News from Democracy Egypt: Cairotimes: Down and out? (fwd)

["Clement M. Henry" <chenry@mail.la.utexas.edu>]

very sad stories that international events may reinforce...

*****************************
Clement M. Henry
Professor of Government
University of Texas at Austin
Austin TX 78712
tel 471-5121, fax 471-1061

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 08:21:41 -0000
From: democracy_egypt <democracy_egypt@mail.com>
To: free_saadeddin_ibrahim@yahoogroups.com
Subject: News from Democracy Egypt:   Cairotimes: Down and out?

Cairo: January 30th, 2002


   On the eve of the Saad Eddin Ibrahim appeal, Egypt's human
   rights movement is at a crossroad. Annik M. Lussier
   asks what the future holds:


   A little over 10 years ago,Muhammad Mandour worked in
   Cairo as a psychiatrist helping rehabilitate
   victims of torture. Then one day in
   1991, Mandour learned for himself what he'd heard only
   too often from his patients. Egyptian security
   officials arrested him, took him from his
   home and detained him incommunicado
   for 10 days. He was blindfolded, beaten,
   whipped, threatened with rape and shocked
   through electrodes applied all over his
   body, including his genitals. "These brutal
   ways are still common," says Mandour,
   who had been working to organize
   grassroots human rights support. "Security
   officials try to make examples out of
   people to scare others."

   Despite this traumatic experience, Mandour
   has continued his human rights work, but
   he and his colleagues in the human rights
   movement may now be facing more
   turbulent times. Over the past two years,
   human rights organizations have been dealt
   important blows which have seriously
   crippled their efforts. In fact, the
   government has attacked prominent
   activists with a new ferocity. Most of the
   Egyptian media has been increasingly
   hostile to the movement and public opinion
   to a large extent views activists with
   suspicion, seeing them as fifth columnists
   who profit from washing the nation's dirty
   laundry in public. Finally, their only
   supporters, Western countries, may be
   melting away in the changing global
   environment after the 11 September events.

   "Egyptian human rights organizations are at
   a crossroads," says Muhammad Zarei, a
   lawyer and director of the Human Rights
   Center for the Assistance of Prisoners
   (HRCAP). "Either we continue to function
   or it all comes to an end. The big challenge
   is to keep going."

   They fought the law...

   Egypt's civil associations including
   charities, non-governmental organizations
   (NGOs) and human rights groups had
   lobbied for years to replace restrictive rules
   making registering and receiving foreign
   funding an arduous task. But civil
   associations were unpleasantly surprised by
   an updated law, which passed in May 1999,
   giving the government even more control
   over foreign funding, activities and
   leadership.

   The passage of the law was a clear defeat
   for the coalition of NGOs and human rights
   groups that opposed it. What's worse, the
   movement fell apart over the question of
   whether to comply with the new
   regulations. Some vowed to defy the
   registration requirements, while others
   favored formally registering with the
   Ministry of Social Affairs in order to
   continue their activities. At least one
   prominent NGO, the Center for Human
   Rights Legal Aid, splintered after an
   internal dispute over registration.

   In Spring 2000, just six days after it came
   into effect, the so called "NGO Law" was
   struck down by the Supreme Constitutional
   Court on a technicality–yielding a small
   sigh of relief from the nation's human
   rights organizations. But the damage to
   unity and cooperation among the groups
   was already done.

   Just weeks after the NGO law debacle, the
   arrest of prominent academic Saad Eddin
   Ibrahim demoralized an already ailing
   human rights community. The American
   University in Cairo professor and director
   of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for
   Developmental Studies was a well-known
   figure on the Western lecture circuit. But in
   June 2000, he was arrested. The move was
   an effective warning shot. If Ibrahim, who
   holds dual US citizenship and was
   generally regarded as having good relations
   with the Egyptian government, could be
   arrested, then nobody was safe.

   He was freed after 45 days in jail, and
   formally charged with accepting foreign
   funding in violation of a military decree,
   misappropriating EU funds (the EU says it
   found no evidence of wrongdoing) and
   tarnishing the image of Egypt through his
   work. In May 2001, he was sentenced to
   seven years in prison. Ibrahim maintains
   his innocence and is appealing the verdict.
   He remains in prison awaiting the decision
   expected on 6 February.

   "With the Ibrahim case, we are seeing that
   we can be charged for incidents that took
   place years ago," says the HRCAP's Zarei,
   since one of the charges centered around
   comments Ibrahim made several years ago
   at a conference. "As a developing country,
   these things are not forgiven. So I will
   remain for years in danger of being
   charged because of my activities in the
   past. Since I'm under threat, I might as well
   continue doing what I believe in."

