Al Jazeera English - Interview: Cindy Sheehan

Interview: Cindy Sheehan

By Liam Stack in Cairo

Cindy Sheehan is in Cairo to protest the Egyptian government's decision to try members of the Muslim Brotherhood in a military court
Cindy Sheehan, an American activist who was nicknamed the "Peace Mom" by the media for her criticism of the Iraq War, retreated from her public campaigns in 2007.

The death of her son Casey, a US soldier, in a Baghdad battle in 2005 had transformed Sheehan into a public figure in the US.

But she resurfaced in Cairo last week as a member of a delegation from the Muslim American Society which is in Egypt to protest against the military trial of 40 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.

She spoke to Al Jazeera about her journey from peace activist to Congressional candidate, her thoughts on Iraq and her experiences in Egypt.

Al Jazeera: You first became famous for your protests against the Iraq war in August 2005, but you have not been an active anti-war figure for a while now. What happened?

Sheehan says she wants to put impeachment of George Bush back on the agenda [GETTY]Sheehan: In May 2007, I decided to quit actually being the face of the anti-war movement in America. I quit and I have not gone back to that. When I left the movement I was broke, I was tired, I was sick – literally sick and in pain.

I wanted to just totally be out of the political realm and not have anything to do with it. The establishment that runs our country just disgusted me and I was tired of it. It is very corrupt and I definitely saw that when I was focusing on anti-war activism.

The leaders of both parties work together to keep normal people out of the process. In many ways the Democratic leadership, especially in Congress, has been complicit with George Bush, the US president, in his crimes against humanity.

How can [Democratic Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi say unequivocally that water-boarding is torture and that Bush and [Richard] Cheney, the US vice-president, should not only be impeached but they should be charged with war crimes when in 2002 she herself was briefed on water-boarding and shown video of the rendition places where water-boarding happened?

Impeaching George Bush was a popular demand among liberal Americans at one time, but very few people talk about it anymore. Is that what turned you into an activist again?

When George Bush commuted [vice-presidential aide] Scooter Libby's sentence, the Democrats in Congress didn't do anything about it. When the Administration said they would not cooperate with subpoenas against [presidential aide] Harriet Myers, the democrats didn't do anything about it.

That's what pulled me back into activism. I thought how can they do that? How can they say 'I'm just not going to come to your stupid trial,’ and no one will say anything about it?

When the Democrats took impeachment off the table, I decided enough was enough. On July 23, 2007, I officially announced that I was running for Congress against Nancy Pelosi.

Why the focus on Nancy Pelosi?

I don't think politicians who make political decisions necessarily think about how they are going to affect people and their families. I decided if Nancy Pelosi wasn't going to put impeachment on the table then I would run against her.

You can't take any part of the Constitution off the table, even though they have rendered it almost meaningless between George Bush and Karl Rove. Since they came to power they have institutionalised torture and spying against Americans.

They have passed the Military Commissions Act and just done away with habeas corpus. They have practically rendered it meaningless. That is why I decided to challenge Pelosi for her seat. I always say if you want change you have to vote out the enablers, and Pelosi is the biggest enabler there is.

If your new focus is on unseating Nancy Pelosi, what are you doing in Egypt?

My anti-war work evolved into work for global human rights because I saw the problem was much deeper than just George Bush.

It's about militarism and violence, globalisation and free trade.

I decided I wanted to do human rights work on behalf of people around the world who have been harmed by US imperialism.

Part of why I am here, also, is to draw attention to the parallels between the military courts here and the same kinds of courts that are being used to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay by the US.
If this becomes the standard for the world, and there is no international outcry, then everyone is in big trouble.

But what does the US have to do with a military trial in Egypt?

Egypt is a major recipient of US foreign aid, and there is no relationship between American aid and human rights.

If we [America] really want to promote democracy in this region then we cannot silence the voices of the Muslim Brotherhood because they're the moderate voice here and they are the ones who are actually working for democracy.

Do you think your presence in Egypt will have an effect on the trial?

Well, we have been doing a lot of media work since we came to Egypt and we hope this will put pressure on the Egyptian government to treat the prisoners better and to also maybe alleviate their punishment.

Hopefully we will draw some international attention to what is happening here, too, and that will help the situation.

You also went to the National Council of Women in downtown Cairo to request a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt's First Lady. How did that go?

I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on. There was a lot of yelling in Arabic. They weren't the right people to get us a meeting with Suzanne Mubarak ... I left a letter for Madame Mubarak and they promised that she would see it.

We thought it was important to go there because there are women and children who are being harmed by having their fathers and husbands detained, so I wanted to talk to Suzanne, mother to mother.

We brought along mothers and wives of the detainees and they were actually able to file complaints, and it was really great.

Have you spoken to many of the families of the defendants in the military trial? Have you spoken to many female members of the Brotherhood mother-to-mother?

My conversations with the mothers and children of the detainees have been really emotional. They told me about the hardships [the arrests and trials] have placed on their families, from financial hardships to emotional and physical hardships.

It is very emotional for me because my family has gone through the same things since my son died. It has been really hard for us.

People always say to me, 'Cindy, why do you always make everything personal?'.

But in the end, everything affects people, whether it's war or economics or human rights violations. I don't think politicians who make political decisions necessarily think about how they are going to affect people and their families.

That is why when I meet people who have been harmed by the policies of their own countries, or the policies of my country, it just makes me resolved to work harder to make the world a better place.

DNE: ID card policy violates religious freedom, say rights groups

ID card policy violates religious freedom, say rights groups

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 13, 2007

CAIRO - Human Rights Watch and the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights called on the government to allow Egyptian citizens to list their actual religion on national ID cards and other necessary official documents in a joint report released on Monday.

At the age of 16, all Egyptians are required to obtain a national ID card that states their religious affiliation.

Religion is listed on most official documents, including birth certificates, although in some cases the religion written on the ID card is different from the religion listed at birth.

No law on the books requires people to believe only in Islam, Christianity or Judaism, and activists say that Egyptians are guaranteed freedom of belief by both international and domestic laws.

But according to the new report, members of the Baha’i faith, as well as those who have converted from Islam, are systematically prevented from getting official documents listing their true religious beliefs.

Many say they are bullied or forced into lying about their religion, and some are later prosecuted for fraud if police learn that they are practicing a different religion than the one listed on their ID. Activists say that this is the fate that befalls many converts.

“The problem that we identify in this report is that Ministry of Interior officials systematically prevent some people, in particular Baha’is and people who have converted from Islam, from properly identifying themselves in their documents,” says Joe Stork, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch.

Baha’is and converts are often unable to acquire any documents at all, and are consigned to a bleak state of official non-existence.

Without proper government identification, it is impossible to accomplish many basic tasks, such as going to a hospital, getting a job, collecting a pension or enrolling in a university.

“This is a violation of religious freedom that has much broader implications on a whole range of people’s rights,” says Stork. “This is not based on any Egyptian law, and our message today is that the government should begin to follow its own laws.”

The rights groups say that the restrictions on people’s official religious status are not sanctioned by existing Egyptian law, but rather come from some officials’ misguided belief that allowing people to record their actual faith would encourage heresy and violate Islamic law.

Under certain interpretations of Islamic law, both converts from Islam and those who believe in faiths beside the three “revealed” religions are considered apostates.

Since sharia is legally considered one component of public order in Egypt, some officials at the Ministry of Interior consider recognition of conversion and other religions a threat to society.

But Islamic law is not a monolithic body, says Hossam Bahgat, the Director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Islamic jurists have reached no consensus on what punishments, if any, should be meted out to people considered apostates in the here and now.

Matters of Islamic jurisprudence are also far outside the jurisdiction of bureaucrats inside the Ministry of Interior’s Civil Status Department, he says.

“We agree with many Islamic scholars that the state is under no obligation to punish people for their religious beliefs and that it should not impose worldly penalties on people who leave the Islamic faith,” he says.

“We are not saying there is a consensus supporting our opinion, we are saying there is no consensus supporting any opinion on this matter. Scholars widely disagree on the issue.”

Furthermore, he argues, the Egyptian penal code does not forbid conversion from Christianity to Islam, or bar citizens from practicing a religion outside of Islam, Christianity or Judaism.

“For the government to say that sharia requires these violations of religious freedom and equality is both a violation of international law and of sharia itself,” he added.

The Egyptian Baha’i community is small, numbering no more than 2,000 people. For decades they have lived peacefully beside their Muslim, Christian and Jewish countrymen.

But the community began to face hardship in the 1950s, when Arab nationalists cast a suspicious gaze on their faith and its world headquarters in Haifa, a formerly Palestinian town that had recently become part of the State of Israel.

Egyptian Baha’is have been able to obtain national ID cards in the past, which until recently were hand-written. Under the old system, workers at the Ministry’s Civil Status Department were allowed to write ‘other’ or simply leave a dash in the space left blank for religious affiliation.

