To Resolve Current Political Crisis: Rule of Law Must Be the Basis of the State

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Jul 3, 2013 Egypt
[Cairo Institution of Human Rights Studies` (CIHRS) official logo. Image originally posted to CIHRS` official Twitter account] [Cairo Institution of Human Rights Studies` (CIHRS) official logo. Image originally posted to CIHRS` official Twitter account]

To Resolve Current Political Crisis: Rule of Law Must Be the Basis of the State

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by human rights groups on the official website of Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies on 3 July 2013]  

The undersigned organizations declare their profound respect for the overwhelming uprising of the Egyptian people, who on 30 June set out to boldly challenge the political despotism, which had now taken on a religious guise, in the same way they challenged Mubarak’s regime and his police state. This uprising is tantamount to a genuine popular referendum by which the majority of Egyptians has rejected all policies seeking to undermine rights and liberties in the name of empowering a single political faction to monopolize state institutions, or which undermine the rule of law and judicial bodies, disregard court orders, harass and prosecute political opponents, and restrict the media and freedom of opinion and expression. Moreover, Egyptians have overwhelmingly rejected the idea that any one party can impose its control over their identity and way of life in the name of religion.

In this context, the undersigned rights groups express their concern and assert that they are closely following the current political developments, which threaten to disrupt the civil peace after the policies of the presidency, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and their Islamist allies over the past year have blocked all channels for dialogue and wasted opportunities to foster national consensus, inflamed political and ideological polarization, stigmatized opponents of their political project as infidels, and made them targets for violence. Despite the successive calls for violence, the executive—including, first and foremost, the president—has failed to take measures to put an end to the bloody events that have led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries over the past week.

The undersigned organizations also condemn the violence to which some of those involved in this peaceful uprising have resorted, including attacks against supporters of Dr. Mohamed Morsi and on offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and its political party.  At the same time, we recognize that these criminal acts would not have occurred absent public incitement by the MB and their allies to suppress their political opponents and were it not for the utter lack of accountability for acts of violence, torture, and murder committed by Muslim Brotherhood supporters. The undersigned organizations affirm that authorities’ continued pursuit of the policy of impunity established by the Mubarak regime is the prime motivator of the current uprising.

The undersigned organizations also condemn the acts of violence and public incitement undertaken by the MB and its supporters against their opponents. We demand that equal standards of justice be applied against all perpetrators of violence regardless of their identity or political affiliations.

The obstinate refusal of the presidency, the MB, and their partisans to respond to the demands of the Egyptian people poses a grave threat to the civil peace. We stress that security forces, including the armed forces, have a legal duty to protect unarmed demonstrators and to deal decisively with any person who attacks any demonstration or sit-in, whether by government opponents or supporters.

The undersigned organizations note that any roadmap reached in discussions must first of all guarantee civil liberties, particularly the freedom to form trade unions and civic associations and freedoms of the press and publication. Secondly, any roadmap must take immediate measures to guarantee fair but real accountability for the perpetrators of crimes committed against Egyptians since 25 January 2011.

As such, the undersigned organizations welcome the armed forces’ stance rejecting a military coup.  They assert than such a stance should also ensure that the military refrain from taking any action on behalf of the people, even if such action were to be taken in the name of achieving the goals of this new uprising, including liberating the people from the new autocratic regime which has come to power under a religious guise.  This must be carried out by the civilian forces which called for the uprising and by the people who responded to this call.

The role of the police and the armed forces in this context must be to provide protection to all parties – as long as they remained peaceful – rather than to achieve the goals of any party on their own, no matter how noble these goals. The armed forces are meant to take control in times of war, yet in political matters the army must follow the people, rather than lead them.  This is how the army has conducted itself in recent weeks and how it should continue to act.

 

Egyptian rights organizations therefore urge that the following measures be taken immediately:

1. The current constitution must be amended.  The task of revising the constitution should be delegated to a committee of constitutional and legal scholars and independent human rights experts in order to reach a new constitution that enjoys the approval of Egyptians, establishes the foundations of a democratic, civil state, entrenches state impartiality and equality for all citizens regardless of religion, belief, race, ethnicity, or gender, guarantees freedom of religion and belief, and criminalizes incitement to religious hatred and sectarian violence.

2. The same committee should be temporarily tasked with conducting a review of existing legislation, particularly laws governing the judiciary, trade union freedoms, civic work, and media and press freedoms, and electoral laws, as well as the Code of Military Justice, in order to put an end to the referral of civilians to military trials.

3. An immediate review the status of detainees and political prisoners should be conducted, and all persons found to have not been involved in acts of criminal violence as defined by law should be released.

Finally, the undersigned organizations call on the Muslim Brotherhood, its Freedom and Justice Party, and allied Islamist factions to show due regard for the civil peace over any narrow political interests and to voluntarily respond to the popular will. They must realize that claims to electoral legitimacy and the will of the voters expressed through the ballot box have been rendered meaningless by the fact that the policies and practices pursued by the Muslim Brotherhood for more than a year have breached all democratic principles and failed to fulfill any of the numerous promises made to voters.

 

Signatories:

1. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies

2. Arab Foundation for Civil Society and Human Right Support

3. Arab Penal Reform Organization

4. Arabic Network for Human Rights Information

5. Center for Appropriate Communication Techniques

6. Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Aid

7. Egyptian Organization for Human Rights

8. Habi Center for Environmental Rights

9. Hisham Mubarak Law Center

10. Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners

11. Land Center for Human Rights

12. New Woman Foundation

13. The Egyptian Association for community Participation Enhancement

14. The Federation of NGOs Against Violence Against Women
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

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