

Norway and England became the two first countries to have an international connection to the renamed ARPANET in 1973. Domain Name Servers were introduced in 1984, enabling text-based internet addresses rather than numbers. The Internet was in 1990 mainly an academic and military adventure, with a simple line mode interface and few applications. It is doubtful if the internet would have become a mass phenomenon in this state.Two events this year dramatically changed this direction.

The first was the lifting of the commercial restrictions on the internet by the United States' National Science Foundation. The second was perhaps even more significant. Tim Berners-Lee was developing a system for sharing information across the wide range of different computer systems for his employer at CERN, a European high-energy physics research institution. He created a simple protocol that could display graphics and text - HTTP - regardless of operating system. The World Wide Web browser accompanying the code was later renamed Nexus, as to avoid confusion with the growing WWW network.

The entrance of commercial capital and the improved graphical interface boosted the Internet to an unprecedented level, a growth that has continued to this day.

Internet in the Arab World
The Internet began as an American research project, that later included Europe. By the time the World Wide Web arrived in 1991, most developed countries were ready to adapt the new technologies.

Developing countries, on the other hand, were still on the sideline. They had not participated in the research, they were afraid of the implications of the new technologies, the technological infrastructure was insufficient and, of course, nobody knew the impact. Whereas events in the developed nations were driven without much governmental involvement, civic society in the third world did not have this power. It was therefore easy for the government to initially ban the internet, as no one knew what he or she was missing.

The internet is switched through relatively small telephone networks and come out differently for different communication situations. It is user based, enabling each users' individual preferences, giving instant access to areas of interest, be it academic, professional, political or leisure.

Broadcasting is a corporate service, transmitting one to many. The internet may therefore become a more significant means of communication than broadcasting.

Most of the Arab nations have for national security reasons adapted a rather cautious approach to the internet. Three years after the introduction of the World Wide Web, there still were no internet service providers (ISPs) in the Arab world. Public access internet in the region started in 1995, with the entry of Bahrain, Kuwait and Iran. Iran was the first country to become a member of an international computer network, BITNET in 1992. Other countries, like Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia banned the internet all together, but found that eager surfers connected to ISPs in neighbouring countries instead . Today only Iraq, with its demobilised communication systems and grave internal difficulties, remain outside the information superhighway.

Most Arab countries have followed a model of governmental gateways to the World Wide Web, enabling a national proxy filter of unwanted political, religious and obscene material. The exact forms of control vary from country to country, usually deriving from military, religious authority, hereditary monarchies, or other oligarchic sources. More so than in many parts of the world, government control of telecommunications continues via monopolistic providers.

A survey done by the Arab PC magazine "Internet Arab World" indicates that the number of users in the Arab world is close to two million, divided on 545 000 internet account holders. .The IAW research unit surveyed more than 1000 internet users in its follow-up to a similar survey last year. It was found that the majority of the users (72 percent) used the internet from home. This is contrary to developed nations, where the office tends to be the main internet gate.

Only 2 percent used internet cafes as their primary web access. English was the secondary language for 88 percent, corresponding to the finding that 73 percent of the users have higher education; a bachelor's degree or more. 96 percent were male, an abnormally high figure. Arab users are slightly younger (30 years) than the world average (33 years).Thursday, followed by Friday is not surprisingly the most popular days for internet surfing, given that users connect from home when they are free from work.

Internet in Egypt
The Internet started in Egypt as a university network in 1993. Free access was initially given to Egyptian corporations, private and public sector companies, governmental entities, NGOs, and professionals to boost awareness. In 1996 the commercial part of the Egyptian Internet was privatised, and 12 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) started offering a fee based service. A governmental project was launched to connect remote areas through small satellite uplink modules, VSATs, and thereby reducing the technological gap between urban area like Cairo and Alexandria and remote areas as Kharga and Sharm el Sheikh.

The two Egyptian satellites, NileSat 101 and NileSat 102, provide increased connectivity to the country, servicing broadcasting, internet, mobile phones and video conferencing. There are 60 ISPs in the country, and an estimated 500 000 academic, governmental, and commercial users. This constitutes 0.25 percent of the population, compared to about 40 percent in developed countries.

The average cost of Internet dialup access is around $20/month in Cairo (down from $100/month in 1996). Access cost is 2-3 times higher outside Greater Cairo. These costs put Internet well outside the reach of the general public, especially in rural areas and outside major cities. The number of cyber cafes, Internet clubs, social clubs, public libraries, public schools and universities providing access to the Internet have increased at an explosive rate.

In addition, it is an expressed government priority to increase Egypt's participation on the Internet. Aside from facilitating access by privatising ISPs, and announcing a free governmental access number, several options are being tried out. Technology Access Community Centres (TACCs) is one of the options being tried out. These are based on similar centres built in the mid-eighties, to enhance computer literacy. Though the TACCs are still in the pilot phase, the idea is to place the virtual offices in central locations across Egypt; offering free computer access, telephony, fax, copiers and Internet.

Though the number of entrance ports to the Internet is increasing, the large barriers remain. These include lack of computer literacy, limited awareness, few skilled professionals and scarcity of local information content. Language and cultural barriers are especially important.

75 percent of the Egyptian population do not speak English, while 90 percent of the Internet is in English.

Despite these difficulties, the Arab presence on the internet doubles each year. Arabic newspapers, such as Al Hayat and others dedicate regular pages to the net. In 1998, there were 34 Arabic language newspapers on the web, and many organisations, opposition movements, private individuals and businesses have their presence on the web. When this author was researching for contact information about the Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights, Legal Resource and Research Centre, Alkan communications and Egyptian Space Communication Company, everything needed was found on the internet, not least on the bi-lingual homepages of the organisations

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