Haneen Hossam arrested after emotional video as rights groups condemn harsh prison sentences against content creators

Nine Egyptian human rights organizations condemned the sentencing of Tik Tok and Likee content creators Haneen Hossam and Mawada al-Adham and three other defendants on human trafficking charges and called for their immediate release in a statement issued on Tuesday. 

Hossam was sentenced in absentia to 10 years in a maximum security prison on Monday and fined LE20,000. Adham, and three other employees of Likee and its parent company Bigo Technology,  Mohamed Abdel Hamid, Mohamed Alaa Eddin and Ahmed Salah Attiya were sentenced to six years in prison and fined LE20,000 each.

After intensified security efforts to locate Hossam, who was acquitted in an earlier case and allowed to walk free in February when investigations into the human trafficking charges began, though she was later ordered detained in April, the 20-year-old was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Her legal team has since filed for retrial, and will be able to seek to overturn the sentence in two further rounds of adjudication since Hossam was issued the harshest possible punishment due to her absence.

In an Instagram live session broadcast hours before her arrest, Hossam called on the president to intervene to help her after her 10-year sentencing. In an emotional appeal, she condemned the authorities’ “unfair” handling of her case, asking why the prosecution had pursued her for the human trafficking charges while senior Chinese Likee employees were allowed to walk free. The video has since been viewed over three million times.

The cases against Hossam and Adham came on the heels of a 2020 security campaign that targeted women content creators on Tik Tok and Likee on morality charges, many of which fell under a 2018 cybercrime law that gives judicial bodies wide-reaching powers to convict social media users on various grounds. These included the offense of “infringing on Egyptian family values,” a charge described as ambiguous and misogynistic by critics who launched a social media campaign for the women to be released. Other charges have included “promoting debauchery” and “promoting prostitution.” At least 10 women content creators have been detained since the beginning of the campaign in April 2020. 

In the Tuesday statement, the rights organizations called for the sentences against Adham and Hossam to be revoked and for the content creators’ release, describing the case against them as an imposition of “moral guardianship on digital content creators.” The groups called on state prosecutors and the justice system system to “stop imposing its ill-defined perceptions of family values ​​on citizens, to stop monitoring social media sites, and to stop punishing social media users with imprisonment.”  

In the wake of condemnations by human rights groups, international organizations, and social media commentators of the Monday rulings against Adham and Hossam, several state-aligned pundits have issued justifications for the ruling. On Tuesday, House of Representatives Human Rights Committee Chair MP Tarek Radwan blasted what he said was the “politicization” of Hossam and Adham’s case, condemning “voices that use human rights” to criticize the Egyptian judiciary’s handling of the case. 

Monday’s convictions came in the second case the five defendants have faced. In July, the Cairo Economic Court handed down prison sentences on charges of violating “family values” for the two women and Hamid, a Middle East director for live streaming agencies at Likee, Alaa Eddin, coordinator and translator for Bigo Technology, and Likee influencer Attiya. The ruling against Hossam was overturned by an appeals court in January, though Adham was convicted and fined LE300,000. Yet, as the earlier case concluded, the Public Prosecution moved to file the new trafficking charges against the defendants. 

During the first trial against the two women, a particular video that Hossam posted on her Instagram account about a new opportunity on Likee became the central focus of the prosecution’s case against her. 

In the video, Hossam discusses the difficulties people may have suffered as a consequence of the lockdown — from losing a job to feelings of boredom and listlessness. She goes on to announce the launch of a Likee-affiliated agency she named Haram Masr (Pyramid of Egypt) which invites young women aged 18 and above to apply for work through her agency. For what she claims would be an easy income of between $36 and $3,000, they would be required to join the app and stream for at least 30 hours per month, no more than three hours a day. While streaming, they are to engage users and establish connections with the audience. The more viewers they get, the more money they can earn. In the video, Hossam forbids potential streamers from wearing revealing clothing or relying on that as a tactic to attract followers. Hossam’s venture came in response to an effort by Likee to expand their live streaming base by contracting virtual agencies that would in turn recruit content creators to engage a youth audience. The owner of the agency gets 20 percent of any earnings by the content creators.

At the time, the video was met with an uproar on local talk shows, with TV hosts noting that Hossam had exclusively called on young women to sign up.

The Tuesday statement was signed by nine Egytian human rights organizations: The Regional Center for Rights and Liberties, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, Committee for Justice, The Freedom Initiative, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Al-Nadeem Center for Torture Victims, the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, and the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.