The story of Giulio Regeni, the Italian researcher whose bodywas found near a highway outside Cairo, nine days after he was reported missing, has been drawing international attention to the dire status of freedoms in Egypt. Despite security forces denial, there’s mounting speculation that the 28-year-old researcher have been killed at the hands of Egyptian police after writing articles critical of president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi and his government.

 

The brutal fate of Regeni, however, is not new to Egyptians; the Egyptian security forces have been repeatedly accused of torturing detainees and dissenters.

 

Following a crack in their power during the revolution, the police have gradually managed to reassert their influence with committing an unprecedented number of violations. And under the pretexts of regaining stability, safeguarding national security and fighting terrorism, freedom of expression has been highly under threat in Egypt.

 

The regime is wasting no effort to tighten the noose on freedom of expression, with its intensified crackdown on dissenters taking different forms, ranging from mass arbitrary arrests, to travel bans and forced disappearances.

 

Poet and novelist Omar Hazek was prevented in January from leaving Egypt to receive the 2016 Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression. Hazek, who had spent almost two years in jail for violating the protest law and was pardoned last September, was detained at the airport before he was prohibited from traveling.

 

The travel ban recurred with the director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights InformationGamal Eid, who was denied to travel earlier in February, without being given any clear legal reason.

 

The authorities have also been curtailing the space for researchers to enter Egypt, based on their political stances. Egyptian-born German researcher Atef Botros was denied entrance to Egypt late January, before he was deported back to Germany.

 

Botros, who was required to give up his Egyptian nationality according to German law, was more fortunate than his fellow researcher Ismail Alexandrani. The Egyptian investigative journalist was arrested upon arrival from Germany last December, and has been detained since then pending trial on charges of broadcasting false news and joining the banned Muslim Brotherhood group.

 

Several media reports alleged that the Egyptian embassy in Berlin was involved in reporting both Bortos and Alexandrani to the authorities.

 

The travel restrictions, however, might look to be a tolerant and lenient act when compared to the other repressive methods used by the regime.

 

Prominent human rights organizations have documented over 1411 cases of forced disappearances in Egypt during 2015, in which the disappeared people turn up to be in prison, dead, or their whereabouts remain to be unknown. In addition, thousands of activists are facing arbitrary detention and subjected to political mass trials, with some of them exceeding the maximum period for pre-trial detention, which is two years.

 

Journalists are no exception to the regime’s repression, as there are at least 23 journalists currently being held unjustly for doing their job. Egypt was ranked 158th out of 180 countries in the 2015 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index, describing the country as on of the world’s biggest prisons for journalists.

 

The security forces have tightened their grip over the public, and even the private, domains. Weeks before the fifth anniversary of the January 25 revolution, the state apparatus waged a fierce campaign against dissenters, storming homes, closing cultural institutions and arresting youth. Even the Internet, which played an important role in the 25 January revolution, is now a tool for the regime to crackdown on dissenters; Amr Nohan was sentenced to three years in prison by a military court after creating an image of Egyptian President Abdul Fattah El-Sisi with Mickey Mouse ears and sharing it on social media.

 

Activists, opposition figures and even impartial citizens in Egypt are continuously exposed to deal with the brutal fate of Guido Regeni. The regime made it clear that dissent voices will not be tolerated and the Egyptians in return became accustomed to the regime’s aggressive methods. The authorities have intimidated anyone who tries to speak up, consequently forcing large sections of the formerly outspoken activists to practice self-censorship. It has also forced a number of intellectuals and opposition figures into exile, amid fears of arrest and prosecution.

 

 

The current political climate in Egypt is worse than it was five years ago, prior to the revolution. The regime is creating a perpetualstate of fear, in an attempt to silence opposition groups and direct their focus away from the political sphere. And while the regime is abridging the freedom of speech in the name of fighting terrorism, it is ultimately feeding the terror and pushing for the breeding of more extremists, who are bound to seek more radical acts to induce change. On the other hand, the relentless repression will eventually lead to incremental accumulation of anger, which might explode at any moment.