Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on Wednesday that international media “generalised” in its coverage of the stand-off between police and journalists, ignoring that the arrested journalists “incited to assassinate the president.” Shoukry was referring to the international coverage of the issue of security personnel raiding the journalists’ syndicate building to arrest two journalists, Amr Badr and Mahmoud al-Sakka, during a sit-in they had been staging on 1 May 2016. The two journalists work at a critical online news outlet called Yanair Gate, which had issued a statement describing the day on which the raid and arrest took place as “a black day in the history of Egyptian journalism.” “Authorities should open an investigation into the increasing assaults on journalists instead of supporting efforts to intimidate and silence the press,” Sherif Mansour, MENA Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), previously told Aswat Masriya. Shoukry, on the other hand, stated that international coverage of the event did not match up to the conditions in Egypt, adding that there are many media outlets that enjoy freedom of expression. He added that there were journalists who protested in Egypt against their syndicate’s “harboring” of people who had arrest warrants…
Arrested Journalists Incited to ‘Assassinate’ Egypt’s President Sisi: Foreign Minister
May 13, 2016
