CAIRO, Dec 7, 2012 (AFP)
CAIRO, Dec 7, 2012 (AFP)
Police fired tear gas on Friday at Islamist protesters backing President Mohamed Morsi outside the Cairo studios of private Egyptian television channels critical of his supporters.
Hundreds of Islamists, most of them hardline Salafists, gathered in front of the main gate of the Egyptian Media Production City (EMPC) in a southwestern Cairo suburb, in live images shown on some of the private channels.
Clashes then broke out with police, who fired tear gas at the protesters when they tried to storm the studios.
Prominent Salafist leader Hazim Abu Ismail had called for the demonstrations on his Twitter and Facebook accounts in order to “cleanse the media.”
EMPC head Mahmud Barakat said “the demonstrators who gathered to call for cleansing the media and to criticise satellite TV channel workers numbered almost 1,000 and are swelling,” according to official MENA news agency.
Salafist parties and the Muslim Brotherhood accuse independent TV channels of being biased in favour of the opposition and of being sympathetic to the former regime of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Many of the media have said the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to suppress freedom of expression through a controversial new draft constitution that was drafted by an Islamist-dominated panel.
Independent and opposition newspapers refused to publish their Tuesday editions in protest against the lack of press freedom in the country’s new charter, set for a popular referendum on December 15.
The constitution has become the focal point of Egypt’s biggest political crisis since Morsi’s election June, polarising opinion and causing mass civil unrest.