But the system of hand-written ID cards and birth certificates have been steadily phased out in recent years, and may be declared null and void as soon as this January.

They are being replaced by sleeker computer printed versions, but Ministry guidelines now forbid people to leave their religious affiliation blank, and only a rare few are allowed to be marked “other.”

Wafaa Hindi and her family, all Bahai, say they live a life full of worrying bureaucratic hardships because the government will not issue them official documents that list their true religion.

Her two sons, Nabil and Kareem, were both given hand-written birth certificates listing their religion as Baha’i.

But when the Ministry of the Interior modernized the country’s birth registries, putting everyone’s information on computer databases, the whole family’s religious affiliation was changed.

To make matters worse, each member of her family was assigned a different religion.

“Nabil’s religion is listed as ‘other.’” She says. “ But Kareem is listed as a Muslim, and my husband Sami and I are both listed as Christians. It’s like we are a mixed salad. But this is not me, this is not any of us – we are Baha’i.”

Now Nabil, her oldest son, faces expulsion from Suez Canal University because he does not have proper identification.

“We are so afraid for our son,” she says. “Anyone can stop him in the street and ask for his ID, and he doesn’t have one.”

Hindi says she does not understand why the government does not let them list their actual religion on their IDs, or at the very least let them leave the cards blank. She sees a difference between official toleration of the Baha’i faith and official endorsement.

“If the government says that I am a Baha’i and recognizes that in the official documents I need, then that is not the same thing as them agreeing with my religion or recognizing four revealed religions,” she says.

“Just saying that they recognize that I have my own religious beliefs does not mean that they believe them too.”

DNE: Cornel West: 'as American as cherry pie'

Cornel West: ‘as American as cherry pie’

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 9, 2007

CAIRO: This year’s Edward Said memorial lecture at the American University in Cairo was delivered by Dr Cornel West: a philosopher, activist, cultural icon, occasional film actor and professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University.

He has won critical praise for his work on race, democracy and imperialism, and his books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide. He sat down with Daily News Egypt for a conversation on imperialism, justice and what it means to be American.

Daily News Egypt: You are in town to deliver a lecture in honor of Edward Said, who was a close friend of yours. How does that feel?

Cornel West: You know, I get sentimental thinking about Edward. He was a real soul mate, and that kind of thing doesn’t happen too often. He was 18 years older than me. We met when I was 24 years old and he was 42, but he always treated me like an equal.

DNE: Your work, like Said’s, confronts institutionalized injustice head-on. But some have said that in a country as socially divided as Egypt, an elite university like AUC itself represents an institutional injustice. How do you feel about that?

It’s hard. I think universities all over the world face these kinds of challenges. It’s hard for a university president to be both a moral leader and a fundraiser for the institution.

And as far as students go, all over the world young people are seduced by the idea of the bourgeois good life, by fitting into the mainstream, the malestream. You have to look for that Socratic, prophetic, courageous slice of humanity willing to look outside of that.

DNE: Much of your work discusses the importance of justice, human dignity and democracy. Many people say that here in Egypt, all three are threatened.

Democracy and the value of every person are at the center of my vision, and in that is an implicit critique of authoritarianism and militarism. I don’t want to come in to a country like Egypt, which is so ancient and so complex, and criticize things in the spirit of arrogance or condescension. But at the same time you have got to take a stand.

In my lecture yesterday I made an allusion to the relationship between the United States and Egypt. It’s worth billions of dollars, and those are my tax dollars too. Working for justice is about identifying the facts and the truth of the matter and that is one of the challenges of remaining true to the life of the mind in a context where democracy has had such trouble gaining traction.

DNE: But in a situation like the one currently facing Egypt, the facts and the truth are both contested subjects. It’s not always so easy to pin them down.

To really identify the facts and the truth, you need to keep putting forward your argument and showing the ways in which the distortions of the truth are tied to the interests of those in power. The key is to connect those distorted interpretations on the one hand to intrinsic interest on the other. Fighting for the truth doesn’t always mean your argument will win in the short term, it means that you continue to put it forward again and again no matter what.

DNE: You have been a critic of American foreign policy for a long time, and began calling it “imperialism” years ago, which is a word many Americans find controversial. What ways have you seen American imperialism change in your lifetime?

I think that Joseph Nye’s distinction between soft and hard power is a very important one. The United States has been an empire for a long time, but outside of Latin America and Vietnam it has mostly used its soft, cultural power to convince and seduce people, and to highlight the best about the country. The use of hard power and force, outright coercion, violence and military action has increased a great deal under Bush. I think Iraq is just the tip of the iceberg, and there has been an ugly backlash against America which I think is no surprise. This happens to any empire, make no mistake.

DNE: How do people in the United States respond to your criticisms?

Critiques of anti-imperialism at home are often seen as anti-American. But I am not anti-American, I am anti-injustice, whether it is happening in Cuba or Burma or Egypt. As a Christian and a democrat, sometimes it is hard to get that message through to people. Americans have a self-image that we are an innocent, pure, unadulterated force for good in the world. There are some very good things in the American democratic experiment, and some very ugly things.

I consider myself as American as George W. Bush, and we are both as American as cherry pie. I represent the other America, the America that has much less power but has deep roots in American history — Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr, Fanny Lou Hamer, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heshem, and Edward Said himself. We are as American as any group.

DNE: As both a committed democrat and a committed anti-imperialist, what is your take on American calls for democratization in the Middle East?

I think that America ought to be explicit in the view that democracy is a desirable way of life. But it is important to say this in the spirit of humility and dialogue, not force or coercion. This include being self-critical about the limitations and shortcomings of our own democracy. But I do believe that democracy is desirable around the world, whether that means China or Singapore or Cuba or Egypt.

Part of the problem with American policies, especially under Bush, has been that the rhetoric of democracy has had very little to do with actually promoting genuine democracy. We saw that when it came to the coup in Venezuela — there you had a democratically elected president who was nearly overthrown in a coup, and all of a sudden we saw that America’s commitment to democracy didn’t cut too deep. America’s moral high ground has been lost.

DNE: Do you think that America can bounce back?

Sure, American can absolutely bounce back, if enough citizens are devoted to justice out of a vision of deep love for each other and the common good. It will take a tremendous amount of vision, courage and determination — I am not naïve about that. But I think that people are tired of the politics of greed and fear, and hungry for a politics based on compassion and justice.

One day the empire will die. All empires go — it is part of the ebb and flow of history. My concern is with the democratic practices and procedures within the empire, because the two do coexist. Aspects of democracy are still there, like the rule of law. They may be weakened but they are not gone, and they are worth fighting for — intellectually, morally and politically.

DNE: When you say that you are as American as cherry pie, what exactly does that mean?

I like to tell the truth so that people can see that the forces for good in America are American, too. I can accent that while I talk about income inequality, structures of domination and the Bush administration. You can be truthful as well as not one-sided. When I go to speak in Cuba or Venezuela they expect me to bash America, but my mama is American, so there must be something positive going on. My tradition is American, and I didn’t become a committed democrat because I dropped out of heaven — I learned it in America.
I should say that as a Christian and a democrat I always put the flag under the cross. I put democracy over nationalism. So that makes me an internationalist in a fundamental way. A lot of people question my patriotism because of my concern for the unjust policies of America — to be concerned with justice across the board is always to risk being called unpatriotic. But if you ask me, it is all a part of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. As he said, “an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And Martin is as American as cherry pie too, no doubt about that.

DNE: Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark denounces Brotherhood trial

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark denounces Brotherhood trial

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 8, 2007

CAIRO: Ramsey Clark, the former attorney general of the United States, is visiting Cairo this week to denounce the military trial of Khayrat El Shater and 39 other leaders of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

In a wide reaching speech delivered at the Lawyer’s Syndicate, Clark drew parallels between the Brotherhood case and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

He accuses the Mubarak regime of trampling on human rights and the rule of law, and says that respect for both is the key to peace and prosperity throughout the Middle East.

“The major reason for the tragedy of Palestine in my lifetime has been the world’s failure to live up to the sacred covenant enshrined in Article 22 of the League of Nations Charter, which promised a free and independent Palestinian state on Palestinian soil more than 80 years ago,” he said, referring to the document that founded the now defunct League in 1919.

“If the world had fulfilled that sacred covenant, I think it would be fair to say that we would all live in a different and much better world — not just for the Palestinians but for all people, brothers and sisters living together in peace and respect,” he added.

Clark argues that by trying the civilian Brotherhood leaders before a military court, the government is violating a “sacred covenant” of its own. The 40 members standing trial are accused of money laundering and membership in a banned organization.

He says the trial is illegal, and in violation of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights that the regime signed in 1984. The treaty guarantees defendants the right to a fair public trial before a legally competent court that is both fair and impartial, and forbids the referral of civilians to military courts.
“The violation of this covenant against the Muslim Brotherhood is as clear as anything before law and life may be,” said Clark.

