German Institute accused of censoring articles critical of ruling military council

Mathloom · Mar 13, 2012

German Institute in Egypt accused of censoring articles critical of ruling military council

A web journal run by the Goethe-Institut in Cairo was taken down late February. Before taking all the posts offline at least two articles related to Egypt’s military were censored for “security reasons” and all posts related to Egypt had been withheld from publishing.

Funded by Germany's Foreign Office, Goethe is a non-profit German cultural association that operates around the world to promote the study of the German language abroad and cultural exchange.

The web journal, Transit, was established a year ago with the theme “The Changing Arab World” and is published in three languages, English, German and Arabic, with contributing authors from 10 different countries.

Daniel Roters, a contributor to Transit, wrote an open letter to the editorial staff asking why the web journal’s posts were taken offline without the team being notified.

Christoph Sanders, another contributor, also wrote a letter asking for an explanation and addressed it to Dr Günther Hasenkamp, Goethe’s Middle East and North Africa cultural programme director.

Numerous other contributors have written letters to Hasenkamp and director Gabriele Becker, who were responsible for the decision.

The official message on the website stated that “Transit is receiving a new design, a new technical backbone and a new conception.”

Goethe’s director Becker told Ahram Online, “We want to sort the posts in a new way. Nobody finds their way through.”

Roters does not believe this explanation for the removal of the articles, stating in his letter that “it is not necessary at all because technically changes are always possible without hiding any posts.”

“Even if you take it offline, you should tell everybody who had contributed and give them the reasons. It is a very authoritarian way of censorship,” says Julia Tieke, a contributor to Transit, whose piece about a military officer was also not allowed to run.

Mariam Bakry, a digital marketing consultant agrees with Roters and told Ahram Online, “Technically, there’s no reason to delete older blog posts. Blogs become popular when a strong relationship is built between the blogger and the readers, and one doesn’t simply remove the old content. It harms this relationship, harms the blog’s ranking at search engines, and messes with all the link-backs that people used from said blog.”

Security concerns

In late January all contributions from or about Egypt were suspended from Transit. Becker denied that any articles were censored for reasons other than their quality, but emails obtained by Ahram Online show that Goethe refused the publication of at least two articles for security reasons.

The first article by Magdy Samaan entitled 'Who are the True 'Fulul 'of Post-Revolution Egypt?' argues that the military are the true remnants or fulul of the Mubarak regime.

The article was approved by the editorial team and on 6 February Samaan received an email saying “it is now being read by our director, for final OK.” In an email dated 8 February, Samaan received the following response, “I am sorry to bring bad news, but for security reasons our director has decided not to publish your article just now.”

Another article by Julia Tieke, written in January, was not published. The article, 'Trust me, I'm an Officer' describes an encounter Tieke had with a military officer, who expressed his love for Germans on account of Hitler.

The response given to Tieke by email many weeks later admitted that there were internal issues with regard to the role of the web journal project as part of a foreign institution. “The director does not want the Egyptian employees of the institute to be exposed to any risk, in light of the NGO [non-governmental organisation] arrests in Cairo a few weeks ago.”

Becker admits that Goethe is concerned after German NGO Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) was raided as part of the Egyptian regime’s crackdown on NGOs.

“We know that we are also watched,” Becker told Ahram Online. Becker said that she knew because the German Embassy was “signalled” and that it was communicated to her earlier in January.

Becker is concerned not to further aggravate the regime. “We will continue to do our work but not provoke,” she said.

Pressure on Goethe

The issue is not specific to Transit web journal; there were also incidents relating to KAS, Tahrir Lounge and the German University in Cairo (GUC) which suggest that there may be more widespread pressure on German institutions in Egypt.

Early in January, Tweet Nadwa, a debate forum founded and organised by Egyptian blogger and activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, was set to take place in Tahrir Lounge on 4 January but was cancelled at the last minute. Tahrir Lounge is a space that uses the Goethe premises but is administratively independent.

Two informed sources, speaking on condition of anonymity independently confirmed to Ahram Online that the German ambassador applied pressure on Tahrir Lounge to cancel Tweet Nadwa.

Mona Shahein, Tahrir Lounge Project Manager, denied this to Ahram Online saying, “On that day we had a technical problem.”
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More at link: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCon...titute-in-Egypt-accused-of-censoring-art.aspx
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da_juice · Mar 13, 2012

This kowtow is ridiculous, those military rulers are almost as bad as mubarrak.

Those elections can't come any sooner.

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