Courtroom reduces TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam’s 10-year ‘human trafficking’ sentence to 3 years.
An Egyptian courtroom has lowered TikTok influencer Haneen Hossam’s 10-year “human trafficking” sentence to 3 years, a judicial supply has stated.
The supply instructed the AFP information company on Monday that regardless of Hossam’s jail time being lower, she was additionally fined 200,000 Egyptian kilos ($10,740) by the Cairo Felony Courtroom.
The focusing on of feminine influencers has rekindled a heated debate in Egypt over what constitutes particular person freedoms and social values.
Hossam was first arrested in 2020 and, together with one other influencer named Mawada al-Adham, was sentenced to 2 years for “attacking society’s values” in on-line movies. She was detained after posting a video on Instagram explaining how ladies may earn as much as $3,000 by broadcasting movies utilizing the video creation platform Likee, which authorities interpreted as selling ladies promoting intercourse on-line.
An appeals courtroom acquitted the pair in January final 12 months, however they had been later charged with “human trafficking” – a cost Hossam reportedly incurred for telling her 1.3 million followers that women can make cash by working along with her on social media.
Then aged 19, she was sentenced in absentia and arrested final June.
Adham obtained a six-year sentence and a 200,000-pound superb. She continues to be behind bars.
Hossam’s lawyer Hussein al-Baqar confirmed to AFP that the sentence had been lowered. As she has already served 21 months together with time below investigation, “she could be launched in June or July”, Baqar stated, including the most recent sentence may nonetheless be appealed.
Her case returned to courtroom below a routine course of as a result of she was now not in absentia.
Strict web controls
The focusing on of ladies in media isn't uncommon in Egypt, the place a number of stomach dancers and pop singers have been focused lately over on-line content material deemed too racy or suggestive.
Egypt has over the previous few years enforced strict web controls via legal guidelines permitting authorities to dam web sites seen as a risk to nationwide safety and to watch private social media accounts with greater than 5,000 followers.
Monday’s ruling “signifies that the justice system is criminalising what influencers globally do each day once they invite others to work with them and monetise TikTok exercise,” Mai el-Sadany, managing director of the Washington, DC-based Tahrir Institute for Center East Coverage, wrote in a Tweet.
“There are actual and critical instances of human trafficking that have to be prosecuted – these TikTok instances should not it.”
Final 12 months, the rights group Amnesty Worldwide condemned the sentencing of Egypt’s TikTok influencers.
“Girls TikTok influencers are being punished for the way in which they gown, act, affect on social media, and earn cash on-line,” stated Amnesty Worldwide researcher Hussein Baoumi. “That is a part of the authorities’ makes an attempt to regulate our on-line world by policing ladies’s our bodies and conduct.”
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