Egypt witnessed many political transformations following the events of 30 June, which led to the removal of the late President Mohamed Morsi and his group from power, as the public sphere, or what is known as “civic public space”, was greatly affected, whether at the level of political participation or trade union organisations, as well as the state of the press and media in Egypt.
Since 2013 and until now, rights reports have shown a marked decline in the state of freedom of opinion and expression in Egypt, the same decline that has affected the space of press and media freedoms. This came in parallel with the escalating pace of security targeting of content creators on digital platforms, with a marked expansion in levelling charges such as “joining terrorist groups” or “spreading false news” against citizens, journalists and activists, over the peaceful expression of their opinions or their addressing of public affairs issues.
Over the past twelve years, the country has witnessed a large increase in the use of pretrial detention and the recycling of cases against journalists, human rights defenders and politicians, according to rights reports, amid the absence of any official statistics on the numbers of detainees or prisoners, despite repeated demands. In this context, Amnesty International described these policies as representing a level of repression “more extreme than anything seen under the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak”, considering that Egypt had turned into “an open-air prison for critics”.
On Public Space and the Shrinking of Spaces
The United Nations defines civic space (or the civic sphere) as “the environment that enables civil society to play an active role in political, economic and social life”. In particular, this space allows individuals and groups to contribute to shaping the policies that affect their lives, through access to information, participation in public dialogue, expressing opposition or disagreement, and joining together collectively to present their views and demands. The United Nations also stresses that the existence of an open and pluralistic civic space, which guarantees freedom of opinion and expression alongside freedom of peaceful assembly and association, is an essential condition for achieving sustainable development and lasting peace.
Meanwhile, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights defines it as the sphere that allows individuals and groups to exercise their rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and participation in public affairs without fear of reprisal or repression, enabling them to hold the authorities accountable and to influence public policies.
In the same context, the HuMENA Foundation (a non-profit human rights organisation), in a research paper titled “Years of Siege: The State of Civic Space in Egypt during the Period 2013–2025”, defined civic space as the framework that enables individuals and groups, within the borders of the state or in exile, to participate freely and effectively in public affairs through organisation, expression and accountability. The organisation considered that this space is not limited to a spatial or legal dimension, but embodies a system of guarantees that allow society to perform its role in influencing, monitoring and decision-making.
Likewise, HuMENA holds that civic space cannot be reduced to freedom of expression or demonstration alone, but encompasses the totality of structures and mechanisms that allow civic actors, individuals and institutions alike, to interact with the authorities and society within a safe and pluralistic environment subject to human rights standards. The foundation views civic space as a pivotal indicator of the extent of the state’s respect for human rights, and as a mirror of the balance of the relationship between the authorities and society. When this space is undermined through repressive laws, security restrictions or smear campaigns, defending it becomes a duty, not only to protect freedoms but to guarantee the continuity of public work, preserve dignity and safeguard the democratic path.
For his part, Mostafa Fouad, executive director of the HuMENA Foundation for Human Rights, explains that the processes of shrinking civic spaces over 12 years, from 3 July 2013 until 31 December 2025, did not happen in one go, but took place gradually through an accumulated series of decisions and policies crafted by the authorities over the years, so that the restrictions and limits imposed on public participation became the rule rather than the exception.
Speaking to Zawia3, Fouad points out that the siege of civic space came in several stages, beginning with redefining what is prohibited within the framework of various pieces of legislation, then using lengthy judicial tracks to produce deterrence over time and to exhaust participants, in addition to using administrative procedures to impose daily restrictions that reduce the ability of individuals and groups to organise and to participate continuously.
He adds that this siege also extended to cyberspace, through policies of blocking, prosecution and surveillance that affect expression, the privacy of communication and the integrity of circulated information. This greatly raised the cost of public participation, brought about fundamental changes in the shape of the public sphere and its actual limits, and turned civic space in Egypt into an environment dominated by cumulative restrictions, so that public participation became exhausting and a risk for citizens and activists.
