CAIRO: A media war in Egypt is underway between state and independent outlets, as violent clashes between police and demonstrators enter their third day, leaving at least 13 dead and 700 wounded so far. As Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper and Egyptian state TV run stories of “foreign conspirators” and “hooligans” in the square, causing anti-revolutionary chaos, independent media has worked to cover the ongoing state-waged violence wracking protesters. Meanwhile, the army has targeted journalists, detaining them and forcing them away from the scene of the clashes. On Saturday, the military raided an apartment above Tahrir Square that was known to host journalists seeking an aerial view of the clashes, smashing the cameras and recording equipment. Independent journalists covering the events have reported harassment and silencing. “Forced out of sq w/ @aellick by mob of men in suits. “We all hate u, we dont wnt u here.” Activists followed us, said men were frm State Sec” tweeted independent American journalist Lauren Bohn (@LaurenBohn) on Sunday afternoon, after reporting from the scene of the clashes. Similarly, military forces detained Bikya Masr's own Editor-in-Chief Joseph Mayton for 11 hours on Saturday afternoon. “They proceeded to go through every file on the computer, deleting all things they felt “were not appropriate to tell of Egypt.” Then they re-formatted my computer and handed it back,” he wrote in a testimony on his detention and treatment. Al-Jazeera English producer Evan Hill reported on Friday, the first day of the violent clashes, that he had been detained and beaten by soldiers. “Soldiers & men in plainclothes beat me with batons, wooden sticks & once with a crowbar before I was taken inside,” he tweeted (@evanchill) after his release. Meanwhile, however, videos and photographs published on social networking sites have aided in combating the whitewashed state discourse, which has pledged army evenhandedness and restraint, distorting the events in order to rally the nation behind the “traumatized” army. Perhaps most significantly, a photograph emerged showing army officers stripping and kicking a young woman, opening the eyes of many in Egypt to the state's ongoing brutality with the now-iconic image. The still image of the woman, bare-chested in her bra, laying on the ground while a soldiers foot remains in the air to kick her chest, was published on the front page of Egypt's Al-Tahrir newspaper with the word “Liars,” in bold, selling an unprecedented number of copies. The military and the prime minister responded, calling the image “Photoshopped.” Activists responded by releasing the whole video that shows the full reality of the beating, sending a pulse of anger through social networking sites and the Egyptian street. The state's attempts at silencing independent media is troubling at the least, while state media continues to construct a discourse of dutiful innocence. State TV aired interviews with people claiming that they were paid by liberal groups to incite violence, while the live CBC+2 channel has been cut twice after recording inflammatory footage of the ongoing events, showing close up images of soldiers beating civilians. A crackdown on media freedoms has been ongoing since Egypt's interim ruling military council, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), took power after the ousting of former President Hosni Mubarak in February. On September 7, the Military Council and the Council of Ministers imposed a ban on requests for new broadcasting licenses in Egypt. Citing licensing problems, authorities raided the offices of Al-Jazeera Mubashir Misr, a live channel, on September 10 and again on September 29, destroying equipment and intimidating the staff. “What happened in the Al-Jazeera office cannot be taken out of the context of a larger-scale campaign in Egypt. The regime is closing down, and there are no criteria for freedom of the press… We are facing a regime more dangerous than Mubarak's,” said Mohamed Zaree, a Program Manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, in a previous interview with Bikyamasr.com The violence in downtown Cairo erupted after a man was kidnapped from the sit-in in front of the Magles al-Sha'b building in downtown Cairo. He returned, badly injured and almost deformed by the beating he suffered at the hands of the soldiers. In response, hundreds of protesters took to the street, as the army used clubs and brute force to remove the protesters from their sit-in. The violence comes amid Egypt's parliamentary elections, of which two phases of national voting have been completed. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/wxzrL Tags: featured, SCAF Section: Egypt, Latest News, Media