“But we know why the military court is trying this case — because the president told them to,” he added. “In a free society living under the rule of law, the president cannot tell the court who to try and how, especially if he is sending people to a military court.”

Clark served as attorney general from 1967 to 1969 under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

During his time as the head of the Justice Department, he supported a number of important advances in the American civil rights movement, including the desegregation of schools that had formerly divided black and white students.

Since then, he has embarked on a second career as an international human rights campaigner.

But his activism has brought him a controversial reputation as the outspoken defender of men such as former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

Clark says that he has defended such controversial figures because he believes that they are the most likely to be treated unfairly in emotionally charged court cases.

“I feel like the most important cases are those that involve the most hated and feared people,” he said. “Whatever they have done, they are still human beings and still have the same civil rights as anyone else.”

“If you don’t stand up for these people, then you say that not everyone has the same rights all the time,” he added. “And that is a world of enormous sadness and danger.”

The controversy surrounding political Islam in the West drew Clark to the Brotherhood case. He sees the trial as an important test of Egypt’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

He says the group is a beneficial part of Egypt’s national life.

The Brotherhood is the country’s largest political opposition group, but has been banned since 1954.

Despite the ban, the group has long been tolerated. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the group startled both the government and its allies in Washington by capturing 88 of the 454 seats in the lower house of parliament. The members ran as independent candidates.

Since then, more than 1,000 members of the group have been detained by the government.

Many analysts say the military trial against El Shater is part of a larger crackdown meant to weaken the group.

Clark says that the United States has been scared away from previous commitments to democracy in Egypt by the war in Iraq and Hamas’ election victory in the Palestinian Territories.

Unwilling to upset an old ally, he says the American government has decided to turn a blind eye to the military trial and other human rights abuses committed by the Egyptian government.

“A case like this is a dilemma for the United States,” he says. “For its own domestic politics, it needs to support democratic rulers and democratic societies. But the US wants to stay away from this case because it is an assault on democracy that they don’t want to appear to support.”

DNE: Trial on refugee gang murder postponed, case referred to State Security Court

Trial on refugee gang murder postponed, case referred to State Security Court

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 8, 2007

CAIRO: The state prosecutor on Wednesday postponed indefinitely the trial of eight men charged in connection with a gang murder on World Refugee Day just outside the American University in Cairo (AUC) campus this past July.

Prosecutors changed the charges against the defendants at the last minute, and referred the case to a State Security Court under the country’s Emergency Law.

Family and friends of the accused gathered at the South Cairo Courthouse in Bab El Khalq Wednesday morning. The eight were told two weeks earlier that their months of detention would finally come to an end.

The defendants have been in legal limbo since their arrest in July, when they were detained in connection with a gang fight between members of two Sudanese gangs “the Lost Boys” and “the Outlaws.”

The fight left one man hacked to death by a machete outside the Greek Campus of AUC.

Friends of the eight men insist they were innocent by-standers to the violent melee, and say there is no evidence against them.

For its part, the prosecutor’s office has avoided setting a firm trial date and instead repeatedly extends their detention for weeks at a time.

At the last such hearing in October, the men were told they would see their day in court on Nov. 7, but it was not to be.

At the last minute, the defendants were taken in shackles from the open-air pen behind the court house to the nearby State Security directorate. They were told that they were now to be charged with a more serious offense.

All eight now stand accused of murder. Before Wednesday’s session, only one of the men was accused of “accidental murder,” which carried a penalty of seven to 10 years in jail.

Weapons possession charges against all eight still stand, a crime which carries a sentence of three months to one year in prison.

Lawyers for the men predict that the case will be tried in the State Security Court in Rehab City by mid-December. But they admit that, as the events in Bab El-Khalq demonstrate, the justice system is unpredictable.

Members of the men’s families reacted to the change in the case with dismay, holding their heads in their hands in the court’s crowded entrance hall.

Mohamed Bayoumi, the lawyer in the case, said he remains committed to the case and to his client’s innocence.

“This puts these men in a very difficult situation, and now we just have to work harder,” he said. “The prosecutor is still convinced that these men killed the person who died at World Refugee Day because that is what the police officers said. But there are no other witnesses and no real reason to believe that they did this. They are just listening to the testimony of the arresting officer.”

Yousef Ahmed Saleh Idris, a friend of Essam Eddin Jubarra — one of the accused — agrees that the men are innocent. He says that Essam was working as a volunteer at the event, and was not a member of any gang.

Idris witnessed his friend’s arrest, and says it was conducted haphazardly by abusive plainclothes officers. He says he thinks the officers wanted to look like they were responding competently to the situation, but were in fact seizing random bystanders based on the color of their skin.

“Essam and his friends were been grabbed by some plainclothes police officers who were dragging them away,” he said. “I went over and told the police that he was with us, but they didn’t respond.”

“I said I wanted to talk to his boss, so the guy grabbed me too and dragged me over to the main gate at AUC where there was a plainclothes officer sitting,” he added. “The officer started screaming ‘Don’t bring anyone to see me over here, how dare you let someone see me here!’”

“I told him Essam was with me but he didn’t respond to me and just started screaming at Essam to shut up, and then he told the cops to put Essam in the truck,” he said. “When the cops were throwing him in the truck they told me I had two choices — I could either get out of there, or they would arrest me too.”

Estimates on the number of refugees in Egypt vary wildly. According to the UNHCR, it has officially registered 45,000 refugees in the country, mainly from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq. But some independent estimates push that figure to as many as three million.

DNE: Kefaya holds short, lackluster protest against NDP conference

Kefaya holds short, lackluster protest against NDP conference

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 5, 2007

CAIRO: Members of the Kefaya Movement for Change demonstrated on the steps of the Press Syndicate on Sunday afternoon against the annual conference of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), which Kefaya accuses of corruption and human rights abuses.

But few activists showed up to the short protest. Those that did were herded inside a security perimeter in front of the syndicate by lines of armored riot police, which outnumbered protestors by almost four-to-one.

Some demonstrators attributed the small size of the lackluster demonstration to disorganization within the Kefaya movement and a sense of hopelessness among its members.

“We don’t agree with the regime, we don’t believe in the regime, and we don’t have any faith in the regime,” said George Ishaq, former Kefaya leader who still plays an organizational role within the group.

The movement’s current leader, Abdel Wahab Al Messiri, did not attend the protest because he was sick, said Ishaq.

“All the talk of change at this conference is just a load of rubbish,” Ishaq added. “It’s the same thing every time the NDP meets. We are against this regime and we oppose the president and everyone who leads this bloody party.”

The demonstration was originally planned to take place in front of the Lawyer’s Syndicate on Ramses Street at noon, but facing last minute security pressure, both its time and location were changed.

Many human rights activists and journalists seemed to be unaware of the original plan for the demonstration in the first place.

Some protestors said the movement’s confusing approach to planning demonstrations was to blame for the low turnout — less than 50 people attended. On occasion, past demonstrations have drawn several times that number.

“Unfortunately, the protest is kind of weak today,” said Nadia Mabrouk, a veteran Kefaya activist. “We should have protests in other places, but security always tries to stop us and people get scared.

“Sometimes everyone is told to meet somewhere else, like Talaat Harb Street or in front of the Lawyer’s Syndicate, and then at the last minute the place or the time gets changed,” she added. “It’s not consistent.”

Activists said the point was not Kefaya’s confusion but the fact that the NDP conference was taking place across town.

During the conference, President Mubarak was re-elected as chairman of the National Democratic Party, which he has led for 26 years. His son Gamal was appointed to a newly formed Supreme Committee, whose members are eligible to be the party’s presidential candidate.

In a speech at the opening of the second day of the conference, Gamal told the assembled delegates that the party is looking out for the concerns of the average citizen.

“The problems of all Egyptians are the priorities of our party,” he said, according to a press release. “The political activities and actions of the NDP are working at the local level, to the benefit of the villages, the families and the hard-working people of Egypt.

“Their needs are for more jobs, better schools, improved healthcare and greater access to basic infrastructure and that is what our party is working to provide,” he added.

Kefaya members expressed angry skepticism at the party’s claims that it represents the Egyptian people. They charge its leaders with corruption and say the NDP is the party of the country’s abusive ruling class.

“They don’t represent the people, they are not talking about the people, and they are not discussing the people’s ideas,” said Rabaa Fahmy, a human rights lawyer who works at the Ibn Khaldun Center research center, which was founded by activist and sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

“The conference is like a meeting of gangsters,” she added. “They are talking about their plans for their futures and thinking up ways to defend all their corruption. This isn’t a political conference, it’s a social club.”

But as the protest drew to a close with the singing of the Kefaya song and the rolling up of banners, Nadia Mabrouk expressed a frustration that many seemed to share.

