Hundreds of plain-clothes police stop journalists covering demonstration

Reporters Without Borders has protested against physical assault and intimidation of numbers of local and foreign journalists covering a demonstration in Cairo, on 14 November 2006, against sexual harassment of women in the capital. “It is disturbing that in Egypt physical assaults on journalists have become systematic during this type of public demonstration,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Whatever the event and regardless of what is at stake, the security forces harass the press and all those who dare to speak to them,” it added. The Cairo correspondent for Radio France and the French daily Libération, Claude Guibal, was held back by plain-clothes police officers who stopped her from reaching the demonstration, even though she gave them her identity and journalist work papers. She was told to leave the area for “security reasons”. She was then followed for 20 minutes by around six police officers to make sure she did not return to the scene of the demonstration. She later told Reporters Without Borders that she felt “clearly threatened and physically intimidated”. The security forces also bundled Nasser Nouri, photographer for the British news agency Reuters, away from the demonstration and destroyed some of his equipment. Other journalists were prevented from interviewing demonstrators by a safety cordon of hundreds of plain-clothes officers. The demonstration had been organised at a spot where several young women were assaulted while leaving a cinema in the capital on 23 October 2006. A report of the incident was posted online by an Egyptian blogger, Waël Abbas, who was there at the time. He was later threatened with arrest for “for violating internal security” after two local television stations broadcast a report based on his pictures and account of what had happened.