MEDIA-EGYPT: Anti-American Press Pays the Price

[Aidoneus]

(dictator Mubarak has to keep his boss happy.. is this the kind of "democracy" the US gov't wants for the Mideast?)

CAIRO, Jul 10 (IPS) - The regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak continued its crackdown on media earlier this week as the police banned an anti-American weekly.

The July 2 issue of al-Sadaa of the al-Takaful political party could not come out. Staff are negotiating with security authorities to get the newspaper back on the newsstands.

The newspaper issued a statement that chairman of the newspaper board and secretary-general of al-Takaful, Esam Abdel Razek was summoned by security authorities and told that there were ”security concerns” about its editorial policies.

The newspaper was launched in February as the United States prepared to invade Iraq. From its first issue the newspaper took a strong position against a war.

The logo of the newspaper is the U.S. flag being stamped upon by shoes. In one front page story it asked U.S. ambassador to Egypt David Welch to ”shut up”. Welch had been writing letters and articles in newspapers calling on journalists to tone down their opposition to the war.

Welch wrote in the state-owned newspaper al-Ahram about the merits of the ”responsible press”. Welch also reportedly met officials over the direction the Egyptian press was taking.

”Our chairman was told by the security authorities that they have problems with the fact that we are trashing the American flag,” Yasser Barakat, editor-in- chief of the newspaper told IPS. ”They said the newspaper was too anti- American and too anti-Israeli.”

Barakat says the newspaper was only expressing a nationalistic view and that the ban is unjustified. Nineteen issues have been released since the first on February 26.

”This is sad and really shameful,” he said. ”The only thing we did was to expose America and Israel. We also ran articles against corruption both in the government and the private sector.”

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http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19174