From the Constitution to Legislation: Years of Legalising Repression
Following the events of 30 June and the removal of the late President Mohamed Morsi and his group on 3 July 2013, the Egyptian authorities sought to comprehensively re-engineer civic space, by reshaping the rules of the public sphere and the mechanisms for controlling it. While the state had historically relied on the Emergency Law No. 162 of 1958 as a main tool for managing the exception, after 2013 it moved towards building an expanded and permanent legislative system, justified on the pretext of “regulating the public sphere”, so that the exception turned into a settled rule in the structure of the legal and political system.
In this context, the research paper issued by HuMENA considered that the Constitution issued in 2014 included important gains, among them recognition of the right to establish associations by notification, affirmation of full equality among citizens and the creation of a commission to combat discrimination, in addition to articles supporting freedom of expression and prohibiting censorship of newspapers. At the same time, however, it points out that the period was not free of criticism, as the Committee of Fifty refused to ban military trials of civilians, which drew objections from defenders of politicians and human rights defenders, as they considered it a violation of fair trial guarantees.
The paper also pointed to the position of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who described the constitution as having been written “with good intentions”, which paved the way for constitutional amendments in 2019 that contributed, as the paper considered, to undermining what remained of judicial independence. The law regulating the judiciary, No. 13 of 2017, was also issued in light of these amendments, granting the president broad powers, among them powers of appointment and of forming the Supreme Council of the Judiciary and the elections regulatory body.
After 3 July 2013, there began a phase of what the research paper called “the legalisation of repression”, aimed at building an integrated legislative system to impose actual restrictions on public participation and civil liberties. According to the paper, this system began with the Protest Law No. 107 of 2013, as the law turned the constitutional right to peaceful assembly into a de facto ban, by imposing broad restrictions and granting the security agencies unlimited powers to disperse and object to demonstrations, creating a climate of fear and pre-emptive deterrence towards any expression of opposition. This was followed by the issuance of a number of laws aimed at completing the siege of public space.
The research paper described what happened to the legal system as the completion of the “militarisation of judicial procedures” through the amendment of the Emergency Law in 2020, which granted judicial police powers to all ranks of the armed forces, culminating in the new Code of Criminal Procedure in 2025, which it considered to have stirred controversy and which rights organisations regarded as tantamount to demolishing the rule of law.
Another paper by the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, titled “Analysing Some Patterns of the Legislative Policies of the Post-30 June State: On Bending the Law to Serve Political Repression”, addressed the structural transformations that the Egyptian legislative framework has undergone from 2013 until the present moment. It concluded that the legislative authority took a strategic path to restructure the national legal system in a way that allows repressive practices and rights violations to be legalised and legitimised, in parallel with strengthening the mechanisms of impunity.
Mostafa Fouad, executive director of the HuMENA Foundation for Human Rights, continues telling Zawia3 that legislation in Egypt, over the twelve years since 2013, has been used as a central tool to systematically narrow civic space and to target its main gateways, foremost among them the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and the media, digital space, and civil society work and organisation.
He explains that, in addition to the Protest Law No. 107 of 2013, which made taking to the streets an act fraught with legal risks, at the level of freedom of expression the Anti-Cyber and Information Technology Crimes Law No. 175 of 2018 strengthened the tools of surveillance and data collection, and opened the door to blocking websites on the basis of loose justifications such as “national security”, and sometimes without giving clear reasons, in parallel with continuous restrictions on independent media, which weakened pluralism and limited citizens’ right to access information.
As for civil society work and organisation, the executive director of HuMENA says that the NGO laws, particularly Law 70 of 2017 and then Law 149 of 2019, have entrenched a system of oversight and procedures that restricts registration, funding and the implementation of activities, and keeps the operational capacity of organisations dependent on repeated administrative and security approvals.
Fouad concludes that peaceful participation in any public work, “whether in the form of organisation, criticism or protest”, has become tied to an accumulated legal and security cost, which has led to the actual shrinking of the public sphere and pushed broad segments of citizens to withdraw from public affairs or to practise self-censorship.
In this context, he stresses that sustainable political or economic stability cannot be achieved under a legislative system that makes public participation a risk, narrows the public sphere and punishes criticism and organisation. Real stability, according to the globally recognised rules of good governance, presupposes the existence of a safe space for criticism, accountability and organisation, and a clear law whose application can be predicted. Therefore, amending these restrictive laws, in line with the constitution and international human rights standards, is an essential condition for building society’s trust and for establishing an economy capable of continuing and growing.
