TV presenter Tamer Amin suspended for remarks on Upper Egypt: read the full story

CAIRO – 19 February 2021: The Egyptian Media Syndicate ordered on Friday suspending TV presenter Tamer Amin from practicing any media-related work and referring him to investigation over his “objectionable” remarks on Upper Egypt.

The Supreme Council for Media Regulation (SCMR) also decided to suspend Amin’s talk show, aired on Al-Nahar channel, for using language, seen as abusive and inappropriate, against Upper Egypt and rural area dwellers.

Syndicate’s head Tarek Saada and the SCMR both affirmed full respect to the people of Upper Egypt.

Amin had criticized the behavior of a “very large percentage” of the dwellers of Upper Egypt and rural areas who, according to him, are keen to give birth to many children so that these parents rely upon child labor.

He claimed that a very large number of the Upper Egyptian families force their boys to work while they are 7 years old or less in workshops so that they earn a small amount of money and hand them to their parents by the end of the month.

He also claimed that they deprive their girls from education and force them when they are 9 years old at most to work as housemaids in the capital for the same purpose, despite the harm that these girls may suffer in other people’s homes.

Many social media users have been infuriated by Amin’s remarks with some people even launching an offensive hashtag to insult him.

“Upper Egyptian people are honest people who try hard to earn their living and plant the food the fills your mouth,” a user said.

“Tamer Amin’s remarks on more than half of the Egyptian people are an evidence on how his personality looks like; he trades in good people’s pain for his own benefit,” another user said,

Amin appeared in a video shortly after his first remarks, expressing full respect to the people of Upper Egypt, accusing some people and Qatari Al-Jazeera channel of “fishing in troubled water”.

“If you reached to the original video of the show, [you would find that] I was speaking on a small group of people who give eight or 9 or 10 births as a mean to earn a living,” he said, in a bid to ease the state of anger.

“This is what I have said. We slam this group who unfortunately do not secure the childhood rights,” he added.

Amin's remarks came shortly after President Abdel Fattah El Sisi warned against overpopulation on Tuesday, saying that people would only feel the results of developmental efforts made by the state when annual population growth rate in Egypt is reduced to 400,000 people.