Feb 24, 2014 2 min read

Anyone who struck up a hopeful chorus of Sting’s “Brand New Day” when Egypt’s autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was overthrown three years ago this month must now be wanting to spit out The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” particularly the line, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Since the summer, when the military deposed Mubarak’s successor, the democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, they’ve been on a rampage against opponents, or even perceived opponents, of the regime. Mass arrests are the order of the day, and they’ve silenced academics, bloggers and anyone else who dissents from the precepts of the new, hard-line rulers. And, last week, three journalists who work for the Al Jazeera English television network were paraded through a courtroom, accused of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization when, from all appearances, they were merely reporting on and maintaining contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood, the party from which Morsi hailed that has now been banned.

The three Al Jazeera correspondents entered not guilty pleas to charges that could carry lengthy prison sentences. The prosecution of journalists for committing the crime of reporting “shows how fast the space for dissent in Egypt is evaporating,” according to Joe Stork of the group Human Rights Watch. “Journalists should not have to risk years in an Egyptian prison for doing their job.”

And despite some preliminary steps toward reform in Iran, a government-run newspaper was shut down last week by the country’s judiciary just six days after its first issue. Its sin? Apparently including a quote in a story from a political activist who, according to The New York Times, “said the bedrock eye-for-an-eye principle of Islamic law is inhumane.”

Surely, neither Egypt nor Iran, nor any other country in that tempest-tossed region, can be on a path to renewal unless all citizens are allowed to speak their minds freely and journalists are allowed to ask questions that might cause some discomfort to those in power.