Engineering Legislation in Egypt
During the period from 3 July 2013 until early 2016, parliament was entirely absent from the legislative scene, which allowed the President of the Republic, on the basis of the constitutional provisions regulating cases of necessity, to issue “decrees having the force of law” without parliamentary oversight, as documented by the Egyptian Human Rights Forum in its paper.
These exceptional powers were used to issue a package of fundamental legislation that reshaped the public sphere in a restrictive way, foremost among them the Protest Law and the counter-terrorism laws, turning legislation from a tool for regulating and guaranteeing rights into an official tool for legalising the restrictions imposed on freedom of expression, assembly and public work.
Meanwhile, the paper produced by the HuMENA organisation for human rights explained that, with the return of parliamentary life, the political regime, led by the current President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and in coordination with the security agencies, tightened its control over the parliamentary elections in the legislative terms of 2016 and 2021 through a system of mechanisms, most notably the adoption of the closed list system, which enabled the backed lists to win all the seats allocated to them, along with barring opposition figures from running and imprisoning cadres of political parties and movements that sought to form electoral alliances. This resulted in a parliament dominated by loyalty to the executive authority, with a sharp decline in the representation of serious opposition voices.
In this context, the phenomenon of “collective ratification” emerged (as addressed by HuMENA in its paper), along with the speedy passing of legislation, as a governing pattern for managing the legislative process: in January 2016, parliament approved nearly 341 laws in one go within only fifteen days, most of which had previously been issued by presidential decrees in the absence of parliament, without substantive discussion or real review. This pattern was repeated in subsequent legislation amid the absence of effective societal dialogue and a marked disregard for the objections of rights organisations and professional syndicates and the recommendations of UN mechanisms.
The Egyptian Human Rights Forum documented in its paper the issuance of 1,695 laws during the period from 2013 until the paper’s publication in August 2024. During these years, the paper pointed out, parliament spared no effort in trampling on the texts and provisions of the constitution, starting with legalising a large number of flawed laws issued in the absence of oversight, and going as far as proposing amendments to constitutional provisions that had, to some extent, guaranteed the principle of the rotation of power and ensured a degree of judicial independence in the face of the dominance of the executive authority.
It is worth noting that the most recent parliamentary elections resulted in the reproduction of the 2021 parliament, as the composition of parliament is still dominated by pro-government parties, whether through the individual seat system or through the single list that ran in the electoral race under the name “National List for Egypt”, which emptied the competition for list seats of its political content. The Mostaqbal Watan Party topped the scene, winning 227 seats, followed by the Homat Watan Party with 86 seats, then the National Front Party, the newest arrival on the party scene, with 65 seats. In the same vein, the Republican People’s Party won 25 seats.
For her part, Samar El-Husseini, executive director of the “Egyptian Human Rights Forum”, believes that the central goal of the Egyptian state in the current phase is not limited to merely “legalising repression”, but goes beyond that to restructuring the state itself on new constitutional and legislative foundations, based on subjecting the entire legislative structure to the dominance of the executive authority, and in turn organically linking the latter to the military institution.
She tells Zawia3 that, according to this vision, any spaces that appear outwardly “free” within the public sphere are in reality spaces subject to the security grip, which can be closed or crushed at any moment without any real legal guarantees or effective institutional deterrent.
El-Husseini compares this situation with what prevailed in earlier stages, particularly during the era before 2011, when the law itself, and the constitutional texts in particular, constituted a real arena of struggle through which spaces for freedoms could be wrested or the encroachment of the executive authority curbed. In those periods, the Supreme Constitutional Court played a prominent role in issuing rulings described as historic in favour of freedom of expression, against torture and in strengthening commitment to international human rights charters. As for the post-2011 phase, she points out that the state’s “governing doctrine” has changed radically, so that the authorities moved to close these legal loopholes and to reformulate the constitutional and legislative framework in a way that prevents the emergence of any authority capable of reviewing or challenging the security and military system.
Explaining the motives behind this path, El-Husseini says that the state holds a firm conviction that “opening the public sphere” was the direct cause of the outbreak of the 25 January Revolution, and that the main guarantee against its recurrence lies in “closing it” almost completely. On the other hand, she stresses that this vision overlooks a fundamental fact, namely that real stability is not achieved through repression and emptying the public sphere of politics, but through building a social contract that guarantees participation, accountability and the balance of powers, and protects rights and freedoms as the pillars of any stable and sustainable state.
