Cover your back!
Who can afford to pay the price for his beliefs with his or her personal freedom?
It's an urgent question here in Egypt. You must ask yourself the question before you take a serious step to proof any kind of corruption or shortage in the performance of the governmental officials. I have some experiences from that.
Four years ago I tried to clarify the miserable condition in a state hospital. It so happened that the patients showed kind of support to me and persuaded me to wear a doctor’s coat and walk through the hospital departments pretending to be a doctor. Dressed like that I discovered that all the former closed doors were opened for me. I was even able to give medicine, to perform surgeries (if I had wanted to) and to check on the patients inside the extensive care unite. After publishing a story of how it all worked, I was charged on three points for breaking the law and it took a whole year of investigations to proof that I was not guilty of any crime.
Few months ago, I worked on another story about state-owned factories polluting the river Nile with industrial waste causing diseases to humans and to the fish in the river. The ministry of environment refused to help me with any information. The medical centre that belongs to the factory declined to provide any information about the number of kidney patients who seek help at the centre.
As a result, I had to find my own ways to make a scientific research to get the information I needed for my story. When the story finally was published – and awarded with a prize – I got a lot of threats from officials and from the Ministers of health and environment, who wished to put me in jail. Luckily enough I was able to make a medical analysis of the samples from the in governmental and independent laboratories. As an independent journalist, here you have to make the documentation on your own, or the authorities will kick your ass.
Hisham Allam
Al Masry Al Youm
Cairo, Egypt