Egypt comes under human rights spotlight

Activists and organisations at home and abroad express concern about violations and extreme action by the authorities

A recent report has criticised torture and other ill-treatment during detention in police stations

Not only is human rights on the top of agendas across the world, it is becoming the focal point of most Egyptians' conversations, from intellectual circles and official think-tanks to people on the street, making it the topic of the hour in the Arab world's most populous country.

Although Egypt was a signatory to almost every international human rights declaration and was one of the first countries that signed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, most Egyptians till a few years ago would consider human rights a trivial issue that concerned only developed and prosperous countries. Some commentators would underestimate it, saying it was the new era's "hype".

However, with almost a hundred registered organisations operating in the field of human rights in Egypt, things are starting to take a serious turn, getting more enthusiastic support from the public and attracting more severe harassment from the government.

Ahmad Rageb, an activist at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), told Weekend Review that people often made the mistake of categorising all human rights activism in Egypt as political activism. Although being the most prominent, political activism only made for about 30 per cent of the organisations, he added.

"The most successful NGOs are those that are consciously apolitical, focusing on issues such as environment, education and welfare. They are generally left to operate without much government interference, becoming a key player on the Egyptian social scene, sometimes hand in hand with the government and sometimes at odds with it," he said.

Many political rights groups believe the Egyptian government has revealed its intentions about human rights defenders by bringing in restrictive laws that will require NGOs to register with the General Federation of NGOs and Foundations. This will likely be another layer of bureaucracy through which to shut down NGOs the government disagrees with.

More restrictive measures, such as harassment, trial on various charges and the refusal to grant legal status to new local branches of international organisations, have been taken against them. In 2007, Egyptian authorities arbitrarily shut down two human rights organisations — one working on torture cases and the other on labour rights.

Human rights have been evolving for thousands of years, from being intricately tied to customs, interests and religions to more universal and egalitarian concepts.

The freedom and rights that are taken for granted today were gained after struggle dating back centuries. The Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights (1791) are some of the early documents that asserted individual rights.

Although being the basis of several modern human rights legislations, most of these charters would be regarded as barbaric by modern standards, as they would exclude women, people of colour and members of certain social, religious, economic and political groups.

The human rights movement in Egypt had to wait until the mid-Eighties to come into its own, when former senior government officials and former activists from the student movement of the Sixties and the Seventies were looking for a new direction to put the country on a path towards economic, social and cultural progress.

The euphoria of Jamal Abdul Nasser's revolution and the post-independence period had dissipated and interest was growing in new ideas of democratisation and liberalisation taking the place of the one-party state that Egypt had come to resemble.

Many civic society organisations, from human rights NGOs to pro-democracy think-tanks and single-issue advocacy groups, have managed to escape the grasp of the government for years, allowing the development of a strong and increasingly sophisticated human rights movement in Egypt.

In addition to these organisations, there have been other groups that have aggressively lobbied for change and political reform, including the protest group Kefaya (Enough) and National Society for Change. The latter is led by Mohammad Al Baradei, former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who is now touring Egypt to rally support for political and constitutional reform.

"Since the early 1990s, the Egyptian government has become increasingly hostile to NGOs, deeming them illegal unless registered and regularly scrutinised by national authorities. Many such organisations advocating human rights are viewed as a threat to national interest," Mohsin Kamal, head of Andalus Rights Centre, told Weekend Review.

"Also, direct foreign funding of NGOs is prohibited. Therefore, such organisations can get foreign grants only after obtaining permission from the authorities.

"Otherwise, they would be viewed as a threat to national security and the government would accuse them of promoting some ‘hidden agenda' of foreign donors," he added.

Many NGOs have been forced to discontinue their activities due to a lack of funds after the tendency of the Obama administration to ease pressure on the Egyptian regime to carry out political reforms and promote civil liberties.

Most organisations witnessed funding cutbacks, as Congress earmarked $20 million, cutting more than $5 million allocated earlier to promote democracy in Egypt in 2011. Observers say the move reflects a new view within the US administration — that human rights NGOs make a profit from their activities or are inefficient.

In its periodical, Human Rights Report, the US Department of State has appraised the situation in Egypt, harshly criticising the government's record on many levels while praising other steps and saying Egypt was in the "tipping point" phase.

