Last Monday, the House of Representatives finally approved a bill to amend some articles of the Penal Code, with tougher penalties for “disclosing state defense secrets.”
– This amendment is among the 3 bills presented by the government this week in Parliament, all of them imposing new and additional penalties under the pretext of “preserving security”, which no one will be against, but we can see the amendments in their image that violate any of the rights of citizens.
– And we said for a while we were writing in the Egyptian position about the abolition of the state of emergency and we praised the step with the fear that many of the provisions of the emergency law are found in other laws, and therefore there is a need to amend other laws in addition to ending the state of emergency.
– And we will follow up with some provisions of laws that in one way or another replace the emergency now, such as the law for the protection of public installations that we have read, which you can see from here:
– Now, in this way, it is a gesture that an arsenal of laws is working to replace the emergency, and it will remain in this way. We go back and do not go forward as we all wish, so we would like to follow the amendments to the laws with you in the emergency reproduction series.
What is the current amendment to the Penal Code? What is its content? What are the expected results? This is what we are going to talk about in the current post.
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What is the content of these modifications?
The amendment introduced by the government increases the penalty by imprisonment from six months to five years, and a fine of 5 to 50 thousand pounds for each of:
1- He obtained by any illegal means one of the country’s defense secrets, and did not intend to hand it over or disclose it to a foreign country, or hand it over or disclose it to a foreign country or to anyone working in its interest.
2- He disclosed in any way a defense secret of the country.
3- Whoever organizes or uses any means of correspondence with the intention of obtaining, delivering or broadcasting a country’s defense secret.
4- Anyone who collects questionnaires or statistics or conducts studies for any information or data related to the armed forces or their tasks, or their current or former members because of their job without a written permission from the Ministry of Defense.
If the crime occurred in time of war, or by using a means of deception, fraud, disguise or concealment of identity, nationality, profession or capacity, or by any means of information technology, or if the offender was an officer of the armed forces, one of its members, or one of its civilian workers The penalty was imprisonment. The same penalties shall be imposed on attempting to commit these crimes.”
What is new in this law is not to tighten the penalties, but to add the fourth paragraph, which clearly affects academic researchers, by targeting the collection of questionnaires or conducting studies for any information related to the army or one of its members, current or former, without permission from the Ministry of Defense.
Article 85 of the new law defines defense secrets, which include:
1. Military, political, diplomatic, economic and industrial information, which by its nature is known only to persons who have a capacity for this, and in the interest of defending the country, it must be kept secret to anyone other than these persons.
2. Objects, correspondences, papers, documents, drawings, maps, designs, photographs, and other things that, in the interest of defending the country, must be known only to those who are entrusted with their preservation or use, and which must be kept secret from anyone else, lest they lead to the disclosure of information referred to in the previous paragraph.
3. News and information related to the armed forces, their formations, movements, equipment, supplies and personnel, and in general everything that affects military and strategic affairs, and a written permission was not issued by the General Command of the Armed Forces for its publication or broadcast.
4. News and information related to the measures and procedures that are taken to detect, investigate, or prosecute the crimes stipulated in this chapter. However, the court in charge of the trial may authorize the broadcast of what it deems to be of its course.
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What was the parliament’s opinion?
– The law was approved in the discussions by all the members except for the objection and proposals of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party deputies and Representative Mohamed Abdel Alim Daoud, who we must salute for their frankly bravery, but the rest of the deputies spoke about the need to protect national security and confront “information wars,” and Major General Mamdouh Shaheen, Assistant Minister of Defense who The session was attended to talk about its importance in confronting the “fourth and fifth generation wars.”
– Egyptian Democratic Party deputy Maha Abdel Nasser, expressed her fear of the timing of the law, “We are not against toughening the punishment for broadcasting military secrets or espionage, but we have some reservations about the timing,” noting that the introduction of these amendments coincided with the president’s decision to end the state of emergency and issue a human rights strategy. .
– She wondered, “What is the idea of delivering messages of security, safety and tranquility, then we begin to expand the penalties and intensify the penalties for research and publication, and it is imposed within the national strategy for human rights that it is free to circulate information, not military information, but what is the definition of the secret?” We are expanding on these and giving mixed messages to the world.”
– Also, MP Muhammad Abdel-Alim Daoud, considered the amendment a restriction on the researcher and journalist in performing his mission, and said, “I am against any breach of national security and any opponent against breaching the national security of the country, we respect the armed forces so that no one is preying on us.”
– Representative Amira Saber of the Egyptian Democratic Party, submitted a proposal to amend the fourth paragraph, which talks about collecting questionnaires, statistics and studies, by adding an article obligating the Ministry of Defense to respond to any request within a specific period of time, so as not to be an obstacle to researchers, given that the work of the army is widespread in many things. .
– But the proposal was rejected, and Major General Mamdouh Shaheen responded to it and said that “the text since 1957 does not have a period and you know that the armed forces do not delay in responding. If we do not respond, the decision is considered negative, but anyone who advances we respond to it, especially scientific research.”
