Human Wrongs Watch
By Shahira Amin*
Cairo, 23 January – Egyptian state TV –for decades the mouthpiece of the authoritarian regime– is an ugly towering block of concrete and steel overlooking the River Nile at Maspero in downtown Cairo. In the post-revolutionary era, it is a heavily fortified fortress surrounded by barbed wire and stone barricades.
**Photo: Muhammad Ghafar| Wikimedia Commons
Snipers can be spotted on the rooftop and terraces, and uniformed soldiers with machine guns stand guard outside the main entrances and exits. Corrugated iron gates have replaced the once-glass façade adding gloom to an already tense and inhospitable atmosphere inside the building which houses some 45,000 employees.
Upstairs on the fifth floor, a storm is brewing. Outside the main news studio, scores of employees of the main Arabic Nile News Channel are staging a sit-in, which they vow will continue until their demands are met. The demands include an immediate end to censorship and a set of reforms, which they say, are long overdue.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 