   ...And the law won

   Hafez Abu Saada, the Secretary General of
   the Egyptian Organization for Human
   Rights (EOHR), was also detained for six
   days in 1998 on foreign funding charges
   similar to those handed down to the AUC
   sociologist. He says Ibrahim's detention
   was part of an orchestrated attack on civil
   society in Egypt–which seems to have
   worked as most groups have grown leery
   of accepting any type of foreign funding.
   With NGOs in general (and human rights
   groups in particular) heavily dependant on
   foreign funding, this has led to financial
   hardship which has curtailed their work.

   "In the last two years, lack of funding has
   affected our activities," admits Abu Saada.
   "Prior to the NGO law and the Saad Eddin
   Ibrahim case we were producing 10 to 12
   reports on human rights abuses a year.
   Now we're only producing two or three.
   We've also stopped producing our
   quarterly magazine."

   In fact the EOHR, Egypt's largest and
   oldest human rights group is in a
   particularly precarious position: not only is
   the organization experiencing serious
   financial difficulty and operating with a
   skeleton staff, the case against Abu Saada
   is still pending and the government has yet
   to approve the registration of the
   organization as an official NGO.

   "I'm not discouraged," says Abu Saada.
   "We'll make some progress. We're still
   young," he said with a laugh.

   This conviction is shared by some of his
   colleagues. "In Egypt," says Negad Al
   Borai, a lawyer and board member of the
   EOHR, "when you work in the human
   rights field, you must expect that one day
   you will be behind bars because the
   government believes that human rights
   defenders are working against the regime
   and that they are a kind of opposition."

   Al Borai and others plan to continue their
   work; they say they don't have much of a
   choice. "It's my society," he says. "My role
   is to improve this society for my children
   and for my country. I don't have another
   place to live in."

   Isolated from the public

   There remains an entirely justified fear that
   what happened to Ibrahim could just as
   easily happen to someone else–and there's
   little in the way of grassroots public
   support to protect human rights groups
   from the government's wrath.

   The smear campaign in the official press
   that accompanied Ibrahim's arrest was
   effective in turning public opinion against
   NGOs. Human rights groups especially
   were painted as Trojan horses for sinister
   Western influences. The aftermath has left
   many groups wary of taking on issues that
   could further erode their public support.

   Ahmad Seif, the director of the Hisham
   Mubarak Law Center, said that fear of
   further vilification caused the majority of
   Egyptian rights groups to avoid
   involvement in the recent trial of 52
   allegedly gay men arrested on the Queen
   Boat on charges of debauchery. Their
   reluctance drew criticism from international
   human rights groups. The Law Center was
   one of the only groups to get involved in
   the case in a legal capacity.

   "Western human rights organizations
   should realize that in Arab countries
   homosexuality is taboo and one cannot
   force another people to accept
   homosexuality," says Mustapha Kamel Al
   Sayid, director of the Center for
   Developing Countries Studies at Cairo
   University. He agrees that Egypt's rights
   groups skated around the issue of
   protecting the rights of homosexuals in the
   Queen Boat case, but says it's
   understandable.

   "The human rights movement in our
   country is very weak and very vulnerable
   to persecution and attacks from the
   government. It is trying to build bridges
   with the masses. So if it takes a position on
   this issue [the right to live freely as a
   homosexual], which is extremely
   unpopular, it is described by the
   government as a tool of cultural
   imperialism in the hands of Western
   countries. That's why it would be
   extremely unwise to take a stand on this
   issue," he said.

   Seif charges that Egypt's human rights
   defenders failed in this instance. Regardless
   of the debate about the legitimacy of
   homosexuality, he says the case merited
   serious human rights attention for other
   reasons–including the trial of what is
   essentially a vice case before a State
   Security Court and the allegations of
   torture-induced confessions.

   "It's a basic rule in human rights. And
   those people had the right to be tried in a
   civil court." They had the right not to be
   tortured and so on. We had many human
   rights issues not related directly to
   homosexuality," Seif said. "This case points
   to a critical problem in the human rights
   movement in Egypt. Most of the people
   working in the field in this country are
   people involved in politics who try to push
   their political agenda through human rights.
   I think that when we look at the trial of the
   52 persons and we look at the statements
   issued by certain organizations, we
   discover to what extent those persons
   didn't really have a clear vision about what
   human rights criteria are."

   Defenders of terrorism?

   The 11 September suicide attacks on the
   United States–and President George W.
   Bush's subsequent Executive Order
   allowing the trial of non-citizen suspects by
   special military commissions–sent a chill
   throughout Egypt's human rights
   organizations. The scenario was a familiar
   one: a government subverting its own
   judicial system in the name of expediency
   and national security. But this time, it was
   coming from a nation which had cast itself
   as a great defender of civil society.

   "I don't know how far the Egyptian
   government will go against human rights
   organizations now," worries Zarei. "Before
   9/11, there were balances and pressure on
   the government from the international
   community. But post 9/11, the whole world
   is on one side and terrorism on the other.
   And by simply defending human rights by
   taking a stand against torture or military
   trials for civilians, I am placed in a position
   where I am accused of defending
   terrorism."

