Egyptian presenter Khadiga Khattab, the regular host of a 30-minute television show, is usually the one delivering the news, not generating it.

But this week, the veteran broadcaster who has worked for the Egyptian radio and television union Ertu for more than 20 years, has been caught up in an unwanted controversy. She and seven other presenters have been deemed by their employer to be too overweight to appear on camera and suspended for a month.

They have been given an ultimatum: lose weight or lose your job.

“It’s unfair,” Khattab told the Guardian. “It’s discriminatory. They discriminate between men and women. They haven’t gone to any men, accusing them of being fat and suspending them. Only women.

“My appearance is my business, not theirs. It’s my private matter and in fact, I’m the way a common, natural Egyptian woman is. You can’t judge a presenter only by how much they weigh.”

Khattab’s programme, called Itelala (Views), is broadcast on public television’s Channel Two every Friday at 9pm. It reflects on the social and cultural events of the past week, with guests usually invited to the studio. “I have a long history of very successful programmes and my place will be empty if I leave my programme as the result of this,” she said.

According to the privately owned Egyptian newspaper al-Youm al-Sabe (the seventh day), the decision was taken by Ertu’s female director Saffa Hijazi, who has called on the presenters to go on diets if they want to keep their job.



Khattab said many people in Egypt had expressed sympathy with their situation. “The public opinion in Egypt reject this decision against many of our country’s distinguished presenters,” she said. Not everyone has been supportive, with some using derogatory terms such as “bakabouzas” (overweight girls in Arabic) to refer to them.



Reda Eldanbouki, director of the women’s centre for guidance and legal awareness, an Egyptian NGO based in al-Mansoura, said it was shameful for Hijazi to ask the eight presenters to only come back in front of camera once their appearance has become “appropriate”.



“This decision was shameful and violates various clauses of the Egyptian constitution and objectifies women and is abusive towards them,” he told the Guardian. “It also violates the ability for women to work freely in public positions. It contradicts the most important agreements that demands total equality between the genders in public positions and also the agreements to end all discrimination against women.”

Eldanbouki called on the public broadcaster to rescind the decision, reinstate the presenters and offer them an apology. He noted that it also violated many international treaties that Egypt has endorsed. “The Arab charter on human rights 2004 states that all people are equal before the law and every citizen has the right to equal opportunities to work in every public position available in their country based on principle of equal opportunities,” Eldanbouki said.

Khattab said the nationwide debate the decision has prompted has put a great deal of psychological pressure on her, distracting her from her usual life. She still has another programme on radio, which is about poetry, that she has been allowed to continue.

But she is unsure about the fate of her TV programme. “For now, they have banned me from appearing in front of camera for one month,” she said. “I don’t know what will happen after that, whether I will be prevented from doing my job or not.” On Itelala, she said she talked about “very crucial subjects about social, cultural issues and also about the media, whether they exaggerate or they are telling the truth.”

Khattab said the TV authorities did not care about the real reason why the state broadcaster has been lagging behind its competitors. “They don’t care about the TV itself and how it progresses and how it is placed compared to other TVs. The state TV cannot compete with other channels, it does not have the characteristics to do so.”|



Asked if losing her job would be a burden, she said: “Financially everybody wants to work, it’s my job first of all, it’s my right, and I’m very successful in my field. I just want justice.”

Khattab’s ordeal comes at a critical time for journalists in Egypt, a country that has dramatically stepped up its persecution of the press since president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, once head of the armed forces, took the helm in the aftermath of the 2013 military coup that ousted the democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

According to Reporters Without Borders, under Sisi’s leadership “the current authorities are orchestrating a ‘Sisification’ of the media” and “journalists are obliged on national security grounds to report only the official version of ‘terrorist’ attacks”.

Last year, Egypt was one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with at least 24 behind bars.

According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists this year alone four journalists have been sentenced for “publishing false news”, five other been sent to trial and two locked up. Photojournalist Mahmoud Abou Zeid has been behind bars for more than 900 days.