“While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies” Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee .
This quote from highly-respected (and Holocaust survivor) Tom Lantos applied to Yahoo, accused of sharing personal information with the Chinese government to help them put dissidents to jail. But Egypt has its own kind of “moral pygmy”: Naguib Sawiris
If you’re wondering why you’ve never come across any negative news about Egypt telecom magnate Naguib Sawiris, that’s because journalists who attempt to expose his corrupt business deals end up with prison sentences.
Of course it’s no secret that Naguib Sawiris uses his telecom services in Egypt (Oeascom owned Mobinil) to give personal information about its users to the government and is also involved in accepting gracious government bribes. But if Naguib Sawiris has anything to do with it, you won’t hear a word about that.
Naguib Sawiris is extremely well-liked by the Egyptian press–if you can call journalists who aren’t allowed to tell the truth "the press." He portrays himself as a liberal good guy, which you’d think means he values free speech and objective reporting. Yet what happens when free speech includes exposing information about how Naguib Sawiris maneuvers his million-dollar deals? Let’s take a look.
In March 2002, a Cairo court sentenced Adel Hammouda and Essam Fahmy of the independent weekly Sawt al-Umma to six months in prison each for defaming Naguib Sawiris, as the Committee to Protect Journalist points out. Just what did Hammouda, a reporter, and Fahmy, the paper’s publisher, do to receive this sentence? They wrote articles accusing Naguib Sawiris and his telecommunications company, Orascom Telecom, of financial misconduct. The journalists charged that the Sawiris family, with the help of Bank Misr, used false bank certificates to raise Orascom’s capital by 400 million Egyptian pounds (about USD 90 million at the time). According PEN World Association of Writers, each was sentenced to six months in prison and fined 500 Egyptian pounds. The conviction was overturned on appeal, but NS and his family filed a total of 30 lawsuits against the paper.
Like Russia and China, Egypt has a nasty censorship track record for shutting down journalists and bloggers who critique government-backed puppets like Naguib Sawiris. Journalists who dare to criticize President Hosni Mubarak (whose family–surprise surprise–has close ties with Naguib Sawiris) and other members of the Egyptian ruling elite are silenced, fined, and buried beneath a heap of lawsuits, despite the fact that Egypt is full of journalists who are well equipped to expose lawless businessmen like Naguib Sawiris.
As CPJ’s (Committee to Protect Journalists) executive director Ann Cooper put it: "Imposing prison sentences on journalists for covering stories of clear public interest is outrageous." The cases against Hammouda and Fahmy should be dropped immediately."