DIGITAL LIFE

Influencers of the Tik Tok are persecuted by the authorities in Egypt

Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi came to power in Egypt in 2014, hundreds of journalists, political activists, lawyers and intellectuals have been arrested and several websites have been blocked. The government claims that these are security measures, while its opponents and human rights NGOs denounce acts of censorship and repression. The new targets of the system are young women who use the Tik Tok app. Influencers, many of them teenagers, are accused of immorality.
The world of influencers has so far been spared by the authorities in Egypt, a conservative Muslim country where less than half the population has access to the Internet. But since April, the situation has started to change.
The trigger was a post by Haneen Hossam, an influencer like about a million followers on Tik Tok, an application that is especially appreciated by teenagers. In the message, she announces that girls in the country could earn a lot of money working on social networks. "You will meet people and make friends" online, said the young woman, who appears with her head covered with a veil. "The most important thing for me is reputation," says Haneen, explaining that depending on the number of clicks, young women could earn up to thousands of dollars.
What Haneen did is not much different from what influencers do around the world. But in an increasingly repressive Egyptian regime, the young woman was accused of promoting prostitution activities and was arrested on April 21. She was released this week after bail, but was arrested again on charges that "new evidence" of immorality had been found.
In May it was the turn of Mawada Al-Adham, 22, another Tik Tok star and followed by more than two million people on Instagram. She was arrested, like Haneen, accused of "attacking the values ​​of family and society".
The position of the authorities, incidentally, finds defenders in the social networks themselves, where internet users congratulate the punishments of the young women. Comments such as "justice must act with an iron fist towards those who deliberately destroy our society" are common after the arrests of influencers.

Victim of collective rape was arrested
But in some cases, presence on social media can cost much more than a prison term. Shortly after the arrest of Mawada Al-Adham and Haneen Hossam, 17-year-old Menna Abdel-Aziz posted a video on Tik Tok in which his face is covered with bruises. She claims to have been a victim of gang rape.
The police acknowledged that there was sexual violence. However, the young woman was arrested, accused of “promoting bad conduct”. According to the prosecutor who handled the case, the teenager “committed crimes and deserves to be punished”.
Only after mobilizing the NGO Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which asked that Menna be treated as a victim, did the young woman manage to be transferred to a center that welcomes victims of violence.
The prisons expose the gap between a conservative society and the development of new technologies, comments Tarek al-Awadi, an Egyptian lawyer specializing in human rights. "There is a technological revolution underway and legislators have to take this into account," he asks, recalling that these episodes hurt "individual freedoms".

Traditions are above the law
However, as Inshad Ezzeldin, a sociologist at Helwan University in Cairo, Egypt, points out, "traditions are above the law." According to him, a reform of the legislation is necessary.
NGOs say influencers' arrests are just another tool in the government's crackdown policy. Especially after the approval, in 2018, of the law on press and media, which authorizes the surveillance of social networks.
But for feminist Ghadeer Ahmed, the detention of influencers has a second reading: almost always these young women are from disadvantaged classes and “use the internet to create opportunities that would not be possible in their social environment”. For the activist, they are criticized for behaving in a way “contrary to what is expected” of women from the poorest classes.

by Radio France International