by David Kavanagh

Egyptian President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi has today given his formal approval to a new set of nation wide anti-terror legislation set to be officially enacted and enforced this coming Monday.

The Egyptian government has ostensibly claimed these laws are designed to combat the supposed growing threat posed by Islamist groups affiliated with Islamic State or the Muslim Brotherhood.

This comes following the assassination of Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat in June and the killing of hundreds of members of Egypt’s armed forces by extremists in the country’s Sinai region.

However, many critics, such as the human rights group Amnesty International, have warned that these anti-terror laws will be exploited by the state to further repress dissent and press freedom. This concern is not unfounded. The laws in question include a number of provisions with arguably worrying consequences.

Under the first, journalists may be fined up to $25000 for reporting in a way that contradicts official or state-spun accounts of militant attacks.

While earlier drafts had gone further and threatened to imprison journalists for these acts, widespread international outcries and the controversy surrounding the disputably farcical show trials and unlawful imprisonment of Al Jazeera reporters Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, forced legislators to make amendments.

Even so, this provision will likely be used by the state to discourage and prevent independent journalists, either locally based or from global networks, from reporting in ways the state deems against its own interests.

Dalia Fahmy, a member of the Egyptian Rule of Law Association and an assistant professor at Long Island University in New York told Al Jazeera:

The law here is a system that is not protecting the citizenry, but rather protecting the state… It is becoming indicative of the consolidation of power in the hands of the executive.

Secondly, under these laws, individuals found guilty of “inciting, or [preparing] to incite, directly or indirectly, a terrorist act” (such as by spreading something deemed by the state to be a terrorist message online), joining a militant group, or financing a terrorist group, may face five to seven, ten, or up to twenty-five years in prison respectively.

The primary issue here is that, in also repressing independent reportage, the state gets to wholly define which groups or individuals are “terrorists” and which are not.

Almost immediately after organizing a coup against former President Mohammed Morsi and taking the office for himself in June 2014, el-Sisi outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood and made it illegal for protesters to gather without a government-issued license.

Importantly, the Muslim Brotherhood, which Mohammed Morsi had himself been a member of, had at that time been voted in by a majority of the Egyptian population for the crucial role it played in toppling Hosni Mubarak, the authoritarian Egyptian President who had reigned over the nation for 30 years.

In other words, the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters were and continue to be a major oppositional force that el-Sisi had, according to many, illegally expelled.

By labeling the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that claims to be committed to peaceful activism (despite the violent actions of some of its members), a “terrorist organisation” and threatening to imprison anyone with supposed ties to the organisation, el-Sisi is making it effectively impossible for the group and other dissenting protesters to run against him.

Finally, although this list is by no means exhaustive, the laws call for the establishment of special courts designed to provide greater legal protection for military or police officers that use force in ways that the court interprets as being proportionate “in performing their duties”

In 2014, during el-Sisi’s coup, at least 1400 protesters supporting Morsi had been killed by the military over which el-Sisi then presided as Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces.

Although members of el-Sisi’s army rarely suffered any consequences for their involvement in what the world media dubbed a “massacre”, the creation of a court that goes even further to protect those violating human rights in the name of the state is greatly unsettling to many.

Already suffering under the weight of an incredibly corrupt and ineffectual court system and other repressive state apparatus, the introduction of these laws may, according to some commentators, see Egypt stumble even further down the path to autocracy.

For a more retrospective look at Egypt post-Morsi, check out my previous post: Repressive Egypt: Greste, death sentences & el-Sisi’s regime

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