Redrawing the Press Landscape Between Legislation and Ownership
Since 2013, the Egyptian press has been subjected to a process of siege and restriction, which resulted in the imprisonment of dozens of journalists over publishing cases, in a context that Reporters Without Borders described in one of its reports by saying that Egypt had become “one of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists”, in reference to the scale of the systematic repression that journalists face because of their work.
Meanwhile, the HuMENA organisation’s research paper shows that the decline in press freedoms in Egypt was not the product of isolated security practices, but the outcome of an integrated legislative system employed to tighten control over the media sphere and to criminalise broad forms of journalistic work.
The paper explained that at the forefront of this system stand three main articles of the Penal Code relating to the crime of “spreading false news”, articles characterised by general wording and vague terminology, which allows them to be used to pursue any content deemed oppositional or critical of the authorities, namely Articles 80 (d), 102 bis and 188, which address the penalties for publishing false news or statements, while leaving the assessment of “bad intent” to the authorities, which allows any political criticism or journalistic investigation to be interpreted as a criminalised act.
The paper also pointed out that these provisions, alongside the counter-terrorism and information technology crimes laws, have turned into central tools for expanding the scope of criminalisation against journalists and activists, whether because of the content of their work or because of their digital and professional activity, which led to the creation of an environment of fear and intimidation and a sharp decline in the practice of independent journalism.
In parallel with this legislative framework besieging press and media freedoms, the Committee to Protect Journalists documented the imprisonment of 18 journalists, with the committee’s report considering Egypt among the ten countries in the world that jailed the most journalists during 2024. The HuMENA Foundation for Human Rights’ paper also documented the blocking of 600 news and rights websites, in addition to the authorities’ continuing efforts to besiege the means of circumventing blocking, with 261 tools and providers of virtual private network (VPN) services blocked.
In addition, the map of media ownership in Egypt underwent a radical transformation after 2013. Whereas the media scene had been divided into state media, private media owned by businessmen and party newspapers of limited influence, a series of acquisitions and deals took place that transferred ownership of a broad sector of channels, newspapers and websites to companies directly linked to the security agencies or to businessmen close to the authorities.
According to what the research paper documented, the company “Egyptian Media Group”, owned by the General Intelligence Service through the company “Eagle Capital”, acquired major channel networks such as “ON TV” with its various branches, a large stake in the “CBC” network, Nile Radio and a number of websites and online newspapers, in addition to influential stakes in film and television production companies, advertising and marketing companies, and sports companies.
The company “Media D”, owned by businessman Tarek Ismail and close to Military Intelligence, also emerged; it owns the “DMC” channel network, Radio 9090 and the religious channel Al-Nas, as well as stakes in websites. Alongside these, there are platforms and channels whose ownership structures have not been clearly announced, which in earlier periods were owned by security services companies and then passed to businessmen with close ties to the security agencies.
According to the paper, this control over media ownership coincided with a parallel plan to tighten the grip on artistic and cultural production, including television series and films, as works addressing issues of corruption or abuses by the agencies declined, replaced by productions that glorify state institutions and present them as respecting the law and the constitution.
In this context, Mohamed Abdel Salam, executive director of the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, believes that the question of media ownership in Egypt is a central axis for understanding the reality of the press and media, whether from the angle of freedoms or from the angle of consolidating the profession of journalism and the conditions of journalists.
Abdel Salam explains, speaking to Zawia3, that Egyptian media was traditionally entirely state-owned, run through radio and television, and that its ownership passed through different stages over time, from the Ministry of National Guidance to the Ministry of Information, alongside party newspapers of limited circulation. He adds that this situation persisted for successive decades under the rule of Sadat and Mubarak, when official media outlets dominated the press scene.
Abdel Salam continues that the main difference began to appear during the last ten years of Mubarak’s era, with the emergence of private media ownership on a wide scale, as private satellite channels began to appear, owned by businessmen, and experiments with private newspapers emerged, in addition to news websites, which were launched relatively easily, whether by young journalists or by investors with limited resources. He explains that the period of the 25 January Revolution contributed to increasing the number of channels and websites, which gave a boost to the revival of the idea of private ownership and widened media diversity.
