Cairo International Book Fair was not quite a beacon of free expression, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights' (EOHR) report on the Cairo International Book Fair, published last week, criticised what it described as "oppression" at a time when the government has promised reform. Noting that the banning and confiscation of books remains a far from uncommon practice in Egypt the report expressed concern over the ramifications of continuing such "restrictive practices". The report cited the experience of political analyst Mohamed El-Sayed Said, deputy director of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. Said, who has repeatedly criticised the government policy, was scheduled to speak on political reform in Egypt at the book fair. The seminar, though, was cancelled at short notice. "The fair's officials," Said says, "cancelled my lecture under the pretext that they wanted to provide more opportunities for people who had not participated in previous seminars to voice their opinion." Something, Said notes, that did not happen. That he is a member of the Egyptian Popular Movement for Change (EMPC), which staged one of the two anti-Mubarak demonstrations held at the time of the fair, seems, Said says, a far more likely reason for the cancellation of the seminar. The EOHR report lists 40 titles that were confiscated during the event, including volumes by the Syrian poet Ali Ahmed Said (Adonis) and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, which inexplicably disappeared from the shelves. The continuing emergency laws, in force since 1981, were cited in the report a major impediment to freedom of expression. They allowed the government "a free hand in restricting and encroaching on freedoms under the pretext of protecting national security". The report also criticised the vague nature of several constitutional articles, arguing that they are in urgent need of clarification to avoid misuse. Conceding that books were confiscated Wahid Abdel-Meguid, head of the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO), the organiser of the event, denied that Said or any other activist had been banned from speaking during the fair. Books are confiscated, he said, under laws that "indeed do need to be amended". The confiscations, though, did not, he claimed, constitute an attempt to "intimidate anyone". He criticised the EOHR for basing its report on "baseless allegations and material collected from street gossip". Samir Sarhan, a member of the fair's organising committee and a former head of GEBO, seemed to contradict Abdel-Meguid, denying that any books had been confiscated. He also denied that activists had been banned from voicing their views during any book fair. "We strictly abide by President Hosni Mubarak's decision banning the confiscation of books without a court ruling," Sarhan said. In response the EOHR points out that it was due to "unjustified restrictions" forced on the book fair that the number of countries participating went down from 97 last year to 25 this year. Commentators interviewed by the Al- Ahram Weekly stressed the importance of reconsidering the way in which the book fair operates. According to Al-Ahram columnist Salama Ahmed Salama "the government needs to beware that it does not send mixed signals to the public and thus cast doubt on the sincerity of its promises of reform." Any inconsistency, Salama warns, "puts the state's credibility at risk at a critical time."