“The NDP and our political leaders are all focusing on Gamal Mubarak,” she said. “Nobody wants him to be president, but we don’t know what we can do. I think that for us to be successful in the short term is basically impossible. It is a hopeless situation.”

DNE: Rights group calls on Egypt to stop forced return of refugees to Sudan

Rights group calls on Egypt to stop forced return of refugees to Sudan

By Liam Stack
First Published: November 5, 2007

CAIRO: Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement calling on Egypt to stop sending Sudanese refugees back to Sudan against their will.

Authorities forcibly repatriated five Sudanese citizens detained by Israel in August after crossing the Sinai to seek refuge there.

The New York-based rights group fears that the returned refugees will face persecution in their home country, and say that such forced repatriations are in violation of international law.

It says that many of the people in question came to Egypt to escape violence in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

"We are extremely worried by Egypt's failure to account for these people," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the director of the Middle East and North Africa division of HRW. "The entire incident reveals Egypt and Israel's shared disregard for the plight of Sudanese fleeing Darfur."

The repatriated Sudanese were part of a group of 48 detainees caught by Israel and handed over to Egypt. Israeli authorities claim they received assurances from Cairo that the detainees would not be returned to Sudan, although Egypt denies making any such promise.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 23 of those detainees were either officially classified as refugees or have outstanding asylum claims.

But the exact number of refugees in the group is unclear because Egyptian security has not allowed the UNHCR access to the detained men.

"Egypt cannot avoid its obligation to assess the refugee status of persons fleeing a conflict by preventing the UN refugee agency from seeing them," said Whitson. "Egypt is thumbing its nose at a fundamental principle of refugee law."

Refugees expelled from Israel face increased danger back in Sudan, which considers it to be an enemy state.

In September, the Sudanese Foreign Minister announced that visiting Israel was a criminal offense and accused those who do of participation in a Zionist plot against Khartoum. It called on the Egyptian government to punish Sudanese caught trying to make it to the Jewish state.

HRW criticized Cairo for not taking Sudan’s hostility towards Israel into account when dealing with refugees who have traveled there. It says Khartoum’s stance gives extra urgency to the issue of forced repatriation.

"In the face of Sudan's record of rights abuses and its hostility toward its citizens who seek refuge in Israel, Egypt's apparent decision to forcibly return Sudanese asylum seekers is unconscionable," Whitson said.

Israel captured the group of migrants and refugees on Aug. 17 after they crossed the mountainous Sinai desert with the help of human traffickers. They were returned to Egypt less than 24 hours after their detention and were not allowed to present asylum claims, in violation of international law.

Israel was widely criticized for sending the refugees back to Egypt, where they complain of racism and random violence at the hands of Egyptian police and civilians.

Earlier in the summer, Israeli border police claimed to witness their Egyptian counterparts gun down a group of refugees running for the border. A young mother was killed in the incident, and several others were seriously wounded.

DNE: Egypt, Mugabe and a diplomatic slip-up

Egypt, Mugabe and a diplomatic slip-up

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 31, 2007

CAIRO: Last week Gamil Fayed became the newest addition to the Egyptian diplomatic corps when he presented his credentials to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, in a run-of-the-mill ceremony in Harare, the capital.

In his new role, Fayed will oversee an embassy staff of only two. He represents Cairo to a country coming apart at the seams under the weight of widespread social unrest and an inflation rate of 13,000 percent a year.

His position is hardly at the forefront of Egyptian diplomacy. But remarks he made after one of his first official meetings provoked uncomfortable back-tracking by superiors in Cairo and cast light on both Mugabe’s approach to the Arab world and Egypt’s attitude towards its African neighbors.

After meeting with the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fayed made routine promises to provide Harare with agricultural advice, according to the Zimbabwean state-run daily The Herald.

But the quote picked up by the paper, and nervously criticized by Cairo, was far from a bland commitment to fertilizer sales.

“I would like to express my government's support to Zimbabwe's land reform and mechanization programs,” the paper quoted Fayed as saying.

Land reform in southern Africa, and Zimbabwe in particular, is a touchy subject.

During the era of white minority rule in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, the white elite comprised one percent of the population but owned 70 percent of the country’s arable land.

After the end of minority rule in 1980, the new government began to commandeer many of the large agricultural estates owned by the white elite.
In theory, the reform program would alleviate poverty by dividing up the land among poor blacks, while the white farmers were to be given fair compensation.
But in practice, say critics, the Mugabe regime carried out the policy thuggishly.

They say much of the land was turned over to political allies with no experience or intention of farming it, creating an economic and humanitarian catastrophe.
In addition, they accuse the state of unleashing a campaign of violence to intimidate both the small white population and the president’s political opponents, whatever their race.

Before Mugabe came to power, the country was a net exporter of foodstuffs and seen as a bread basket of Africa.

Now, more than two decades after land reform began, Zimbabwe is in a shambles. It is racked by quintuple-digit inflation and more than 45 percent of the country is malnourished. It has been heavily sanctioned by western governments, and Mugabe himself is one of world politics’ personae-non-grata.

After Fayed’s statements in Harare, representatives of the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted with nervous bewilderment. Speaking to a foreign reporter, one expressed a sense that Ambassador Fayed made a rookie mistake and was not reading from the right page in Cairo’s playbook.

“This man is really dreaming,” said a senior official in the Ministry’s Division of African Affairs, who did not want to go on record criticizing a colleague. “These are explosive comments. This is just not what our relationship with Zimbabwe is about.”

According to the diplomat, Egypt’s main interaction with Zimbabwe is to occasionally provide it with technical advice or humanitarian assistance through the Egyptian Fund for Technological Cooperation with Africa. Every year the Fund sends a handful of physicians and engineers to the country.

“There is no agreement between Egypt and Zimbabwe when it comes to land reform — not at all,” he told Daily News Egypt. “I think Fayed was just making up the speech as he went along. This is just humorous, it is completely invented, that we agree with them on this or would even consider agreeing with them.”

“Even in informal meetings we have with the Zimbabweans, we don’t even bring up land reform. It is a very sensitive issue with them. We think it is an internal Zimbabwean issue and we don’t have any official position on it.”

While the official was careful to point out that Cairo considers Mugabe’s land reform policies to be an internal affair, he was also emphatic that Egypt’s experience of land reform bore no resemblance to the controversial and bloody Zimbabwean model.

“Our land reform in the 1960s under Nasser was completely different than what they are doing there,” he emphasized. “Completely different.”

Cairo’s presence in Southern Africa is also felt through its investments in the telecom sector, where Egyptian giant Orascom has competed against local firms for a share in the regional mobile phone market.

Until earlier this year, it had met some success in Zimbabwe. Orascom was a 60 percent owner of local firm Telecel Zimbabwe, with the other 40 percent of the funds invested by a local group of shareholders called the Empowerment Group of Zimbabwe.

But in August the Mugabe regime revoked Telecel’s license, and accused Orascom of not doing enough to attract more Zimbabwean investors. Egyptian diplomats are quick to write off the dispute as a misunderstanding.

Observers of the relationship between Cairo and Harare say that it is not just limited to aid missions and investment deals.

Simon Myambo, a former professor of development studies at Belvedere Teacher’s College in Harare, expresses surprise at the offer of development assistance from Cairo.

But he suggests that business deals and aid offers like these are backed up by a personal relationship between the two countries’ presidents.

Because of the sanctions imposed on his country by Europe and America, western multinationals cannot invest in Zimbabwe and Mugabe cannot travel there. In response, he tries to attract support and investment from China and the Islamic world under his regime’s “Look East” policy.

“Mugabe always stops here to visit on his way to summits at the UN or to visit investors or friends in places like Malaysia or China,” says Myambo. “When he comes here he always stays for a few days. He has already been here about five or six times this year.”

According to Myambo, “Look East” deserves credit for the Orascom deal as well as Mugabe’s recent success in attracting major investments from Qatar-based Venessia Petroleum.

Earlier this month, the Gulf firm announced plans to build a 120,000 barrel-per-day refinery in Harare, at a cost of $1.5 billion. In addition, its sister company will build a five-star hotel in downtown Harare.

“Mugabe has been trying to woo the entire Middle East, because he can’t go to Europe anymore,” explains Myambo. “It is all part of his ‘Look East’ policy, which includes Egypt as one of the strongest countries in the Middle East.”

But if Mugabe is looking east, officials at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry insist that Cairo is also looking south.

They insist that the ruined investments, small humanitarian missions and bungled speeches that are the hallmark of the ties between Cairo and Harare do not do justice to Egypt’s role in Africa at large.

According to them, Egypt is a natural leader on the continent.

They say it has played an important historical role in bringing civilization and freedom from colonialism to its southern neighbors, and point to investments and aid work in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Nigeria as evidence of that.