He adds that, starting from the period that followed 2013, the state began forcing major businessmen to give up ownership of television networks, stressing that the details of these deals are still not all known precisely, including whether they were carried out for an actual or a nominal financial consideration, because these companies became affiliated with sovereign bodies. He points out that the change in the ownership structure was accompanied by legislative amendments that made opening a new channel or website an extremely difficult process, both financially and legally, including licensing conditions, which limited the ability of journalists and media professionals to work within stable legal frameworks, and this contributed to the process of besieging and restricting the press.
Abdel Salam stresses that restricting the press would not have been possible without the transfer of ownership to state agencies, as legislation alone or security practices alone were not effective in controlling the press and media scene, which the security agencies understood: alongside the arsenal of legislation, they resorted to dominating the ownership of most private newspapers and websites, which contributed to completing the siege and control of the media and press scene in Egypt.
Everyone Under Watch
In recent years, the restriction of the public sphere has extended to include digital space, as the Egyptian authorities paid great attention to strengthening their capabilities to monitor the virtual public sphere, especially social networks, by investing in spyware and digital surveillance software. “Digital surveillance” refers to processes of monitoring and tracking citizens’ digital activities, whether through phone calls, email, instant messaging or internet browsing, with the aim of collecting and analysing data to understand user behaviour.
The HuMENA organisation’s paper documented that the Interior Ministry engaged in a limited practice of purchasing applications and electronic equipment from the private sector, aimed at tracking users’ activities on the internet, whether in relation to exchanging information and opinions in the public sphere or in private conversations and messages. The paper also documented the Egyptian authorities’ use of advanced surveillance technologies and software, among them the “Cerebro” system provided by a French company with the support of the United Arab Emirates, which allowed the authorities to track phone calls, text messages and email, and to monitor activity on social networks. This was in addition to hacking the phones of prominent political opponents inside and outside Egypt, as happened with the Egyptian opposition figure Ahmed Tantawi, a former member of parliament and presidential candidate, whose phone was targeted with messages carrying spyware links during his campaign to prepare for his candidacy.
At the institutional level, the paper monitored the role of the Public Prosecution in following media outlets and social media sites since May 2018, in accordance with the instructions issued by the former Prosecutor General, Nabil Sadek, to the heads of prosecution offices to follow what is published in the way of news, statements or rumours “that may disturb public security or harm the public interest”, using terms such as “undermining the security of the nation” and “spreading terror among members of society”, which the paper described as expanding surveillance powers to cover any digital activity on the internet.
The paper also pointed to the special committee of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation responsible for following social media pages, with the aim of monitoring the prevailing trends and ideas among different social groups and the changes they undergo, as part of the state’s broad system of censorship and control over digital space.
In a paper titled “Digital Transformation in the Public Prosecution: A Gateway to Mass Surveillance on the Internet”, the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression explained that the role of the Public Prosecution is no longer limited to receiving reports and complaints from individuals, but that it has come to play a pre-emptive role in monitoring and tracking crimes and violations, including conducting preliminary investigations that were supposed to remain at the core of the competences of the police apparatus as a body affiliated with the executive authority.
As a consequence, according to the paper, the impact of the work of the Monitoring and Analysis Unit is not limited to infringing on the privacy of internet users and on freedom of thought and expression, but also contradicts the principle of the separation of powers enshrined in the Egyptian constitution, as the Public Prosecution has come to undertake tasks that originally fall within the competence of the police apparatus, which is supposed to carry them out in specific cases and with clear controls, not in a collective or wide-scale manner.
Over the twelve years of accumulated restrictions on civic space in Egypt, an integrated path took shape to re-engineer the public sphere in a way that empties it of its political and rights content and redefines participation as a restricted privilege rather than an inherent right. At the same time, restrictive legislation, security practices, transformations in media ownership and the expansion of digital surveillance tools combined to form a system that tightens control over expression, organisation and criticism.
This system reveals that the state worked to produce a legal and institutional structure that negatively affected civic space, as confidence in the usefulness of public work eroded and patterns of self-censorship and fear of punishment spread, so that the question becomes: is there a way out?
