CAIRO: Egyptian human rights group is calling for the investigation of Osama Haikel, the Egpytian Minister of Information, for his involvement in the falsified state TV coverage of a Coptic protest in Cairo on October 9. The state TV coverage misrepresented military-incited violence at the protest. State TV insisted that Coptic protesters waged an attack on Egypt's military as the protest crested, without any investigation or evidence of such an attack. State TV called upon “honorable” Egyptian citizens to defend the nations army, causing mobs of men to take to the streets to raise arms against the alleged “violent” Coptic protesters. The reporting incited intense violence against the Coptic citizens, playing off of the country's already tense sectarian divides. At least 25 Egyptian protesters died in the violence, and around 300 were injured, marking the deadliest day in Cairo since the January 25 Revolution that toppled the former President Hosni Mubarak last February. The state TV discourse and the official Egyptian government narrative of the events are both inconsistent with the reports of eyewitnesses. Photographs and videos taken during the evening clearly reveal that army-backed violence ignited the scene. These videos and pictures quickly circulated on the Internet, but Egypt's government has since stuck to its original narrative, enraging many. “National newspapers and the Radio and Television Union are mass media owned by the Egyptian people alone. Their only goal should be protecting the interests of this people, and their right to genuine information,” said the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) in a call for Haikel's investigations. “The incitement on the channels of Maspero should not pass without an investigation with the first one responsible for it, who is the Minister of Information, especially that it would have caused a strife and violence that could have led the country into dire consequences if the citizens had responded to these calls,” it went on. Egypt's former Minister of Information, Anas el-Fekki, was sentenced to a seven-year jail term for squandering public funds from a state television union earlier last month. BM
