Mubarak Republic

"“I call it the freedom to scream,” said Fahmy Howeidy, a writer who has often criticized the government without penalty. “You can say what you want. But you cannot act.” The detention this month of Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German who organized a peaceful march in support of Palestinians in Gaza, received international attention because of his dual nationality and because he was held incommunicado and without charge. But what made Mr. Rizk’s case extraordinary was how routine it actually was, according to political activists, political scientists, bloggers, Islamists, former prisoners and human rights groups here and abroad. It is all too common for the security services to grab citizens, detain them without charge, refuse to release any information concerning their whereabouts and deny them even the minimal protections, under an emergency law passed decades ago to help fight terrorism. “In Egypt, it’s sort of a soft dictatorship,” said Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information in Cairo. “They want to have a pleasant image. But Egypt is ruled by the security apparatus.” The security services appear to have decided that it is generally acceptable to write for a newspaper. But bloggers are another matter. For some reason, as yet unexplained, blogging seems to cross the line from speaking to acting. It may be that bloggers, by nature, are less willing to stop at the edge of what criticism is tolerated. Newspaper writers, for example, are cautious about how they deal with the president; bloggers have often attacked him head-on."