Press Release: 'Petition to EU Members of Parliament about Auditing Egyptian Foreign Debt'

[Inside of the European Parliament in Brussels. From Wikimedia Commons.] [Inside of the European Parliament in Brussels. From Wikimedia Commons.]

Press Release: "Petition to EU Members of Parliament about Auditing Egyptian Foreign Debt"

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt`s Debt on 1 April, 2012]

The end of the Mubarak dictatorship left Egypt with a heavy legacy of failed economic policies and a misshaped sovereign debt management with projects not necessarily benefiting the vast majority of the Egyptian population. Today, Egypt bears the burden of a public external debt amounting to $35 billion consuming 2/5th of the national budget to service and principal repayment. In 2011, debt service amounted to more than government expenditure on health, education and housing combined. Mubarak’s failing economy, complete lack of social justice, and the extreme violations of the citizen’s social and economic rights was only complemented with an iron fist stifling the protests of a suffering but raging population. Furthermore, some of Mubarak’s debt incurred throughout the past three decades clearly promoted certain economic policies, which when combined with the corruption of a soft state par excellence, allowed for the concentration of both political and economic power in the hands of a few. Meaning that such debt and conditionality attached empowered those, who systematically marginalized, oppressed and tortured Egyptians until they revolted. 

Moreover, with a severe deficit in its balance of payment and a critical decline in its foreign currency reserve levels, Egypt now needs every domestic resource available to be invested in its social infrastructure and to speed economic growth. An independent debt audit rendering some of Mubarak’s debt odious or illegitimate shall enable current and future governments to meet their obligations towards their citizens. It will constitute a means for achieving the main goals of the January 25th revolution: ‘’Bread, freedom and social justice’’, by relieving Egyptian citizens from servicing and repaying debts they had not requested nor benefited from. 

Furthermore, in the light of the resolution [1] of the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly ACP-EU/100.958/11/ fin of May 2011 specifically calling for auditing foreign debt owed by countries going though democratic transition, including Egypt, and the temporary suspension of repayment.

in view of the recent Call [2] to National  and European MPs for an audit of Tunisia’s debt to the EU, the campaign urges all MPs and MEPs to adopt the same position towards Egypt’s foreign debt in order to unearth all illegal, illegitimate or odious debt incurred following the last debt restructuring process of 1991 during the dictator’s administration. 

Given the above background, the Campaign believes that a portion of Egypt debt’s to Europe could very well fall under the legal definition of illegal, illegitimate, or odious debt, the identification of which is only possible though an independent citizen’s debt audit commission. The audit, to which members of civil society must be associated, as was the case in Ecuador in 2007-2008, will shed light on what the money was borrowed for, the circumstances in which loan contracts were signed, what conditions were set, and their environmental, social and economic consequences. The audit should also serve to prevent a new cycle of illegitimate and unsustainable debt while underlining the responsibility of European creditors; international financial institutions in which the European Member States are playing a preponderant role, as well as the Egyptian government.

This is why, we the undersigned, Members of different Parliaments of Europe, both at national and European levels, call for an immediate auditing of the debt.

To sign this call, please contact Noha El Shoky (nohaelshoky@yahoo.com) from the Popular Campaign to Drop Egypt’s Debt.

 --------------------------------------------------------

[1] http://www.europarl.europa.eu/intcoop/acp/60_21/pdf/adopted_ap100.958_en.pdf

[2] http://www.cadtm.org/Call-to-national-and-European-MPs

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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