“I want to tell you that we’ve been concerned with controlling the media from the very first day the army took over power in 2011,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is heard saying in an October 2013 leaked video.

“Tell me how do you suggest I terrorize them?” Sisi asked one of his officers. Three and a half years into power after the toppling of President Mohammed Morsi and taking charge of the country, Sisi’s Egypt is witnessing the harshest crackdown in the 200-year history of Egyptian media. Repression, destruction of equipment, imprisonment and even death surround the profession.

Last week, the parliament passed a law on the “Institutional Regulation of the Press and the Media,” which indicates creating three regulatory bodies to oversee all of Egypt’s media outlets. Sisi himself is to select the heads of these boards, according to Article 32.

One body is to supervise state-owned press organizations and select their board chairmen and editors, another would oversee state-owned audio-visual media, radio and digital media institutions, and last and most crucial, the Higher Council for Media Regulation will regulate all media outlets, audio-visual, digital or print — whether public or private — in coordination with the other two bodies.