Egypt
Egyptian courts "at war against poet's ghost"

afrol News, 15 October - Three years ago, Internet publisher Shohdy Surur posed a well-known, thirty-year-old poem written by his father on his website. Yesterday, a Cairo appeals court confirmed Mr Surur's one-year prison with labour sentence for "offending public decency".

Mr Surur was first sentenced on 30 June under article 178 of the penal code, which forbids possession of material for sale or distribution "with intent to corrupt public morals." He had posted on a website, www.wadada.net, which is partly devoted to the work of his father, the poet and actor Naguib Surur, a poem called 'Kuss Ummiyat', which contained passages said to be "an affront to public morals." 

The poem was written by the elder Surur, in earthy and sexually-explicit language, as a criticism of Egyptian society and culture after the country's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War with Israel. He several times likens Egypt to a prostitute. Since no law refers to the Internet, the state brought charges under the law on public morals. 

Though a leftist and a critic of the establishment, Naguib Surur "remains a respected figure in the modern Egyptian pantheon to this day, and his plays are regularly performed by national theatre companies," reports the 'Independent Media Centre'. His early death was partly caused by his everlasting cat-and-mouse game with the Nasser regime, which had him forcibly admitted to mental hospitals for his fierce critiques.

Naguib Surur's poem, which never had been published before, had been on the US-based www.wadada.net for the past three years. The poem has however been very well-known in Egypt all along, and audio cassettes of it easily found. The author, who died in 1978, was never prosecuted for writing it. 

The author's son, 40-year-old Shohdy Surur, was arrested on 22 November last year at his home, which was searched and his computer seized. Police interrogated him for three days. Mr Surur, who has dual Russian and Egyptian nationality and lives in Russia, was not attending the Cairo appeal hearing, which meant the appeal was rejected and the jail sentence confirmed. 

From his Moscow safe harbour, the accused reacted relaxed to the court's confirmation of his prison sentence. Mr Surur said says he is now even more dedicated to cyber-militancy and protecting his father's heritage. "I consider this court to be illegitimate because internet is out of Egypt’s jurisdiction," he told the 'Cairo Times' in an e-mail interview.

Mr Surur was born in Russia, his mother's nationality, and is one of Russia's Internet pioneers. He was part of the team that created the country's first webzine (www.zhurnal.ru), where a Russian translation of John Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" appeared, which he later translated into Arabic. From 1998, he worked in Cairo as webmaster of the respected English-language 'Al-Ahram' Weekly's website. 

'Al-Ahram' and other independent media vehemently have defended Mr Surur in the case of the "control-obsessed state bodies" against him. His Cairo employer asks "Why is there a case at all, let alone an appalling one-year prison term?" Indeed, Naguib Surur had been "posthumously honoured by the highest cultural bodies of the state," Hani Shukrallah of 'Al-Ahram' reminds, expressing his disgust for the authority's "war on ghosts".

Also human rights groups have denounced Mr Surur's conviction, regarding the case as a violation of civil liberties. "This conviction, unprecedented in Egypt, is quite grotesque," declared the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). "Why should he be declared guilty today of something written back then by his father, who was himself never prosecuted when he was alive?" asked RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. 

- While claiming they are defending public decency, the authorities are really trying to stifle free expression on the Internet, added Mr Ménard. In 1993, the Egyptian Constitutional High Court ruled that the right to criticise people, including public officials, was an integral part of democracy. "This right should apply to any media," Mr Ménard said, adding that if Mr Surur's sentence was confirmed, "Egypt will be joining the club of countries who are enemies of the Internet." 

At the start of the trial, Mr Surur had removed the 'Kuss Ummiyat' from the website. Recently, however, it has been re-released, along with audio files of his father's poem recitals. English, French and Russian translations are also said to be underway. The website www.wadada.net and Surur Senior's poem are assured of a visitors' boom by the publicity the Egyptian trial has caused. 

Sources: Based on RSF, Egyptian media and afrol archives

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