Haneen Hossam is a university student and TikTok influencer
Cairo, Egypt:
Young Egyptian women with thousands of followers each on the popular TikTok app have become the latest target of state officials who accuse them of spreading “immorality” in society.
Since President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi came to power in 2014, hundreds of journalists, activists, lawyers and intellectuals have been arrested and many websites blocked in the name of state security.
But in recent months, a popular group of women social media “influencers” have also drawn government ire, and several have been arrested in a widely acclaimed crackdown in the deeply conservative country.
In April, university student Haneen Hossam released a three-minute video clip telling more than 1.3 million followers that girls on the social media platform can make money by working with her.
“You will get to know new people and make friends in a respectful way … but please keep things clean,” she said, smiling cheekily under a red veil.
“The most important thing for me is my reputation,” she said, adding that participants who collaborate with her, depending on the number of clicks, could earn thousands of dollars.
Following allegations from online users that it was promoting prostitution, Egyptian police arrested Hossam on April 21, a court only ordered his bail this week.
“Iron fist”
Another influencer was arrested in May, Mowada al-Adham, who rose to fame by posting satirical clips on TikTok and Instagram, where she has two million followers.
The attorney general said the two women were accused of “attacking the family values of Egyptian society” through their incendiary posts.
Young women have also drawn a storm of sexist and hateful comments online.
“It is excellent,” wrote one user about the arrests, arguing that Egyptian justice must safeguard “the moral of the streets and of Egyptian society … It must do so with an iron fist”.
An even more shocking case followed later in May.
Menna Abdel-Aziz, 17, sobbing, beaten and bruised, posted a TikTok video in which she said that she had been gang-raped by a group of young men.
The authorities’ response was swift: she was arrested, along with her six alleged attackers, and all were charged with “promoting debauchery”.
“She has committed crimes, she admitted to some of them,” the attorney general said in a statement. “She deserves to be punished.”
The Egyptian Non-Governmental Initiative for Personal Rights called for her immediate release, to drop all charges and for the adolescent girl to be “treated as a victim and survivor of rape”.
It was not until Tuesday that prosecutors announced that she had been transferred from police custody to a rehabilitation center for women victims of abuse and violence.
“Technological revolution”
Human rights lawyer Tarek al-Awadi said the recent arrests show how deeply conservative and religious society is grappling with the rapid development of modern communication technologies.
Internet penetration has reached over 40% of the young Egyptian population of over 100 million. Online communications were a key instrument in the protests of the Arab Spring almost a decade ago.
“There is a technological revolution underway and legislators must take into account a constantly changing environment,” said Awadi.
He said that “if there are crimes that must be punished,” many “incidents fall squarely within the realm of personal freedoms”.
Helwan University sociologist Inshad Ezzeldin agreed that “traditions and rituals prevail over the law” in Egypt at a time when “the younger generations now have access to everything and know everything”.
The latest arrests are part of a larger state scheme targeting online dissent, said Joey Shea, a non-resident colleague doing cybersecurity research at the Washington-based Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy.
“This is a new attempt to increase and legitimize surveillance of digital platforms,” she told AFP, highlighting the laws criminalizing “false information” which is used to restrict the freedom of expression.
Feminist Ghadeer Ahmed said the latest crackdown also concerned class and status.
“Young women have used the Internet to create various opportunities that are generally not available due to their class,” she said on Facebook.
In the eyes of many Egyptians, she said, this “is contrary to the behavior expected of women from the poor classes”.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
