Press Release: Sentencing Activists for Fifteen Years in Absentia Confirms Our Concerns

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Jun 13, 2014 Egypt
Press Release: Sentencing Activists for Fifteen Years in Absentia Confirms Our Concerns

Press Release: Sentencing Activists for Fifteen Years in Absentia Confirms Our Concerns

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press released was issued on 12 June 2014 by the below list of groups and published on by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)]

 

Joint Press Release: Sentencing Activists for 15 years in Absentia Confirms Our Concerns Regarding the Right to Free and Fair Trials and the Independence of the Judiciary

 

The harsh sentence handed down yesterday in absentia by the Cairo Criminal Court against Alaa Abdel Fattah, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Wael Metwally and 22 others is another severe violation of the basic right to a fair trial adding to the dismal human rights situation in Egypt, said the undersigned organizations. The undersigned organizations condemn the sham proceedings, not meeting the most basic standards of fair trial, and believe that the defendants should not have been charged or tried in the first place as they were merely exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The undersigned organizations condemn the continual crackdown on any form of dissent and the silencing of the lone voices drawing attention to the government`s abysmal human rights record. Putting one of the faces and symbols of opposition activism, Alaa Abdel Fattah, behind bars appears to be a punitive measure against his continual vocal criticism of the authorities, and aims to serve as a deterrent for others signaling that criticism is no longer tolerated.

Alaa Abdelfattah, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Wael Metwally and 22 others were convicted of breeching the protest law, illegal gathering, theft, and attacking officials on duty and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, 100,000 pound fines, and a further five years of police surveillance after their release. The verdict was handed down in abstentia despite the fact that defendants` lawyers were present from 9:00am in court room held at the Police Academy in Tora Prison. They were awaiting the beginning of the hearing, while some defendants began to arrive shortly after. At about 9:45am, to their surprise, lawyers discovered from court security that the verdict had already been handed down in absentia without any hearing. Some 15 minutes later, Alaa Abdelfattah, Ahmed Abdel Rahman and Wael Metwally were arrested outside the court.

During the last hearing in this case held on 25 May, the proceedings were postponed until today due to the judge`s alleged illness. Today`s verdict was handed down in proceedings flagrantly breeching the right to fair trial including the right to adequate defense. Defense did not have the chance to call in witnesses, cross examine prosecution witnesses, examine video evidence or plead their case. On the other hand, the prosecution`s case solely rests on police investigations and witnesses, including some five or six police officers carrying out the arrests. Defense plans to call for a “ repeat of procedures” to retry the case. In the meantime, Alaa Abdelfattah, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, and Wael Metwally will remain behind bars. It is worth noting that after the investigations were over, Alaa and Ahmed Abdel Rahman were kept in custody for over 100 days waiting for their referral to the criminal court. We consider this delay an abuse of the law aimed at prolonging their detention. The undersigned organizations are extremely concerned about the manipulation of the law, for the purpose of keeping them in custody for an extended period.

The undersigned human rights organizations express their deep concern about the deeply flawed nature of the trial and the judiciary’s apparent involvement in a political conflict. Today’s verdict is the latest example in the series of unfair trials conducted in Egypt in the past three years, all failing to uphold basic due process rights. The Minya mass trials are other blatant examples of severe breeches to the right to a fair trials. The verdict further demonstrates the selective nature f justice and thus reflects deep problems affecting the judiciary at large.

The defendants, with the exception of Alaa Abdel Fattah, were arrested on 26 November 2013, when police violently dispersed a peaceful protest in front of the Shura Council in Cairo. Alaa Abdel Fattah was taken from his home two days later. The protest organized by the No to Military Trials group against provisions allowing for the military trials of civilians in the 2014 Constitution came in the wake of a passage of a repressive protest law on 24 November, which essentially bans protests unauthorized by the Ministry of Interior and gives security forces free reign to use excessive force to disperse peaceful protests.

Police broke-up the peaceful protest using excessive force, beating and arresting protesters including women who were punched, dragged and in some cases sexually assaulted. While women and a number of journalists and lawyers were released without charge, 24 men were slapped with charges. Alaa Abdel Fattah was added to the case after the public prosecution issued an arrest warrant. Despite Alaa Abdel Fattah`s declared intention of handing himself to the public prosecution, on 28 November, police forcibly broke into his home hitting him and his wife Manal Bahaa al-Din before whisking him away. Alaa Abdel Fattah and Ahmed Abdel Rahman remained in prison until their release on bail on 23 March.

Thousands of people have been arrested in the context of demonstrations and other political violence, many of them charged or convicted of breeching the protest law since its passage in November 2013, including members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as prominent activists and human rights defenders know for their opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood. Among those serving sentences for breeching the repressive protest law is human rights defender Mahinour El Masry sentenced along with seven others to two years in prison on 2 January and fines for protesting without authorization in Alexandria. A higher court upheld the verdict on 20 May. Founder of the 6 April Movement, Ahmed Maher, Mohamed Adel, the movement`s spokesperson, and political activist Ahmed Douma are also currently serving three year sentences for breeching the same protest law after following their conviction b a Cairo court in December. 

Yesterday`s verdict is another example of the government`s unrestlessness disregard for Egypt`s constitutional guarantees to uphold freedom of assembly and the right to fair trial, as well as Egypt`s international obligations as a state party to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.

 

Signatories:

1. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

2. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

3. Andalus institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies

4. Appropriate Communications Techniques for Development (ACT)

5. Arab Organization for Penal Reform

6. Arabic Network for Human Rights Information

7. Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression

8. Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance

9. Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights

10. El Nadeem Centre for psychological rehabilitation of victims of violence and torture

11. Hisham Mubarak Law Center  

12. Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners

13. Masryoon Against Religious Discrimination

14. National group for human rights and law

15. Nazra for Feminist Studies

16. New Woman Foundation
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412