“I want to visit neither the Hussein neighborhood nor the pyramids, I just want to get out of Egypt as soon as possible,” said Syrian director Yamen Mughrabi before emigrating to Turkey. Mughrabi has given up his future cinematic projects and plans in a country he used to consider an incubator of art.

“I want to visit neither the Hussein neighborhood nor the pyramids, I just want to get out of Egypt as soon as possible,” said Syrian director Yamen Mughrabi before emigrating to Turkey. Mughrabi has given up his future cinematic projects and plans in a country he used to consider an incubator of art.

Now, says Mughrabi, he and thousands of other Syrians who have fled to Egypt since 2011, are subject to abusive media messages that have been widely broadcast by several satellite channels targeting Syrians in Egypt, especially after the June 30, 2013 popular uprising – which toppled former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in a military-assisted coup.

“They accuse Syrians of being terrorists and Muslim Brothers,” Mughrabi says.

Syria’s tent

But it was not always like this. When the Syrian revolution was just underway in 2011, a Syrian revolution tent was pitched in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in solidarity and built by both Egyptian and Syrian activists. Young journalists used to go to the tent to communicate with Syrians and write about the Syrian issue.  A few meters away, near the League of Arab States headquarters, cameras monitored the hunger strike staged by Syrian women activists to protest the massacres committed by al-Assad’s regime.

The Egyptian media also once showed solidarity with the Syrian cause. In October 2012, Yosri Fouda began an initiative on his ON TV program called ‘Rebels of Syria who Do not Die’. He hosted Syrian thinkers Salama Kila, Ibrahim Gabin, Samih Choucair and Ali Farzat. ON TV was perhaps the single Egyptian satellite channel most interested in the Syrian issue and the plight of Syrians in Egypt. In May 2013, it produced a documentary entitled ‘Kifak’ (How are you?), which showed the Syrians’ situation in Egypt and examples of solidarity with their humanitarian struggle.

Egyptian newspapers celebrated Syrian artist Ali Farzat who visited Cairo several times, and poet Lina Taibi who was welcomed in the media. Egyptian media at the time could be described as a tent that sheltered the Syrians in Egypt.

At that time, Mughrabi was studying at the Egypt Film Institute. He had gone to Egypt before the revolution and was closely connected to Egyptian directors, including Mohamed Khan. With his Egyptian fellows, Mughrabi followed up new art projects and plans to revive Syrian cinema.

Tent dismantled

Following the June 30 uprising, the situation became what Naji Al-Ali described through writing and drawing: a tent that turns into disappointment.

July 2013 witnessed the most counter-Syrian media waves, which could not be separated from Egypt’s political context and transformation at the time following the breaking up of the Rabia Square sit-in. Syrians were threatened with burning by Tawfik Okasha and with beating and humiliation by Yusuf Husseini. Mohammed Ghaity also accused Syrian women of practicing sexual jihad in Rabia Square in exchange for money.

Following Husseini’s position, ON TV lost much of its neutrality. However, Fouda seized all opportunities to stand by the Syrians as he always did before the June 30 revolution. On November 27, 2013, he announced during his program on the same channel that Syrian suffering in Egypt “is even worse than the treatment of prisoners of war.” He described Egyptians as “having lost their humanity in the name of politics and interest.”

On April 14, 2014, Mohamed Khair, in Good Evening program, denied any rumors or incitements by Egyptian media against the Syrians in Cairo and called for discussing the issue of refugees with the prime minister.

Egyptian media, says Mughrabi, caused documented incidents of beating Syrians in Alexandria and arresting them on fabricated charges, including the arrest of a Syrian in Maspero Square without evidence, and of a freelance photojournalist working for an Egyptian newspaper while covering the clashes with the Ministry of Interior. “The Egyptian media was and is still insulting Syrians,” he says. “The Syrians in Egypt are insecure with of course no stabilization, but blurred vision is better than blindness,” says Mughrabi.

Whitewashing al-Assad

Syrian writer and journalist Abdussalam Shibli who lives in Egypt says Egyptian media, particularly non-revolutionary private media that claim to stand by the two revolutions of the Egyptian people, largely helped distort the image of Syrians and stereotyped them as terrorists. Furthermore, some media figures are polishing al-Assad’s image as a warrior of terrorism.

Although some Egyptians defend Syrian refugees, says Shibli, this defaming approach has made other Egyptians think that the Syrians in Egypt are terrorists, even if only intellectually. This has made it difficult to convince Egyptians that what happened and is happening in Syria is a revolution the regime brutally suppressed, he says.

Addressing the Syrian crisis

Rahaf Moussa is a Syrian political activist who lived in Egypt with her husband for less than a year before they decided to emigrate to the Netherlands.

She also believes that the Egyptian media has recently worsened, (she left Egypt following June 30), but she believes that the  media treatment towards Syrians is similar to media treatment of Egyptians themselves.

In September 2015, media professional Ahmed Musa warned the Egyptian employees who had demonstrated in protest against the Civil Service Law that it could affect the country and they might suffer like the Syrians. Musa cited the Syrian child Ilan who drowned in the Mediterranean while his family was attempting to reach Greece.

In the same month, Sa’eed used the suffering of Syrian refugees in Lebanon to warn of what might happen to Egypt in case of any disturbances. Also in the same month, the Egyptian 7 Ayyam magazine celebrated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, putting his picture on the cover of one of its issues with the title ‘Bashar al-Assad, the world’s most powerful man who eventually defeated all his enemies.’