[Mb-civic] The Freedom to Describe Dictatorship - Jackson Diehl - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

The Freedom to Describe Dictatorship
<>
By Jackson Diehl
The Washington Post
Monday, March 27, 2006; A15

Following the first day of Egypt's deeply flawed parliamentary election 
last November, the country's largest newspaper, the state-controlled 
al-Ahram, appeared with an equally flawed headline: "The Fairest 
Parliamentary Elections in 50 Years." Its sister, al-Gumhuriya, 
proclaimed to its readers that "Egyptians Spoke Yesterday -- They Chose 
True Democracy Rather Than Slogans and Heeded President Hosni Mubarak's 
Call."

But for the first time in the 24 years of Mubarak's rule, there was 
another voice that day on the newsstands. The newspaper al-Masri al-Yom, 
or the Daily Egyptian, reported "death threats, bribes, violence and 
partisan security forces." It said that "the elections were marred by 
irregularities and violations carried out by a large number of 
[Mubarak's] National Democratic Party and independent candidates and 
their militias, which prevented people from entering polling stations."

This was no more or less than the truth. But the fact that it was 
published in Cairo, and in Arabic -- and that the newspaper's publisher 
remains a free man who can travel to Washington and talk about it -- is 
perhaps the strongest single sign that Egypt's stifling and stagnant 
autocracy has begun to unravel. "Egyptians have discovered dissent," 
says Hisham Kassem, the stocky, graying and once-lonely liberal who 
created al-Masri al-Yom. "And it's no longer possible for the regime to 
manage information in the old ways."

Kassem is actually pretty pessimistic about where Mubarak is taking 
Egypt in the short term. But, before we get to that, it's worth 
marveling at the mini-revolution his paper has wrought. Until two years 
ago Egyptian media consisted of official organs such as al-Ahram, whose 
editors are appointed by Mubarak and routinely order up headlines like 
those above, and an "opposition" press that specialized in slanders 
against Israel, the Jewish people, the United States, Western culture -- 
anything other than Mubarak. Ten years ago this spring, the biggest 
story in Egypt, thanks to such media, was the allegation that Israel was 
trying to corrupt Egyptian women by distributing chewing gum that 
created irresistible sexual urges.

"From 1993 to 2003 Mubarak was criticized once," Kassem told me last 
week. "He closed down the newspaper, as well as the political party that 
published it." Kassem himself published a spirited paper called the 
Cairo Times, but it was in English and appeared only weekly.

In 2003 he was approached by a group of businessmen who proposed to 
start a new daily and asked Kassem to run it. He agreed, on condition 
that he be allowed to create "a paper of record," with objective 
reporting, no sensationalism -- and no self-censorship. "I said we would 
cover human rights and civil liberties on the front page," Kassem says. 
"I said, 'Enough xenophobia. Anyone who wants to destroy Israel can join 
the jihad. And I want to be the oldest person in the paper.' " (He's 46.)

Al-Masri al-Yom was launched in June 2004. Though the first months were 
rocky, the paper took off as Mubarak opened his campaign for another 
term as president a year ago. Early on, it covered an anti-Mubarak 
protest with the once-unthinkable headline, "Angry Demonstrations Demand 
Information on President's Health." The next day Kassem brushed off the 
inevitable threats from the mukhabarat , or state security, and never 
looked back. In the past year the paper's daily circulation has grown 
from 3,000 to a peak of 40,000. Meanwhile, other opposition papers are 
springing up, including several that attack Mubarak so unmercifully that 
even Kassem is put off.

How did this space for press freedom open? Kassem doesn't hedge: "U.S. 
pressure on the Mubarak regime has been the catalyst for most of the 
change we have seen," he said. He traces the turning point to an April 
2004 summit between Mubarak and President Bush in Crawford, Tex., at 
which the aging Egyptian strongman heard for the first time from an 
American president that political liberalization would be necessary to 
maintain good relations. After stalling a few months in the hope that 
Bush would lose the 2004 election, Mubarak reluctantly concluded that he 
must take some visible steps, Kassem says. One was the allowance of 
greater press freedom; another was the conversion of his reelection from 
a referendum into a multi-candidate competition.

The problem, Kassem says, is that once his reelection was secured and 
accepted by Washington, Mubarak froze the reforms. Though he promised a 
long list of political and economic liberalizations before the election, 
not one has been implemented in the six months since. Instead, Mubarak 
has imprisoned his chief liberal opponent, Ayman Nour, on bogus criminal 
charges; postponed scheduled municipal elections; and refused to 
legalize the centrist political parties that might provide an 
alternative to his regime and the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood. 
Kassem says he fears the 77-year-old president plans to die in office 
without leaving either a successor or a democratic mechanism for 
choosing one.

Ask him for a remedy, and once again he doesn't hedge. "The United 
States has to continue pressuring," he says. "We're all willing to 
accept a controlled process of reform under Mubarak. But leave him alone 
and he won't do it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600879.html?nav=hcmodule
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