Egypt demanded that CBS News not air an in-depth interview with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the US news outlet said, after the Egyptian president had participated in the interview.
CBS said on Thursday that it rejected Egypt’s demands and will air the interview on its 60 Minutes programme at 7pm ET on 6 January.
"The 60 Minutes team was contacted by the Egyptian Ambassador shortly after [the interview] and told the interview could not be aired," CBS said on its website, where it shared a short excerpt of the interview.
The news outlet described it as "the interview Egypt's government doesn't want you to see".
In his sit-down with 60 Minutes, Sisi claims “there are no political prisoners in Egypt,” despite widespread reports that the country currently holds tens of thousands of political prisoners.
Human Rights Watch, a global watchdog on rights abuses, said Egypt currently has about 60,000 people behind bars on charges that range from spreading fake news to insulting the president.
In May 2018, Amnesty International also
said dozens of political prisoners in Egypt suffer from abuse and torture in
“prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement”.
In the 60 Minutes interview, Sisi says that when he came to power in 2013, following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi, the government “tried every peaceful means to disperse” Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers who protested Morsi's forced removal.
In what became known as the Rab’a Massacre, Egyptian security officials killed as many as 1,000 people, Human Rights Watch said in 2014.
Sisi also says in the 60 Minutes interview that his country is closer to Israel than ever before.
“We have a wide range of cooperation with the Israelis,” he said.
For years, human rights groups have raised alarms about the situation in Egypt, which saw a 2011 uprising that unseated longtime leader Hosni Mubarak and then the 2012 election of Morsi and his ouster a year later by the military.
The groups say Sisi has presided over a widespread crackdown on the media, non-profit organisations, human rights defenders and other perceived critics of his government.
According to Reporters Without Borders, Egypt also ranks in the bottom 20 countries globally on media freedom.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/cbs-interview-Egypt-Sisi-60-Minutes-831104908
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home