‘We’ve Never Seen in Egypt’s History This Many Attacks Against Journalists’

Two journalists have now been confirmed killed in clashes that erupted last night as the Egyptian military began clearing sit-ins by supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsy. Mick Deane, a 15-year veteran cameraman for Sky News, and Habiba Abd El Aziz, a 26-year-old Emirati journalist for the publication Xpress, were both killed by gunfire.

Other journalists in Cairo have been wounded or detained by the military. Erin Cunningham, Middle East editor for GlobalPost, has compiled a series of their tweets, including:

Authorities knew full well that I’m a journalist while arresting me today. It actually seemed to get me some extra punches.

— Mike Giglio (@mike_giglio) August 14, 2013

Cops took my laptop, opened it on the scene. Then punched me in the head until I gave them the password. Laptop, wallet, cell not returned.

— Mike Giglio (@mike_giglio) August 14, 2013

Police officer who told me earlier I was "provoking" him by writing in my notebook now says: "if I see u again I will shoot you in the leg"

— Abigail Hauslohner (@ahauslohner) August 14, 2013

Reuters photojournalist Asmaa Waguih is being moved to the international medical center after she was shot in the leg

— Halim ???? (@HaleemElsharani) August 14, 2013

Press intimidation is hardly new in Egypt — it was a staple of the Mubarak regime, and it continued during Egypt’s military-led transition, under the Morsy government, and now under the military-backed government of President Adly Mansour, which came to power on July 3. But Sherif Mansour, program coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa at the Committee to Protect Journalists, says it’s getting worse.

"We haven’t seen in Egypt’s history this many attacks against journalists," he told Foreign Policy by phone this morning. "Not even under Mubarak." Journalists are "absolutely" being targeted, he said. "This has been systematic."

Efforts to silence journalists have taken different forms over the past year, Mansour noted. "Morsy supporters and allies" filed legal injunctions against journalists to stop reporting against the government, and CPJ "documented at least 78 cases of assault during the year of Morsy’s tenure." Military leaders have taken a different tack, for the most part — on the day of the coup, they blocked access to parts of an enclave of television studios outside of Cairo and shut down some stations sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood government, five of which remain shuttered today, a month and a half later. Journalists have also reportedly being harassed while visiting the protest encampment that was attacked on Wednesday. A CPJ report, released on Tuesday, detailed several accounts, including one in which an editor for an online news site was briefly kidnapped and "[taken] in a car to Nahda Square, where assailants beat him, photographed him naked, and threatened to publish the photographs."

Last December, Al-Hosseiny Abou Deif, a reporter for the Egyptian paper El-Fagr, was shot and killed outside the presidential palace in Cairo during a demonstration. An investigation by CPJ has led Mansour to believe that Abou Deif was assassinated.

"Journalists are paying a price for doing their work," Mansour told FP. "It is vital that the government steps up and … allows journalists the rights and protection to do their work."

With what appears to be the deliberate, targeted harassment of journalists in Cairo today, that seems increasingly unlikely.