Concerning the provision, Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zend stated, “The government has the duty to defend citizens from wrong information … I hope no one interprets this as a restriction on media freedoms. It’s just about numbers.” However, others harshly criticized the law as a “savage assault on free speech.” Egypt’s Press Syndicate released a statement condemning the move, calling it a “threat to the freedom of the press,” “hazardous to the right of society to know the facts,” and “unconstitutional.”
The government has become notorious for its restrictions of press freedoms. A recent Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report documented at least 18 journalists currently detained in Egyptian prisons. Last week, a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that he fled Egypt after hearing that he was at risk of arrest. Egyptian NGO Journalists Against Torture released a report Saturday alleging 39 violations committed against journalists in the month of June alone, including assaults, arrests, and confiscation of equipment.
On Saturday, the Foreign Ministry issued a guide for foreign journalists, requesting that they cease referring to the Islamic State as such—as the name “inaccurately associates the group with Islam”—and instead use terms from a list including “savages,” “slaughterers,” “fanatics,” “eradicators,” and “slayers.”
The counterterrorism law has also been criticized for employing a broad definition of terrorism that can be applied to journalists and civil society organizations in addition to actual militants and for granting impunity to officers carrying out the law’s provisions. The director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies said, “This is worse than all the drafts we’ve seen before.”