CAIRO: Editor-in-Chief of Al-Shorouk El-Gadid Amr Khafagy denied Wednesday recent rumors that prominent novelist Alaa El-Aswany quit writing his weekly column in the independent daily after facing pressure by some officials. “We published a note in the newspaper saying that El-Aswany is on vacation; and he will resume writing when he comes back,” Khafagy told Daily News Egypt. “Several other columnists [including] Galal Amin are off…too,” Khafagy added. An administrator of El-Aswany's group on the social networking website Facebook had recently sent a message to all members saying that the newspaper had been facing pressure to prevent the novelist from writing his weekly column. The administrator, identified as Ahmed Gharib, told group members that high-profile officials close to the regime informed the newspaper of their objection to El-Aswany's outspoken writings. The circulating message also claimed that the government shut down a factory owned by the paper's publisher and chairman, Ibrahim El-Mo'alem, leaving its workers jobless. “I don't know the source of such rumors. What I know is that El-Aswany will be back within a maximum of two or three weeks,” Khafagi noted. “If he doesn't [show up] by then, [people] can have the right to question the reason,” he added. Rumors further said that El-Asawny's latest article entitled “Thoughts about the President's Health,” was one of the reasons why the newspaper was subject to pressure. In his article, El-Aswany wrote that the international press published reports about the alleged deterioration of the president's health. In response, President Hosni Mubarak made several public appearances to deny these claims. The government launched a counter campaign where officials decisively denied that the president was sick. However, El-Aswany continued, the foreign media continued publishing new stories. This in turn led officials to instruct editors of state-owned newspapers to launch a campaign that confirmed the outstanding health state of Mubarak and condemn the foreign press, considering their move a “Zionist conspiracy” to raise doubts among Egyptians about their president's medical condition, he noted. El-Aswany wondered why the Egyptian government did not resort to objective means of announcing information about the president's health condition instead of launching press campaigns that accused the international media of conspiring against Egypt. However, Khafagy told Daily News Egypt that the article did not stir any official reactions. El-Aswany could not be reached for comment. But according to recent press reports, he neither denied nor confirmed any of the above rumors.