   Other activists share this fear of what lies
   ahead. "I am so afraid for the future,
   especially the coming year," says Al Borai.
   "Before 9/11, the government was shy
   about its behavior relating to human rights.
   Now it is in a very good position to do
   what it wants to do."

   Meanwhile, low-level harassment remains a
   daily reality. "You can't compare the
   harassment of human rights defenders in
   Egypt with countries like Libya or Iraq,
   where the government completely bans the
   existence of any form of human rights
   movement," Al Borai says. "But we do
   have some problems with the government.
   For instance, our phone calls are under
   control, as is our house, and this meeting is
   perhaps being recorded by State Security.
   We also face small problems at the airport
   when we travel."

   Seif says security officials ensure their
   presence is always felt. "The police come
   here every week," he says.

   Despite the ongoing hardball tactics, the
   government hasn't completely cracked
   down, activists say, because it recognizes
   the important role these groups play in
   helping improve the country's international
   image. "The government wants us to make
   an effort for the intifada," says Seif, "but it
   doesn't want us to work on local issues like
   torture, misuse of power in Egypt or trade
   union elections."

   During the recent trade union election
   campaign, the government displayed just
   how it can obstruct involvement by human
   rights and civil society groups.

   "There was a new technique," Seif says.
   "State Security Investigations (SSI) put
   direct pressure on workers involved in
   trade union elections not to come to us.
   Security officials try to let citizens feel that
   if they go see an Egyptian human rights
   organization, they will be in serious
   trouble." Seif also hints that even if cases
   over trade union issues go to court there
   might be some government pressure at the
   judicial level–a heretofore sacrosanct
   institution

   The easy route

   With the local arena so fraught with peril,
   some Egyptian groups have decided to
   focus on international issues, which have
   government and popular support. "People
   are going off their agendas these days,"
   says Zarei of the HRCAP. "They're dealing
   with issues not originally in their mandate
   as a way to avoid any clash with the
   government or simply to create a stir to say
   `Hey, I'm still here.'" It is much easier (and
   popular) to focus on human rights abuses
   in Israel, says Zarei.

   Although the Hisham Mubarak Law Center,
   the Cairo Institute for Human Rights
   Studies and a host of other Egyptian
   organizations also work on the Palestinian
   cause, Seif believes a balance between local
   and international issues exists. "In 2001, we
   won a case against an officer in Aswan
   who tortured people. We work on different
   issues." He adds that the Palestinian effort
   is a legitimate cause which is close to the
   hearts of most Arab citizens.

   Sayid, of Cairo University, agrees: "I would
   not underestimate the importance of
   international action because few human
   rights organizations stand up against the
   United States. I think we should lead the
   wave of protest against the US
   government."

   This year, rights groups and other NGOs
   expect a familiar obstacle to re-emerge in
   their paths. A new version of the stillborn
   1999 NGO law restricting their activities
   and funding is expected to come before
   parliament.

   "It is very similar to the last one which was
   ruled unconstitutional by the court,"
   worries Seif. "And I think they will try to
   make funding for our organizations even
   more difficult." In addition to this new law,
   some worry that a recent UN Security
   Council resolution–designed to combat
   money laundering and the financing of
   international terrorist organizations–could
   be used by the Egyptian government to
   further restrict funding.

   Still relevant?

   Despite the current doldrums, some in the
   local human rights field say their efforts
   will be needed more than ever in the
   coming months. With public
   disenchantment with the state of the
   economy on the rise–as seen a few weeks
   ago in the Port Said demonstrations against
   sudden changes in customs tariffs–one
   activist predicts the government will soon
   experience a "nervous breakdown." This
   could, in turn, lead to an increase in human
   rights violations and a crackdown on
   activists.

   One of the symptoms of the predicted
   breakdown can already be seen in the
   increase of systematic torture in the
   country's local police stations, according to
   the 2000 Amnesty International Annual
   Report. "You need to give additional
   protection for the system in such times,"
   says Al Borai. "Through torture in local
   police stations, they want to remind people
   that they are still being controlled."

   In such a climate of fear, it is difficult to
   encourage the average Egyptian to take up
   the human rights cause. "In Egypt we are
   raised to be oppressed," says Mandour. "It
   is a culture of self-sacrifice."

   Underfunded, undersupported and under
   constant pressure, the short-term situation
   looks grim for the Egyptian human rights
   field. Although he concedes it will be a
   long-term battle for human rights
   defenders, Al Borai remains optimistic for
   the future.

   "It's Tom and Jerry, you know," he says,
   referring to the animated classic. "The
   mouse keeps pushing until the big cat tries
   to stop it. But the mouse always wins in the
   end. The proof is that 10 years ago, human
   rights weren't even being discussed in
   Egypt. Now even [the government] accepts
   to discuss the issues. From time to time we
   gain some ground. You'll see, the mouse
   will win in the end because of its
   cleverness. We have a clear objective and
   we have nothing to lose."





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