The Human Rights Report condemned serious violations, such as arbitrary arrests, prolonged pre-trial detention, limiting citizens' right to change the government and the continued state of emergency that has been in place almost continuously since 1967.

The report, released annually by the US Department of State's Bureau of Human Rights, criticised torture and other ill-treatment during detention in police stations and premises of the State Security Investigation Services. The perpetrators were rarely brought to justice, the report added.

According to the report, arbitrary arrests followed by incommunicado and secret detention are a persistent occurrence. Security forces used unwarranted force and tortured prisoners and detainees, in most cases with impunity. Persons arbitrarily arrested and detained, for political purposes in some cases, were kept in prolonged pre-trial detention.

According to the annual report of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR), 12 people were tortured to death by the police in 2009.

"Egypt's government has never confirmed the number of those arbitrarily detained under Emergency Law orders issued by the interior minister. But Egyptian human rights organisations estimate that between 5,000 and 10,000 people are held without charge [and] more than 63 cases of torture in detention were documented this year," said Hafez Abu Sa'ada, the head of the human rights watchdog.

Most of the severe violations are linked to the ongoing state of emergency that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared in 1981. It gives the government uncontested authority to detain persons without charge, trial or legal recourse.

Moataz Al Fegiery, executive director at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, told Weekend Review that Egypt had announced in 2006 that it was in the process of abolishing the Emergency Law but in March 2007, President Mubarak extended the law for another two years, approving several constitutional amendments to include "an anti-terrorism clause that appears to enshrine sweeping police powers of arrest and surveillance", suggesting that the Emergency Law was to stay for a long time.

In an unprecedented step, the United Nations Human Rights Council reviewed Egypt's rights record at its headquarters in Geneva in February, with the participation of some outstanding Egyptian NGOs, including the CIHRS, Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) and the EOHR. The council called on the Egyptian government to seriously address human rights violations.

The government accepted some of the recommendations regarding civil and political rights and the rights of women and children but refused to revise laws on NGOs to comply with international standards on the right to organise. Egypt also rejected the recommendation to abolish the state of emergency and abstain from incorporating measures of the Emergency Law in the constitution.

However, it agreed to the proposal of Pakistan and Sudan to include the Emergency Law in the constitution as a form of the anti-terrorism law.

But human rights activists are of the opinion that instead of solving the problem of the Emergency Law, the proposal would merely rename the Emergency Law as an anti-terrorism law.

"We regard these as only small victories. Of the 165 recommendations that the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) submitted to the Egyptian government, only 119 were accepted. Egypt has been selective in accepting and rejecting various human rights reforms," Al Fegiery said.

Egypt will come under review again within the next four years. Therefore, the government must demonstrate that it has implemented the recommendations of the rights council.

However, the report indicated that in recent years, there have been very promising developments in both the institutional and the legal framework for realisation of rights concerning women and freedom of religion and speech.

Lina Metwally, a 26-year-old lawyer and activist, said credit for the breakthroughs in the status of Egyptian women should go to the cooperative efforts of the official bodies and NGOs, which have succeeded in tackling two significant issues: criminalising female genital mutilation and reforming the family law system over the past eight years.

Huge reforms have taken place during the past decade, such as those that allow women to travel freely without the written approval of their husbands and the right to file for a no-fault divorce called "khul", for the first time in the Arab region, which enables the wife to divorce the husband without his consent, provided she is willing to forgo all her financial rights, including alimony, dowry and other benefits.

In another positive move made this year, the Ministry of Interior issued a decree authorising members of the Baha' faith (officially unrecognised Muslim sect) and other "non-recognised" religions to obtain identification documents with a dash in the mandatory religious identification space. Egyptian Baha'is reported that the government issued 17 national-identification cards and 70 birth certificates to Baha'is during the year.

Previously, all such documents specified the holder's religion as Muslim, Christian or Jewish.

Many Baha'is were unwilling to accept such a document because they thought that it would require them to give false testimony concerning their faith.

"Improving Egypt's human rights record may be difficult but it is not impossible. The fact that every day in the newspapers we see the words ‘human rights' is already a step [forward]," said Dr Boutros Boutros-Gali, the first Arab head of the United Nations and the present head of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. "What is required is political will at the highest levels, together with cooperation among all government institutions."

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