16/06/2020
The Feminist Majority Foundation, an intersectional feminist network in the United States, maintains a lively blog with the latest news of relevance to all women, including lesbian, transwomen and BAME women. They publish information this week which is also of great concern to all of us who work volunteer in the grassroots media, and are concerned about freedom of expression in the digital world. Four young women have now been arrested by the conservative government in the state of Egypt for what the state is calling “spreading immorality”. The real reason, many experts believe, is because they were promoting ways of life outside the strict patriarchal control of heterosexual males, and because in at least one case, they were politically critical of the state. The North African Journal adds that since President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi’s election in 2014, hundreds of dissident public persons, including journalists, authors, activists, academics, and lawyers, have been arrested under the guise of state security. The four women in question currently are stars of the social media platform TikTok which is very popular across the globe, and which infuriates conservative states around the globe. The agenda of the government of Egypt in crushing opposition to heteropatriarchy was hinted at in one of the charges brought against three of the four, which reads “ attacking the family values of Egyptian society.” The targeting of social media influencers fits into a pattern of state interest in squashing dissent online, said Joey Shea, who studies cybersecurity at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. “This is yet another attempt to increase and legitimize surveillance of digital platforms,” she told the Guardian, pointing to other laws meant to limit freedom of expression.
http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2020/06/12/egypt-arrests-female-socia...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/05/egypt-end-relentless-atta...
