[ad_1]
Issued on:
Egyptian authorities have since 2020 carried out a campaign to silence female social media influencers, using a cybercrime law to detain them on vague charges such as violating “public morals” and “undermining family values”. Last week, TikTok celebrity Salma Elshimy became the latest in a growing list of women to fall foul of the authorities over social media posts.
Elshimy had just landed at Cairo International Airport when she was arrested on April 3 on charges of inciting “debauchery” and “violating family values” through her social media posts. The Egyptian model and influencer with an audience of 3.3 million TikTok followers was returning from a trip to Dubai, where she filed a residency application ahead of a planned move.
Her arrest was reported by a photographer from the United Arab Emirates, who informed the Egyptian news website Mada. According to Qatar-based Middle East Monitor, Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered that she be detained for four days on charges of “spreading immorality” and publishing videos and photographs that “contradict social morals and values”.
Lawyer Hany Sameh, a member of the Lawyers Syndicate’s committee on freedoms who has worked on similar cases in the past, described the accusations against Elshimy as “vague”. In an interview with Mada, he said they stemmed from “vestiges of regressive male chauvinism that is uncompromising against women”.
Such arrests are increasingly common in President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s Egypt, noted Amr Magdi, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a Twitter post last week. “Egyptian authorities arrested yet another female influencer for ‘debauchery’ just because she posts photos we see in everyday life and TVs,” he wrote, adding that arrests of women on “morality” charges “have…
[ad_2]
Source : france24
