The Egyptian government has continued to ignore the ongoing stand-off between the Interior Ministry and the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate, offering no commentary on the situation, nor any solutions, in the apparent hope that a lack of official response will cause the crisis to fade from the media spotlight.
The crisis errupted on Sunday, May 1, when police officers entered the syndicate's headquarters building in downtown Cairo and arrested two journalists on a warrant from the public prosecution. Amr Badr, editor-in-chief of yanair.net, and a journalist working for the same news website named Mahmoud al-Sakka, were arrested on suspicion of inciting anti-government protests.
The arrests came as a part of a broader police crackdown on journalists since April 25, when mass anti-government protests had been planned in response to the transfer of two Red Sea islands from Egyptian control to that of Saudi Arabia as part of a maritime demarcation agreement.
The arrests of Badr and Sakka sparked uproar among syndicate members, who claimed that the police had broken the law by entering the syndicate building without proper authorization and prior permission. The ministry responded by saying that they had all the authorization necessary to make the arrests.
The next day, Monday, May 2, syndicate head Yehyia Qallash demanded the resignation of Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar and called a General Assembly on Wednesday to decide on further action against the ministry. At the meeting on Wednesday, the syndicate ruled on a number of steps to be taken to escalate the stand-off, including possible strike action.
While the Interior Ministry has made a number of statements regarding the legality of its actions in making the arrests, there has been no comment from President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or the Cabinet, despite the solutions that have been put forward by journalists.
President Sisi has made two public appearnaces in the past week without referring to the issue at all.
On Sunday, the same day the syndicate was stormed, the president stopped on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road to pay fees on the toll gates, meeting there with a number of citizens there who surrounded him, saluting.
The opportunity for Sisi to comment came on Thursday at Farafra Oasis, when he gave the signal for the wheat harvest to begin at a new land reclamation project.
While some have demanded an apology from Sisi for the controversial arrests last Sunday, others have said that he was not involved in or aware of the Interior Ministry's actions and is therefore not to blame.
In a phone-in to CBC television channel just a few hours after the arrests last Sunday, the editor-of-chief of Al-Akhbar newspaper, Yasser Rezk, said that Sisi had no idea about the incident at the time that it happened.
Rezk said that he called the office of the president at the time, and they insisted that they knew nothing of the incident.
Rezk also suggested that some Interior Ministry officials who oppose Sisi deliberately commit acts to tarnish his image, adding a new possible spin on events.
Despite the president's silence on the matter, Egyptian journalists are insisting on keeping the issue in the spotlight, while the syndicate is still planning strike action if the matter is not resolved soon.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
