Citizen Journalism in Egypt

When I began my search for an example of citizen journalism in Egypt I was a little worried. I have been reading through the partially state-owned Al Ahram for months now and although I've gained a lot, a citizen's perspective on the state of affairs is not one of them. Lucky for me my search did not take very long at all. Omraneya.net is an aggregator of Egyptian blogs maintained by citizen journalists, an extremely good find for a source.

After reading several of the entries I was painted a picture of Egypt that I had never gotten a sense of from the paper, and that was Egypt as a police state. From reading the Al Ahram I was always given the impression that demonstrations and protests were constantly taking place over various policy issues and other violations, but for the most part I assumed they were peaceful. This blog entry tells a different story. A protest was being held for the release of a student, Tarek Kheder, who was arrested by the SSI for collecting signatures for a petition for the National Association of Change. The SSI is the State Security Intelligence, and it is the highest national investigative body in Egypt. The gathering was only just beginning when they were approached by SSI officers looking to see papers. The event quickly erupted in violence and the scene described is that of chaos and brutality. The citizen reporter describes participants as being dragged, beaten, and “kidnapped”. The reporter himself was never attacked but he did have his rights violated. He says that he was the only journalist on the scene at the time of the violence, and he was getting exclusive footage that would surely shock the nation, when he made the fatal mistake of accidentally filming an SSI officer. The officer had him apprehended and of course confiscated his identification and camera. The footage was never recovered.

Stories similar to this one appear again and again when talking about Egypt. Although it is a very developed country and a key American ally in the Middle East, it continues to top many human rights lists as a chief violator. Although their press allows from them to criticize everything under the sun that occurs outside of the country, their freedom to report on controversial actions of the government and to criticize their own leadership is severely limited. That is why a unified and dedicated citizen journalist press is so important to the region. It is vital for the Egyptian people to create checks on the government's powers and ensure that the world is aware of what is going on under their nose. Sites such as Omraneya.net have an important duty to do, but so do the people, in seeking out the truth when it is hidden and reporting on the news themselves when no one else sees it.