FIDH Condemns Crackdown on Freedom of Expression in Egypt

[International Federation for Human Rights logo. Image from fidh.org] [International Federation for Human Rights logo. Image from fidh.org]

FIDH Condemns Crackdown on Freedom of Expression in Egypt

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the International Federation for Human Rights on 3 April 2013.]

FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights) deplores the increasing crackdown against freedom of expression in Egypt and is alarmed to recall that if under the thirty year rule of former president Hosni Mubarak, four cases were filed for “insulting the President”, during the first six months of President Morsy’s rule alone, at least twenty-four cases and complaints have been filed, three of them filed by the Egyptian Presidency itself, against journalists and political opponents.

“Freedom of expression is an essential core value to a true democratic society. These decisions by the Egyptian authorities constitute a blatant infringement on this right and consequently disclaim any sign of willingness to move toward democratic transition” declared Souhayr Belhassen, FIDH President.

Over the past two days, the Public Prosecutor referred CBC Channel’s satirist Bassem Youssef, Albert Shafiq, ON TV manager, Gaber El Qarmouty, ONTV presenter, and Shaimaa Abul Kheir, a consultant for the International Committee to Protect Journalists’ Rights, to the State Security Court. Youssef is charged with insulting the presidency and religion, spreading false news, while the others are charged with publishing false news, threatening security and disturbing peace. Last week, TV hosts Amr Adib and Lamis El Hadidi were also referred to State Security Court on charges of inciting chaos and threatening national security. In addition, the state investment body, the General Authority for Investment, threatened CBC channel to withdraw its registration if Youssef’s show “Al Bernameg”, a weekly satirical show, is not changed, citing violations with the “standards of the media free zone."

According to Shaimaa Abul Kheir, who made a phone intervention on ONTV on 31 March on the interrogation of Bassem Youssef by the Public Prosecutor, which she attended as a representative of her organization, “none of us who are currently prosecuted were officially summoned by any judicial body; we got all the information about the charges against us from the media.”

FIDH is all the more concerned that the case filed against Shaimaa Abul Kheir may be an indication of extra-pressure exerted on human rights groups and organizations to deter them from denouncing the crackdown on freedom of expression and other human rights violations by subjecting them to prosecution.

The swift process of investigation of the complaints filed by the Union of Egyptian lawyers against the TV presenters and Abul Kheir, as well as the swift referral of the cases to the State security court further question the credibility of the entire procedure.

This crackdown on journalists comes against the backdrop of a general hostile environment for freedom of expression. Indeed, on 24 March, Islamist groups surrounded the Media Production City where they prevented journalists from entering the area and attacked several TV guests, including Hafez Abu Seada, the president of FIDH member organization in Egypt, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. On 21 March, several protesters and journalists, including one female protester who was slapped on the face, were attacked by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Moqattam, a neighborhood of Cairo where their headquarters is located.

Journalists are not the only victims of this latest crackdown, as political opponents and human rights defenders are being targeted as well. On March 26th, the Public Prosecution ordered the arrest of five activists, including human rights defender and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah, on charges of inciting violence in the context of the clashes in front of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters on 22 March, after his name was mentioned on Twitter.

“It is particularly worrying that the Public Prosecution has not ordered the arrest of those who used violence against others during the recent incidents, particularly from the side of the Muslim Brotherhood,” stated Belhassen. “Instead of referring cases of freedom of expression to extraordinary courts, the Public Prosecution should focus its efforts on investigating the intermittent violent episodes, and bring those responsible to justice” added Belhassen.

Furthermore, FIDH deplores that, despite the guarantees set-forth by the new Egyptian constitution and the ending of the thirty year-long state of emergency, the use of State Security courts continues and recalls that Article 45 of the constitution guarantees that “every individual has the right to express an opinion and to disseminate it verbally, in writing or illustration, or by any other means of publication and expression” and Article 75 states that “no person shall be tried except before their natural judge; exceptional courts are prohibited.”

FIDH is highly concerned by the resort to exceptional courts, as these courts offer no guarantees of the right to fair trial or due process, and have historically been used by the former regime in an arbitrary manner to sanction political dissent.

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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