You might be surprised to know that Egypt was considering boycotts against Australia last week. In an obscure Senate committee, the Australian government stated it was now referring to the Palestinian territories as “disputed” rather than “occupied”. After ambassadors from the Organization of the Islamic Conference (including Egypt) exerted diplomatic pressure and threatened trade sanctions, Australia back-tracked and “clarified its position”. As the Australian government responds to the jailing of Peter Greste for seven years for simply doing his job as a journalist, would such pressure work against Egypt? As an Australian expat living in Cairo for the last eight years, I am sympathetic to how sanctions might affect the lives of Egyptians, especially in the tourism industry. However, I am convinced that the only effective response to this travesty of justice is to implement a program of economic sanctions and a tourism boycott in coordination with the other nations impacted by the Al Jazeera case – the UK, Holland and Canada. Firstly, Egypt does not respond to diplomatic pressure and does not care about its reputation. No matter how many times in the past year the international community has…