Also, the Egyptian Democratic Representative, Samira El-Gazzar, submitted a proposal to separate the completion of the crime from the attempt at it, but the council rejected this proposal as well.
– Major General Mamdouh Shaheen Qaad reiterates that the military judiciary is not a boogeyman, and there is no exceptional judiciary, and that the army does not ban journalists or researchers, but rather asks them to refer to the armed forces to obtain the correct information.
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What do we see from all of this?
First, it is the amendment of 3 laws in one day, all of which increase penalties and expand military trials. This is something that contradicts any logic related to freedoms or improving the human rights situation, which are things the government is supposed to work on improving, not neglecting an arsenal of laws to restrict them.
Especially since the military judiciary is in the end an exceptional judiciary, which does not have any guarantees for fair trials, and judges in it are appointed by choosing the Minister of Defense, and they are subject to obeying orders and respecting the military hierarchy. .
Amending a law that talks about espionage and adding research and studies to it, is an addition to new legal restrictions that imprison researchers who can take on a figure from the armed forces or part of the army’s work, and who are now involved in very many economic and political activities, thus intimidating researchers and journalists more and more From their work, especially since it is impossible that the Ministry of Defense will guide anyone to any work, and it will remain a new restriction on the freedom of information circulation and freedom of scientific research, as well as journalistic work and transparency.
– And the most dangerous thing is to equate scientific research and journalistic work with intelligence activities, something that is not at all reasonable. It is the scientific and academic research that is published and read by all people in the whole world. It is classified as espionage and intelligence activity that is actually circulating on military secrets because of its hands to military or intelligence agencies, which is a real crime Of course, its purpose will be to collect non-public information, whether about the armament of units or their movements, or maps, ciphers, or other real secrets that are being spread by other than spies or those who have illegal activities.
– But the academic researcher who publishes his paper or study in a magazine or on the website of a research center or university, this actually deals with “public” information because scientific research assumes that it is not an intelligence activity, and it is completely prohibited for any respected researcher or respected study center to publish confidential information that happens In an unscientific manner, the researcher deals with published information from a press archive, an archive of decisions, public statements, or interviews with specialists, recording them with their knowledge and prior approval of the content of the interview. This is a well-known research and journalistic activity in the world.
Unfortunately, Egypt has many detainees, researchers and academics, just because they did their normal and normal job, out of freedom of scientific research, but it is not reasonable that instead of discussing what you write, they are imprisoned on terrorism charges, like Ismail Al-Iskandarani who is imprisoned in a military court, or the publisher Khaled Lotfi who translated a book on Ashraf Marawan, Abdo Fayed, Patrick George, Ibrahim Ezz El-Din, and other journalists and researchers who are hard to count.
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A big problem if we deal in our country with the human rights file as a pressure card from the West. It is possible to make some concessions if the pressure increases, but at the same time by codifying repression in the legislative structure of Egyptian laws, by amending laws and granting immunity to measures of this kind.
Protecting the right of any citizen to research and knowledge is something that any developed country is keen on, because in the end it helps in understanding problems and helps develop situations and develop solutions for each file with different points of view, but intimidation and placing more restrictions in front of researchers, will never make a country progress There are no researchers, universities, or academics left there, and this is what affects our universities and our production in scientific research and knowledge, which is very weak compared to most countries in the world.
– When we wrote about ending the state of emergency and we praised the president’s step, we had fears that it would be only a formal step, and that the mechanisms and components of the state of emergency would continue through other laws like the one we presented.
– Therefore, we are now in front of a frank and persistent contradiction, by the way, in the state’s policy to deal with the public sphere and society in general in Egypt, at a time when the state is talking about a national strategy for human rights that violates the freedom of information circulation and places more restrictions on it.
– Constitution of 2014 Article `68 says that “information, data and statistics belong to the people, and disclosure of them from their various sources is a right guaranteed by the state to every citizen…” The law regulates “grievance against refusal to give it, and it also defines the penalty for withholding information…”.
Imposing permanent restrictions on research and journalistic work, is a new production for emergencies, in which censorship is abandoned for a period because it is an exceptional case. It is good in this way to establish censorship with permanent laws, you say that even the emergency law had a duration and extension, but the laws in this form will remain permanent emergencies without discussion or extension.
– Therefore, in the current way, talking about a breakthrough or a real democratic transition in Egypt will remain an area of doubt, because there is an amazing insistence not to move forward with real reforms that infringe the country to safety from its political and social predicament.
The arsenal of laws that we hear are being discussed in Parliament and will replace the emergency in their use, casts doubt on the seriousness of talking about reform, and therefore says that we are in the wrong direction unfortunately so far.
The existence of a healthy political life in a constitutional system, an independent judiciary, and all kinds of direct and electoral popular oversight, and the freedom to circulate information are not requests for luxury. This is in the interest of all Egyptians.
I wish a day would come when we see our country in which there is freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, freedom of scientific research and freedom of thought, and there are no unfair trials and no exceptional judiciary that punishes civilians.