EL-ARISH, Egypt — “You're supporting terrorism,” the man said before he realized the cruelty of his accusation. “There are traitors in Sinai,” added the retired major general affiliated with the Egyptian liberal parties. This is how he began his conversation with me when we happened to find ourselves sitting at the same table with a group of his friends during an event in Cairo. The major general’s statements, published on condition of anonymity, illustrate how badly the Egyptian people are being informed about events in the Sinai Peninsula, be they politicians, security elites or ordinary people. What, however, is the source of such misconceptions about Sinai residents?

A Sinai sheikh requesting anonymity answered the question, stating, “The deliberate media blackout based on security directives is one of the reasons that has led to the growing suspicion and mistrust among the Egyptian people about Sinai. Egypt’s newspapers and satellite TV only report news about the death of military members shot by extremist religious groups in the Nile Valley provinces. These outlets fail, however, to convey the suffering of the Sinai people, who are plagued by repressive security practices and the dominance of armed religious extremism.”

Asked about the reasoning behind the security directives involving the media, the sheikh said, “The successive Egyptian regimes, especially President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime, have succeeded in separating Sinai from the rest of the Egyptian governorates by tarnishing our image through pro-regime reporters working for Egyptian newspapers and satellite channels. These reporters depict us as fighting, instead of supporting, the state in order to serve political agendas, as well as regional and international interests aimed at ensuring the survival of the Egyptian regime and its allies in the region, and to implement the buffer zone project, which serves Israeli national security interests.”

The people of Sinai often accuse the Sisi regime of tarnishing their image in Egyptian media, which tend to be owned by businessmen loyal to the military regime. Mohamed Hassan, a resident of Sheikh Zuweid, a border city, told Al-Monitor, “The Egyptian media outlets are biased. They call for our systematic extermination in an attempt to rally the Egyptian people around the ruling regime in carrying out ethnic massacres in Sinai to set the stage for their plans and suspicious interests.”