“Egypt is a leader in Africa,” said the official in the Ministry’s Division of African Affairs, who spoke to Daily News Egypt on condition of anonymity.

“We are a pioneer in everything,” he said. “We are one of the most important countries, and one of the biggest economies, on the continent. We helped the entire African continent gain independence, and we have always been eager to help them develop and to provide humanitarian aid when disasters happen.”

“In terms of civilization and culture Egypt has been a pioneer,” he added.

“Egyptian civilization is 7,000 years old. Most African countries are new and are not deeply rooted like Egypt. We were here when there was no one else”

DNE: Harassed journalists file complaints against Ain Shams University

Harassed journalists file complaints against Ain Shams University

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 29, 2007

CAIRO: Two journalists have filed a series of complaints against both campus security at Ain Shams University and its president, Ahmed Zaki Badr, and say that guards obstructed them from reporting on student demonstrations last week, blocking one man’s entrance to the campus and violently beating another who made it inside.

Aboul Seoud Mohamed, a journalist with Al-Masry Al-Youm, says that security forces barred him from entering the campus when he went to cover the demonstrations protesting vote-rigging and state interference in student body elections.

“I gave the security officers at the gates my card saying that I am a journalist and a member of the syndicate, but they said that I couldn’t enter unless I had a special pass,” Mohamed told Daily News Egypt. “I knew this wasn’t right, so I called the President of the University, Ahmed Zaki Badr, and he said he would send someone from the public relations (PR) office down to escort me in to the campus.

“I waited for two hours and no one came,” he added. “I called the president’s office and the PR office again and again and no one ever came down.”

While he stood waiting outside the university, Mohamed says he saw Amr Sharaf, a photographer from Al Dostour, come stumbling out. He had been badly beaten.

“He was badly hurt and had wounds on his head,” says Mohamed. “He said he had been beaten by a police officer.

“We tried to take a picture of Amr Sharaf and his wounds but the security officers said we couldn’t because it would tarnish the reputation of the university.”

Sharaf could not be reached for comment at press time, but according to reports published in Al-Masry Al-Youm he was beaten with clubs by campus police and a mob of plainclothes officers until he lost consciousness. He was later hospitalized at Ain Shams University Hospital.

According to the complaint, the two have accused Ahmed Helmy, an officer with campus security, and President Ahmed Zaki Badr of illegally denying Mohamed access to the grounds of the university.

Sherif Kadry, another officer with campus security, stands accused of smashing Sharaf’s camera and assaulting him along with a number of unidentified plainclothes agents.

Security was on high alert on the day of the demonstrations, which witnesses say drew 500 student activists to the campus to chant slogans against both the Mubarak regime and university president Ahmed Zaki Badr, son of a former Interior Minister.

Students complain that university officials loyal to the ruling National Democratic Party intervened in student elections, disqualifying candidates seen as not being loyal enough to the government. Islamist candidates in particular were barred from running for seats in the student union.

Such tactics are a common feature of Egypt’s annual student elections, as the government tries to ensure that student unions at the nation’s largest
universities do not become a platform for opposition groups.

Protests and clashes erupted at several universities after last week’s elections, with students across the country complaining that votes were being rigged by state security forces and NDP loyalists within university administrations.

In Zagazig University alone, located at the delta town of Zagazig, the university disqualified more than 500 students from running for office based on their perceived political affiliation.

DNE: Security detains Brotherhood students after violence at Ain Shams University

Security detains Brotherhood students after violence at Ain Shams University

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 25, 2007

CAIRO: State security forces arrested 13 students at Ain Shams University affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) on Wednesday after violent clashes between student groups and uniformed and plainclothes security forces during a protest against alleged vote rigging on Monday’s student elections.

Students complain that university officials disqualified candidates not aligned with the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), and focused on barring Islamist candidates in particular.

Such tactics are a common feature of the country’s annual student elections, as the government tries to ensure that student unions at the nation’s largest universities do not become a platform for opposition groups.

According to witnesses, roughly 500 students from a range of opposition movements gathered in front of university administrator’s offices to collect signatures against vote rigging and chant slogans.

“We decided that we wanted to have a big demonstration and a sit-in because the government would not let the elections happen freely,” Mohamed Soliman, a student at the Faculty of Arts and a member of the MB told Daily News Egypt.

“This happens every year. The rules are always broken in student elections in Egypt.”

Shortly after gathering, they say they were attacked by uniformed security forces and a crowd of plainclothes agents wielding machetes, Molotov cocktails and clubs.

The Brotherhood’s website claims that 13 students were detained by police, although student protestors say that 14 were detained by university security and nine were later transferred to El Waily police station.

At least one man, Amr Sharaf, a photographer with the opposition daily Al Dostour, was hospitalized at Ain Shams University hospital after being beaten by plainclothes officers, who took the memory cards out of his camera.

Student protestors blame the university administration for the violence, and in particular attack its president Ahmed Zaki Badr. He is the son of former Minister of the Interior Zaki Badr, who was the target of an assassination attempt in 1987 for allegedly sanctioning torture in prisons and his fierce campaign against Islamists.

“Ahmed Zaki Badr refused to meet with student protestors, instead he called in these thugs to attack us, he gave them the orders and watched the whole thing,” said Soliman.

“He is the president of this university and he is responsible when violence like this happens here,” he added.

Protests and clashes have accompanied voting at universities across the country this week, as student union elections are scheduled to take place under the watchful eye of state security.

Opposition groups complain of widespread government interference in student elections, and say that university administrators loyal to the NDP routinely disqualify candidates considered insufficiently loyal to the government.

In Zagazig University alone, in the delta town of Zagazig, the university disqualified more than 500 students from running for office based on their perceived political affiliation.

DNE: Trial date set for refugee gang murder, lawyers insist wrong men are charged

Trial date set for refugee gang murder, lawyers insist wrong men are charged

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 23, 2007

CAIRO: More than four months after the annual World Refugee Day at the American University in Cairo was disrupted by gang violence that left one man dead outside the university premises, the state prosecutor has agreed to bring the case to trial on Nov. 6.

But friends and family of the eight defendants insist they were innocent bystanders swept up in a frantic police crackdown following the murder, which occurred during a fight between two Sudanese gangs, the Outlaws and the Lost Boys.

“The men that the police arrested were not the ones who were involved in the fighting,” said Mohamed Bayoumi, a lawyer representing the defendants. “The ones who committed this crime ran away before the police arrived, so the police just arrested anyone who was there.

“The ones they arrested are innocent. They did not do anything,” he added.

Seven of the men are charged with possession of knives, a crime which carries a sentence of three months to one year in prison. One of the defendants is charged with “accidental murder,” for which he may face seven to ten years in jail.

According to witnesses to the attack, a gang of Sudanese men wielding machetes attacked another Sudanese man on the sidewalk outside AUC’s Greek Campus, hacking at his arms and head.

After the assault the gang of attackers quickly dispersed, leaving the victim, identified in as Taha Malea Fealjour Bekam, on a sidewalk streaked with blood.

Police arrived soon after and began arresting all the Sudanese men they saw in the vicinity in what some have described as a random, hurried manner.

One of the defendants, Essam Eddin Jubbara, was arrested while hailing a taxi near the university, according to friends. He had been working as a volunteer at World Refugee Day and was leaving with two Sudanese friends when they were detained by police.

He and his friends are among those charged with weapons possession, but friends say it is impossible that Jubbara or his friends were involved in the attack.

They say none of the three were involved in the gangs, and that Jubbara, who is recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR, was an upstanding member of the refugee community. He spent his free time helping out his fellow refugees and babysitting, according to friends, and was supposed to start his studies this semester at Cairo University.

They additionally point out that both the Lost Boys and the Outlaws are based in the Cairo neighborhoods of Maadi and Ain Shams, but Essam lived in Bab El-Louq and had little contact with those communities.

“The people who committed this crime must be laughing,” said Peroline Ainsworth, a friend of Jubbara. “They’ve arrested the wrong people.”

As for the two men arrested with Jubbara, they do not live in Egypt at all, and were only visiting from Sudan to attend a training course hosted by EgyptAir.

According to Bayoumi, the lawyer for the defense, the state prosecutor’s office takes special interest in cases involving Sudanese refugees because they are afraid that the community will organize more demonstrations like the 2005 protest in Mustafa Mahmoud square.

Thousands of refugees took part in a high-profile sit-in in the Mohandiseen roundabout that year, which ended in a bloody crackdown by state security forces in which as many as 30 refugees, mainly women and children, were killed.

“After the violence that occurred at the square, they are always afraid that the Sudanese are going to organize another demonstration,” he told Daily News Egypt. “They are just scared.”

Estimates on the number of refugees in Egypt vary wildly. According to the UNHCR, it has officially registered 45,000 refugees in the country, mainly from Sudan, Somalia and Iraq. But some independent estimates push that figure to as many as three million.

