MIDDLE EAST : Egyptian Journalists Breathe Easier as Prison Threat Fades

In a victory for press freedom that could reverberate elsewhere in the Arab world, President Hosni Mubarak is lifting the threat of stiff prison terms for Egyptian journalists who run afoul of the government for what they write.

For 13 months, journalists have been waging an energetic campaign for the repeal of the harsh penalties outlined in a law rammed through parliament in May 1995. Just when it looked as if the battle was lost, their leaders say, they have now met with success because of Mubarak’s intervention.

The government has promised that when the revised law goes to parliament today, it will be amended to remove the prison terms that have been the main cause of outrage, said Ibrahim Nafie, chairman of the Egyptian Press Syndicate and editor in chief of the semi-official Al Ahram newspaper.

Instead of the possibility of five years’ imprisonment, the maximum sanction against journalists for their work will be back to its old level: three months in prison. But the maximum fine for journalistic misdeeds will increase from $15 to nearly $6,000.

“This is good news,” Nafie said Friday.

In addition to the concession on jail sentences, Nafie said, other changes are being made throughout the legislation that would meet about 90% of journalists’ demands. He declined to go into detail, and it was unclear whether other disputed issues--such as the right to publish details of people’s private lives or to be protected from police search at home--have been resolved.

At issue is Law 93, dubbed by some in the press as “The Assassination of Journalism Law.” It treated libel, slander against state officials and institutions and the spreading of “false” information that harms the state or the economy as criminal offenses.

After the law was enacted, Mubarak responded to journalists’ concerns by agreeing to let it “sleep” for a year while a government-appointed committee of lawyers and journalists evaluated it. But until this week, it looked as if parliament--dominated by Mubarak’s National Democratic Party--was not going to agree to substantive revisions in the law.

Fears of prison galvanized the country’s journalistic community. Writers from both the government-owned official press and the handful of opposition newspapers--two usually bickering groups--found common cause. They posted banners, wrote editorials, organized a five-day sit-in at their union offices and were planning a mass gathering outside parliament--an unusual degree of protest in this society.

Mubarak finally agreed to step in after Nafie and the entire board of the 4,500-member Press Syndicate, a journalists union, announced Wednesday that they were resigning in protest. The president’s action also came as Egypt prepares to host a pan-Arab summit next week that is expected to focus world attention on Cairo.

The government has been pushing the press because it “feels vulnerable,” said political analyst Mohammed Sid-Ahmed, citing the threat of Islamic terrorism and the potential foundering of the Arab-Israeli peace process that Mubarak’s government supports. Reporting on alleged corruption has also disconcerted ruling circles, journalists claim.

Sid-Ahmed said it would be dangerous for authorities to still the press now, just when the country needs open discourse to help it through a critical phase of Middle Eastern history.

Besides being the most populous Arab country, Egypt’s government is one of the few--along with Jordan’s and Lebanon’s--that have allowed, within limits, some diverse and critical viewpoints to be published.

“Whatever happens in Egypt always has its reflection on the Arab nation,” Nafie said, referring to other Arab countries. “Of course if there is freedom here, Arab journalists will be happy and the governments will hate it.”

One commentator, however, said that any discussion of press law betrays a tendency in Arab societies to rely on “methods of force and coercion.”

“We forget that knowledge, enlightenment, true information and the encouragement of free expression, free thought and creativity are more significant motivators than deterrent punishments,” columnist Salama Ahmad Salama wrote in Al Ahram.

“The real problem with the press laws, both new and old,” he said, “is that they tend to close rather than open [and] obstruct rather than encourage people to rid themselves of fear and prejudice.”