Press Release from the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt's Debt

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Press Release from the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt's Debt

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Press Release

Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt`s Debt

Four Events Worldwide Mark the Global Day for the Cancellation of Egypt`s Debt

October 31st marks the global day for the cancellation of Egypt`s debt in Cairo and a number of other cities around the world. Independent activists and a number of civil society organizations will be organizing various actions in London, Berlin, Paris and Cairo in parallel, calling on their respective governments to drop the debts accumulated by Mubarak’s regime. The dictator’s regime resorted to external borrowing to finance its budget deficits and political projects. But the Egyptian people never had a say in decisions regarding external loans nor their spending priorities. If not dropped, the accumulated debt will remain a burden for the Egyptian people, the coming generations and the future governments to bear.

With the slogan "keep your eyes open, the debt is out your pockets" the campaign encourages the Egyptian people to share with the government the economic decision making process that affects the quality of their lives and that of their children.

The members of the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt are Egyptian individuals and civil society organizations concerned with the common good and the realization of social justice in Egypt.  According to the founding statement of the campaign, "the economic policies that were applied by the ousted Mubarak regime have left us with enormous internal and external debts. The regime borrowed extensively in order to pay off its debt premiums and interest. Real solutions would have entailed searching for alternative mechanisms to finance government expenditure – such as income and wealth taxes – towards the goal of creating a more just economy. But instead of seeking ways to address the structural issues at stake, policymakers attempted to sustain a failing economic model by borrowing both internally and externally." Philip Rizk, a film-maker explained his reasons for joining the campaign, “there is a lot of discussions about social justice in Egyptian society. I believe this campaign is good way to speak directly about the economy in Egypt and to change economics from a realm restricted to "experts" to a subject that every Egyptian can discuss.” Rizk has released a number of short films about the debt problem in Egypt and why it constitutes a burden that Egyptians should refuse to carry.

The campaign also refuses that economics becomes a monopoly of economists only. "I am not a specialist in economics, but I believe that individuals should be involved in how the country is run,” says Wael Khalil, an activist and blogger and member of the campaign. “Part of this involvement is through knowledge sharing. The priority is to access information, to access the details and to be able to publish it. This could then be followed by mobilizing and putting pressure when finding out what did not benefit the public” he adds.

The campaign also rejects the shackling of the political will to the debt conditionalities. Financial expert Reda Eisa, and campaign member says, “tying the Egyptian will to political, economic and social conditionalities has pushed millions of Egyptians into a spiral of poverty and illness. The corruption of the former regime is suspected to have extended to some of the external borrowing, with the benefits prioritized for the aides of the ousted regime over the rest of the people. This debt burden, which the people and the coming generations will bear, urges us to insist on an audit of Mubarak’s debts and to evaluate their benefit to the Egyptian people at large.”

To avoid the perpetuation of the current economic regime, which resorts to internal and external borrowing as the first and easiest strategy to address the complex questions of economic planning, the campaign will be starting a popular movement to rally all those concerned with pressuring for the cancellation of Egypt’s debts both domestically and internationally in creditor countries and by creditor institutions.

The Egyptian government is spending EGP 106 billion this year on total internal and external debt services. This exceeds annual amounts allocated for education, health and all other public investments. In aggregate, the taxpayer pays 40 piasters for each Egyptian pound in payment of debt services. “Internal and external debt service payments are one the largest budget expenditures, therefore depriving vast groups of Egyptians from their basic right to a dignified life”, explains Wael Gamal, an economic journalist and member of the campaign.

On the 20th of October, a workshop on “Debts and Social Justice” was held in Cologne, Germany. The workshop was organised by “ATTAC” an anti-globalisation organisation, in cooperation with “Rosa Luxembourg Foundation”. Noha El Shoky, a PhD researcher at the United Nations University and member of the campaign, was a panelist at the workshop discussing the Egyptian debt situation in relation to success stories such as Ecuador’s, where similar calls for debt cancellation were initiated following the fall of dictatorial regimes.

On October 31st, the global day for dropping Egypt`s debts, “Jubilee Debt Campaign UK” an organisation fighting for the cancellation of the illegitimate debts of third world countries, is organising in coordination with Egyptian campaign members based in London a meeting with British Members of Parliament to deliver petitions to drop Egyptian debts. The meeting will be followed by a demonstration at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Dina Makram-Ebeid, a member of the campaign and a PhD researcher at the London School of Economics, said “we have been coordinating this event for more than 2 months, after meeting in Egypt and London with some of our Egyptian colleagues living in England.”

On the same evening of October 31st, the Campaign will hold a conference at the Journalist Syndicate in Cairo under the title: “The impact of external debts on Egyptians”. The panelist for the conference will include economist Ahmed El Naggar, Fathi El Chamkhy from the Tunisian Debt Audit Campaign, economic journalist Wael Gamal, as well as Khaled Ali, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. Workers, popular committee members, activists and public figures supporting the campaign will all be present. The conference will be marking the launch of the campaign in Egypt and will include an open call for new members to join the campaign.

 

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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