DNE: International labor groups condemn conviction of labor leader Kamal Abbas

International labor groups condemn conviction of labor leader Kamal Abbas

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 21, 2007

CAIRO: A string of international labor and human rights groups have come out in support of Kamal Abbas — the director of the shuttered Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS) — condemning a recent court decision which sentenced him and a freelance journalist associated with his group to one year in prison.

The two were convicted of defamation and public abuse after writer Mohamed Helmy published an article on corruption at the 15th of May Youth Center, where he was a member of the board. The story was published in Kalam Sanay’iya, a magazine published by the CTUWS.

Last week, the International Confederation of Trade Unions (ITUC) issued a statement expressing its “most serious condemnation” of the conviction.
The group, which represents 168 million workers in 153 countries, accused the government of orchestrating the convictions as part of its broader crackdown on opposition groups and independent media.

“We are very concerned about this latest attack on the CTUWS,” said Guy Ryder, ITUC general secretary, in a statement released to the press. “We are particularly concerned that these prison sentences follow a long tradition of repression of the CTUWS, an independent civil society organization committed to defending trade union and workers rights in Egypt.

“We cannot accept that the CTUWS be intimidated through the courts or otherwise for actions that are perfectly legal and legitimate,” he added.
In addition to the ITUC, statements of support have poured in from a number of European organizations.

A coalition of the three largest Italian trade unions sent a letter to President Hosni Mubarak urging him to “ensure that CTUWS is not persecuted” and demanding that “this particular case could be reviewed.”

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network also issued a statement “expressing its deep concern” over the case.

The conviction has attracted particular attention and anger from rights groups because in between the publication of the corruption accusations and the two men’s September conviction, an investigation launched by the Governor of Cairo revealed the charges against the youth center management to be true.

After the investigation, Cairo Governor Abdel Azim Wazir ordered the entire board of the center to be disbanded and singled out Chairman Mohamed Mustafa Ibrahim for particular censure.

In an ironic twist, it was Ibrahim who filed the case against Abbas and Helmy, and on Sept. 30 the Helwan Misdemeanor Court ruled in his favor.

“The article that we published about the 15th of May Youth Center was based on facts and research which proved the corruption,” Abbas told Daily News Egypt. “Those complaints and facts were all accurate and legitimate, and eventually led to many of the problems at the center being solved.

“Ibrahim filed his suit against both the writer and I before it was clear to everyone that the facts were true, and before the problems there were solved,” he added.

In a statement released to the media, the CTUWS expressed “extreme concern” at what it called an “unbelievable sentence.”

The group says it plans to appeal the conviction at a court session scheduled for Dec. 29, and both Abbas and Helmy remain free until the appeals have been completed.

DNE: Syrian rights activist condemns motives behind Brotherhood trial

Syrian rights activist condemns motives behind Brotherhood trial

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 18, 2007

CAIRO: Lawyer and human rights activist Gamila Sadek, a representative of the Syrian Bar Association and the Paris-based Arab Committee for Human Rights, like several would-be observers before her, has recently been barred from attending the trial of 40 Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

The trial has attracted widespread attention both at home and abroad, largely because the defendants were acquitted of the same charges of membership of a banned organization and money laundering before a civilian judge.

“Referring civilians to military courts is wrong, this is not why military courts exist,” Sadek told Daily News Egypt. “The government already knows what verdict it wants to see in the court and has forged evidence to make its point. It has all been pre-arranged from the beginning. The whole thing is illegal, unconstitutional and illegitimate.”

Sadek says she is not surprised that, like all the observers before her, she was barred from the trial. Even though no one has yet been successful in observing the proceedings, she thinks that it is important for observers to keep trying.

“We have sent four observers before me to observe nine separate court sessions, but each time they have gone to the court our observers have been denied access,” she says. “Nevertheless, it is important to come and highlight the political nature of these trials. They are full of legal violations as well, but we think that the political aspects of the case are the most important.”

According to Sadek, the military trial is only one front in a widely reaching government crackdown on opposition figures that also extends to factory workers and newspaper editors. But she thinks it is significant due to both the personal wealth and economic influence of many Brotherhood leaders and the public support that the movement enjoys.

“The Muslim Brotherhood includes some very wealthy members who have accumulated a lot of influence in the economy, and the government is afraid of their growing economic power,” she says.

“The economic rise of the Brotherhood is competition for the economic monopoly of the National Democratic Party and its elites. That is why they have been charged with money laundering, to attack their finances and block their economic achievements.”

Despite the wealth that many of its leaders have accumulated, Sadek says that Egyptian society’s religious devotion has kept many people from considering the Brotherhood to be just another gang of elites.

An avowed secularist and one-time communist, Sadek says that while she herself is not swayed by religious arguments she thinks that for many people the movement’s piety is a big part of its attraction.

“The Arab public usually supports Islamist parties because they think that they are the only ones who can actually fulfill their promises and meet the people’s demands. Most Arabs are religious Muslims so they find Islamist parties generally attractive.”

But she says the movement’s Islamic piety also gives the regime an effective means of attacking it, and accuses the regime of attracting Western support for cracking down on opposition groups by painting Islamist activists and politicians as violent extremists.

“The regime here is cracking down on Islamists in part to please Western governments,” she says. “It has done a good job of spreading the image that Islamists are all radicals and terrorists, and uses this image to gain the support of Western governments.”

“But it’s not true that they are all like that, and it is not true that they are the only ones suffering now,” she adds. “The crackdown we are seeing in Egypt now does not just include Islamists. This is not just about the Brotherhood. The government is attacking everyone, and cracking down on leftists and secularists as well.”

DNE: MB military trial resumes today as human rights observer arrives in Egypt

MB military trial resumes today as human rights observer arrives in Egypt

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 16, 2007

CAIRO: The military trial of Muslim Brotherhood leader Khayrat El Shater and 39 others continues today, as the latest in a string of foreign human rights lawyers attempts to observe the proceedings, which have so far been closed to both media and international monitors.

Gamila Sadek, a Syrian attorney representing the Paris-based Arab Committee for Human Rights, arrived in Egypt last night. She is one of several representatives of that group who have tried to observe the trial. All have been turned away.

“She will attend the trial, but we don’t expect that they will let her enter because they don’t let anyone in,” Zahraa El Shater told Daily News Egypt.
Zahraa is the daughter of Khayrat El Shater and the wife of Ayman Abdel Ghany, who is also a defendant in the case.

“It is good to see that there are organizations and people out there who support us, but for the Egyptian government it doesn’t matter,” she continued. “They won’t let her in, but we do appreciate her support.”

Khayrat El Shater and his co-defendants stand accused of being members of a banned organization and money laundering, charges which they were acquitted of before a civil court last year.

On the day of their acquittal they were re-arrested before leaving the courtroom and recharged with the same crimes before a military court, which is empowered to sentence them to death and whose decisions they cannot appeal.

The Brotherhood is Egypt’s most influential opposition group. It holds 88 seats in the 454 member People’s Assembly, which it won during a brief period of political opening that coincided with elections in the fall of 2005.

Since then, over a thousands members of the group have been detained, including top leaders like El Shater.

DNE: Responses to worker unrest a government tactic, says observer

Responses to worker unrest a government tactic, say observers

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 3, 2007

CAIRO: Life in the delta town of Mahalla was disrupted last week by a boisterous strike at the mammoth Ghazl El Mahalla industrial complex, where 27,000 workers walked off the job and took up residence with their families in a tent city inside the factory gates.

At energetic rallies in front of the factory gates, workers banged drums and chanted slogans against a cast of would-be villains including their local government-appointed union committee, the chairman of the board of Misr Spinning and Weaving, and the World Bank.

They demanded a host of changes ranging from the payment of promised bonuses to the dissolution of Egypt’s union system and the overthrow of President Mubarak.

The strike had its roots in a similar protest last December. That strike ended when management and the state promised to improve working conditions and include employees in a profit-sharing deal that would pay them a bonus equal to 150 days wages if the company turned a profit of more than LE 60 million.

At the end of the fiscal year in July, Misr Spinning and Weaving posted profits of more than LE 170 million although workers only received a bonus of 20 days’ pay.

Worker leaders reacted with outrage. They accused the management of reneging on its promises and began to organize for a new action.

After striking for six days, the workers’ negotiating team abandoned many of their more radical political demands and focused instead on winning a verbal commitment to the payment of their bonuses. In talks that stretched late into the night, the two sides agreed upon a deal that independent observers say is both financially generous and politically significant.

“The settlement is pretty remarkable for a couple of reasons,” said Joel Beinin, the director of the Middle Eastern Studies department at the American University in Cairo.

“In terms of the economic issues, the workers pretty much won everything they wanted, and they did it pretty quickly.”

