Young women ‘influencers’ from poor backgrounds are being jailed by the Egyptian government for posting videos on TikTok. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi may have muzzled the Muslim Brotherhood, but his electorate and country is still torn between competing forces of modernisation and conservative traditions. Activists claim the Egyptian authorities – keen to burnish their traditionalist credentials — are using these defenceless women as convenient scapegoats.
In February this year, Haneen Hossam, a 20 year-old Egyptian woman appeared in a video dancing to celebrate her release from prison. She celebrated too soon; six months later she was been jailed for 10 years.