According to Sayed Habib, a leader of the Mahalla movement, the management agreed to pay the workers an immediate bonus equal to 70 days’ wages. They also pledged to pay a later bonus of 60 days’ wages after consulting with the firm’s administrative general assembly.

While management failed to commit to the principle of profit-sharing, they promised that future bonuses will be larger than in the past and will also be tied to an annual salary increase of seven percent.

The negotiations did score some political victories even though they did not result in extreme changes such as the overthrow of the regime or the dissolution of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation (ETUF) — a government body formed in 1957 and widely seen as a tool of state repression.

Chief among them was the forced resignation of company CEO Mahmoud El Gibali and the firm’s board of directors.

“That is a pretty political thing to do, considering that this is a public sector company and those guys are all government appointees,” says Beinin.

Additionally, the chairman of the factory’s local union committee also resigned after he was hospitalized following an attack by a group of striking workers. Like all members of the local union committee, he too was appointed by the state.

As the largest and one of the oldest public sector enterprises in Egypt, Ghazl El Mahalla has always served as one of the bellwethers of labor unrest. What workers there win from the state, workers elsewhere can be expected to demand as well.

For that reason, Beinin thinks Mahalla will inspire more strikes in the coming months, and that the regime will most likely continue to appease workers’ economic demands while overlooking the political ones.

“The Mahalla workers are in an almost unique position vis-à-vis the government because their legitimacy is unassailable,” he told Daily News Egypt.

“Their enterprise is the flagship enterprise of Egyptian economic nationalism, and unlike many textile firms, it is profitable. But the workers there are paid a pathetic amount of money that it is impossible to raise a family on.

“Everyone but the business elite supports them,” he added. “I think the regime has either decided that it should help them, or that it has to.”

The government’s conciliatory approach to labor unrest is in stark contrast to the increasingly repressive measures it has taken over the last year against dissent from the middle class and urban intellectuals.

Some, like AUC Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, have fled the country. Others, such as newspaper editor Ibrahim Eissa or Muslim Brotherhood leader Khayrat El Shater, have been subjected to grueling trials within the civil or military justice system that critics dismiss as kangaroo courts.

While it appears the regime is trying to smother working class dissent with financially favorable settlements, Beinin warns that the regime’s willingness to pay out could quickly harden if workers pressed their demand for the dissolution of the ETUF.

“The demand for an independent labor union has been around for at least a decade, but there has never really been any rank-and-file organizing around it,” he says.

“What is happening in Mahalla is the first real instance of that,” he added. “But the regime will fight very, very hard against this demand. Control of the union apparatus is one of its main tools for retaining power and has been for years.”

The distance between the ETUF and workers is the most serious problem in labor politics, says Kamal Abbas, the director of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, which was shut down by the authorities in March.

He says that as long as the union fails to represent workers, more strikes are inevitable.

“The real problem here is that the union is isolated from the workers themselves,” he says. “This problem has not been solved, and because of that and other problems the strikes will just continue.”

“It is just like with anything else,” he added. “If the problems are not addressed, then they will only lead to the same outcomes.”

DNE: Director of labor rights group, freelance journalist sentenced to one year for defamation

Director of labor rights group, freelance journalist sentenced to one year for defamation

By Liam Stack
First Published: October 3, 2007

CAIRO: Kamal Abbas, the director of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS), a high-profile labor rights group shut down by the authorities last winter, was sentenced to one year in prison for defamation.

The case was filed against both him and a freelance writer for the group’s magazine, after it published allegations of corruption against a Cairo youth center which later proved to be true.

Both Abbas and the writer, Mohamed Helmy, were sentenced by the Helwan Misdemeanor Court, but remain free pending an appeal which will be heard on Dec. 26.

The charges were published in Kalam Sanay’iya, the magazine of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, which was shut down in March after the state accused it of threatening national security by encouraging workers to strike.

In the article, Helmy alleged that the management of the 15th of May Youth Center was corrupt, and laid the blame on Mohamed Mustafa Ibrahim, the chairman of its board and a member of the National Democratic Party who was once a parliamentary candidate.

When the article appeared, Ibrahim sued both Helmy and Abbas for “public abuse” and “defamation of his capacity as a public representative.”

The author claimed inside knowledge of the center’s operations because he was also a member of its board of directors, and, along with four other board members filed a complaint against Ibrahim before Cairo governor Abdel Azim Wazir last year.

Wazir assigned a task force to investigate the charges, which released a report last January confirming Helmy’s allegations of financial misconduct and recommending that Ibrahim be removed from his position.

In response, Wazir disbanded the entire board of the 15th of May Center, relieving both Helmy and Ibrahim of their duties.

Abbas stands by the article, saying that the governor’s action against the center’s management proves that it was based on facts.

“The article that we published about the 15th of May Youth Center was based on facts and research,” he told Daily News Egypt.

“Those complaints and facts were all accurate and legitimate, and eventually led to solving many of the problems at the center.”

“Ibrahim filed his suit against both the writer and I before it was clear to everyone that the facts were true, and before the problems there were solved,” he added.

In a statement released to the media, the CTUWS expressed “extreme concern” at what it called an “unbelievable sentence.”

It says the sentence is just another example of the regime’s crackdown on both free speech and non-governmental organizations, and demanded the government “annul penalties which restrict freedom of publishing and also called for Egyptians to “defend freedom of expression.”

DNE: Wage concessions end Mahalla strike, leave political demands unaddressed

Wage concessions end Mahalla strike, leave political demands unaddressed

By Liam Stack
First Published: September 30, 2007

MAHALLA EL KOBRA: The Ghazl El Mahalla workers’ movement ended its week-long strike early on Saturday morning after negotiations with management and the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation yielded concessions on wages and working conditions, although the strike’s political demands have not been met.

The strike, which united more than 27,000 employees of Egypt’s largest public sector plant and brought production at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company to a stand-still, was the second to grip the site in the dusty industrial city of Mahalla in less than a year.

The most recent protest began last week, when workers said that management and the ETUF had reneged on a series of promises they made after last December’s strike.

At that time, workers were told that conditions at the factory would improve and that they could participate in a profit-sharing deal that would pay them bonuses equal to 150 days pay if the company turned a profit of more than LE 60 million.

At the end of the fiscal year in July, workers in Mahalla complained that the firm posted profits of more than LE 200 million, but that they had only received a bonus of 20-days pay.

Combined with the abysmal conditions in the plant and what workers call widespread corruption, the broken profit sharing promise ignited a new wave of frustration and militancy among the company’s employees.

“The people on strike are the factory workers, the office workers, the engineers, the people who work in the management building — everyone except for the board of directors,” one protestor, who was afraid to give his name, told Daily News Egypt during the strike.

“We are here because [Minister of Manpower] Aisha Abdel Hady and [Minister of Investment] Mahmoud Mohieddin made promises to us in the last strike but now they say they didn’t promise us anything,” he added. “We are here because they are liars.”

But after one week of high-profile strikes, dubbed “The Mahalla Intifada” by some independent Arabic-language dailies, the management of the firm has renewed its rhetorical commitment to many of those promises.

According to Sayed Habib, a leader of the Mahalla Workers Movement, the management has agreed to pay the workers an immediate bonus equal to 70-days pay and additionally will pay a later bonus of 60-days wages after a meeting of the firm’s administrative general assembly.

They have not agreed to the principle of profit sharing in the future, although they say that future bonuses will be larger than in the past and tied to an annual salary increase of 7 percent. Management has also agreed to consider the days of the sit-in a paid vacation, and says that no worker will be penalized for their participation in the action.

For its part, the government has promised to form a committee in the Ministry of Investment to negotiate hazard pay for workers whose jobs expose them to dangerous conditions or health risks, as many positions in the textile mill do. They will also increase each worker’s clothing allowance.

“We are happy with the deal that was reached,” said Habib. “It is a good deal for us.”

While the concessions made by management are a welcome boon to the lives of some of Egypt’s poorest workers, Saturday’s pre-dawn agreement addressed none of the political demands made by the increasingly politicized Mahalla movement.

After last December’s strike, in which the workers’ local union sided with management against them, the workers’ movement collected over 14,000 signatures calling for the impeachment of local union officials and the dissolution of the ETUF.

They say the national union body is an arm of the state, and cares more about keeping the Mubarak regime in power than it does about defending the interests of the working class.

But the ETUF has consistently ignored the worker’s petitions, and their demands for reform have never been the subject of any negotiation between workers and the state.

Habib says that the movement is “still in discussions” with management about forming a free union, but that in the meantime they are considering other options for exerting pressure on their bosses from within the existing union framework.

“We are thinking about forming a worker’s collective at the factory,” he says. “We hope that a collective would be able to put pressure on the union committee here to listen to us and fight harder for demands we make.”

DNE: Striking Mahalla workers demand government fulfill broken promises

Striking Mahalla workers demand government fulfill broken promises

By Liam Stack and Maram Mazen

First Published: September 27, 2007

Workers at Ghazl el Mahalla complain they are "not treated like human beings."

Photo by Liam Stack

EL MAHALLA EL KOBRA: A crippling strike at Egypt’s largest public sector factory entered its fifth day on Thursday as workers, angry at corruption and what they call a string of lies and broken promises, say they will not end their occupation of the factory until their demands have been met by both the company’s board of directors and by President Hosni Mubarak.

The strike has united more than 27,000 employees of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company, from manual laborers to more highly skilled engineers and clerical staff, and has brought production at the factory in the dusty Delta city of Mahalla to a standstill.

Workers in Mahalla complain of low wages which leave them subject to grinding poverty, abuse by management, corruption, and above all a host of unfulfilled government promises made after a similarly large strike last December.

Workers throughout the company insist that they want nothing more than what is rightfully theirs, and accuse their managers of widespread corruption and violating past agreements.

“We just want them to treat us like human beings,” said one man, who like most of the strikers preferred to remain anonymous for fear of possible reprisals by management or its allies in state security.

“There is corruption in this company,” alleged another man “They treat us badly. There is mismanagement and they are bad at planning for the future.”

“If the chairman gave us the price of one of the iftar meals that he eats, it would be enough to pay us what is rightfully ours,” shouted a third.

In last December’s strike, the shop floor came to a standstill over the non-payment of bonuses workers said they were promised by a government decree guaranteeing public sector employees an annual bonus equal to two months salary.

Ghazl El Mahalla management said that the decree did not apply to workers in public sector factories, but was only meant for employees in government ministries and offices.

The workers’ union, which they say is corrupt and dominated by loyalists of the ruling National Democratic Party, sided with management.

Workers said the union did not represent them and staged a strike despite its opposition, which ended after management and the Ministry of Labor conceded to many of the workers’ demands. They gave the strikers a one and a half month bonus and made a host of other promises, including a commitment to profit sharing.

That profit sharing agreement is at the crux of the new strike, say workers. Under it, management agreed that if Misr Spinning and Weaving turned a profit of more than LE 60 million, then it would set aside 10 percent of that to be distributed among the 27,000 employees. Under the deal, each worker was supposed to receive a bonus roughly equal to 150 days pay.

But workers say that the management has not held up its end of the deal. Over the past year the company has recorded profits of more than LE 200 million, although despite these apparent boom times workers say they have only received a bonus equal to 20 days pay.

They accuse the management of diverting LE 40 million of that profit into private bank accounts, and say that they want the rest of the money they are owed.

“The main problem we have here is that we were promised that if the company made LE 60 million in profit then we would all get paid a bonus out of 10 percent of it,” said one man, who like the other was afraid to give his name.

“The Chairman of the Board told us all that the company made LE 245 million this year, but they only gave us a bonus of 20 days.”

The management of Ghazl El Mahalla refused to comment. When approached by foreign and Egyptian reporters for a response to the worker’s charges, one member of the Board of Directors fled through the streets of Mahalla in a polished Toyota.

After December’s strike, the Mahalla workers movement began a campaign to impeach their local union leaders and abolish the country’s national union body, the General Federation of Trade Unions.

They claim that the General Federation has been co-opted by the Mubarak regime, and is more interested in keeping the regime in power than it is in helping the country’s workers. According to them, what Egypt needs is an independent labor movement.

“We want a change in the structure and hierarchy of the union system in this country,” said Mohamed El Attar, one of the leaders of the workers’ movement.

“The way unions in this country are organized is completely wrong, from top to bottom. It is organized to make it look like our representatives have been elected, when really they are appointed by the government.”

El Attar and seven others were arrested late on Tuesday night and charged with the potentially serious crimes of sabotage, unlawful gathering, the destruction of public property and instigating riots.

But they were released two days later, El Attar says, after police told them that they sympathized with the strike. Their first court session is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 29.

Speaking to a crowd of hushed workers in the factory’s Talaat Harb Square just before sunset, El Attar urged them not to give up their fight against the factory management and its allies within the government and state security forces.

For him, the Mahalla strike is not just about wages and benefits, but about the future of the country.

“He built this company for the workers and for the people of Egypt,” he told them, gesturing to a nearby statue of Talaat Harb, a national leader who helped forge Egypt’s economy after independence from Britain. “Every grain of sand in this company is yours. He built it for you, and it still belongs to you.”

But the management of Misr Spinning and Weaving disagrees. They say the company belongs to them. The Board of Directors issued a statement on Wednesday declaring that the company is on a week-long holiday and that any workers who remained on the premises were trespassing on company property and would be open to prosecution.

Workers fear that the sudden declaration of a week-long holiday will be used to justify the use of force against them by state security, which they say has sent soldiers to barricade the factory gates during the night.

Each time soldiers approach the factory, workers say they have outnumbered and intimidated them, but the threat of future violence against the Mahalla strikers and their families is real.

“We have to stay here no matter what,” El Attar told the mostly-male crowd on Wednesday. “Even if a worker, or two or 20 are killed. If you leave your places inside this strike, then you are running away from your blood and your manhood.”

Many in the crowd agreed with El Attar.

“We are ready to die to get what is ours,” said one. “We don’t want anything more than that.”

“We just want our rights,” insisted another. “We are ready to die for our rights.”

But a mood of frustration hangs over the tent city at Ghazl El Mahalla, and many workers say they are angry that factory management and government officials are unwilling to negotiate. Four days into the strike, workers say the only times that they have heard from officials is when they make statements to the media.

“There are no government representatives coming here to try to reach a common ground,” said one man. “The government cannot just abandon people like this.”

So far, it seems the government has little interest in finding common ground with the strikers.

On Wednesday night, Minister of Labor Aisha Abdel Hady appeared on El Beit Beitek, a nightly news magazine show on Egyptian Channel 2, and accused the Mahalla workers of sabotaging the factory machinery. But she later called the workers “loyal, honest and honorable people” and said that she would work to ensure their rights.

Residents of the tent city say they are uninterested in Abdel Hady’s compliments, and angrily deny her accusations of sabotage. They say that they would not sabotage the very machines that provide their livelihood.

To demonstrate that no sabotage has taken place, members of the private security team employed by Misr Spinning and Weaving took two Daily News Egypt journalists inside the locked factory to show them that the machines were in working order.

“We are not sabotaging this factory,” growled one gray-haired worker, showing the machinery to visitors as a uniformed member of factory security stood nearby. “We are guarding these machines. This is our factory. This is where we make our living. We understand that.”

Workers say they want a resolution to the strike, but believe that in the end the only person with the authority to meet their demands is President Mubarak. While some workers say they want him to get more involved in the dispute, others say it is time for his rule to end.

That is the position taken by Mohamed El Attar, the influential worker leader. For him, organizing workers, as in the Mahalla movement, is the way forward for Egypt.

“I want the whole government to resign,” he told the crowd standing in Talaat Harb square, just before the end of the Ramadan fast. “I want the Mubarak regime to come to an end.”

“Politics and workers’ rights are inseparable,” he added. “Work is politics by itself. What we are witnessing here right now, this is as democratic as it gets.”

DNE: Eight Mahalla strikers arrested, thousands erect tent city inside factory

Eight Mahalla strikers arrested, thousands erect tent city inside factory

By Liam Stack
First Published: September 25, 2007

CAIRO: Thousands of workers in the Nile Delta town of El Mahalla El Kobra continued their strike for a third day on Tuesday, erecting a tent city in the center of the factory grounds even as three more strike leaders were arrested by state security.

About 27,000 employees of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in Mahalla went on strike on Sunday, about 10 months after a previous strike won them increased wages and benefits.

They say that management has not fulfilled the promises it made after that strike, in December, and that none of their gains have been realized. They say wages have remained very low and bonuses they were promised have not been forthcoming.

An original string of arrests on Monday saw workers Mohamed El Attar, Feisal Naqousha, Magdy Sherif, Mohamed Abu El Isaad, Wael Habib taken in to custody. They were charged with a string of potentially serious crimes including sabotage, unlawful gathering, the destruction of public property and instigating riots.

On Tuesday Khattaby Eid, Ahmed Sharaa, Farag Awad, also workers in Ghazl El Mahalla, were detained and charged with the same offenses.

Sources in Mahalla say that they are not intimidated by the arrests. They vow to continue their strike for as long as it takes, and to prove their determination have begun to erect a tent city in compound’s central Talaat Harb Square.

“We are putting up tents inside the factory grounds, and no one is stopping us,” said Gehad Taman, an employee at Misr Spinning and Weaving. “We want to send a message to the management that we are not going anywhere.”

“We are bringing our wives and our children, our whole families, here,” he added. “We will eat and drink and sleep here and will show them that we are not going anywhere. If we have to we will stay here until Eid.”