Press Release: Non-Peaceful Assembly Does Not Justify Collective Punishment

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Press Release: Non-Peaceful Assembly Does Not Justify Collective Punishment

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was issued by the below listed signatories via the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) on 15 August 2013.]

 

Press Release: Non-Peaceful Assembly Does Not Justify Collective Punishment - Rights Groups Condemn Lethal Violence Against Those in Sit-in and Terrorist Acts of the Muslim Brotherhood

The undersigned rights organizations condemn the use of excessive force yesterday by the security authorities when dispersing the sit-in by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and its supporters at Rabia al-Adawiya Square in the Cairo governorate and Nahda Square in Giza. The action left hundreds dead and thousands seriously injured, as well as dozens of bodies torched in still unexplained circumstances. We believe the security apparatus could have avoided this human tragedy if it had complied with international rules and standards for the dispersal of assemblies. Moreover, in the past weeks, the security authorities have failed to do their duty to take the necessary legal measures to protect public security and citizens, particularly residents and passersby in the aforementioned two areas, which in turn allowed weapons, ammunition, and fortifications to enter the sit-ins and led to killing, torture, and physical assaults on journalists with impunity.

That some participants in the sit-in, and it’s leaders committed criminal acts, were in possession of weapons, and engaged in violence does not give the security authorities a license to impose collective punishment and use excessive force when dispersing the sit-in, according to international standards for the right of peaceful assembly.. Moreover, decision makers, when choosing to use excessive force, did not show due consideration to containing retaliatory violence by the MB and its supporters, although retribution against Coptic Egyptians and public incitement to terrorism began several weeks ago. This raises additional concerns about the competence of political and security decision-making at this critical juncture, particularly regarding the consequences for human rights. Indeed, the policies and practices pursued by the authorities when faced with the two sit-ins, since the removal of President Morsy on July 3 and including the storming of the protests yesterday, represent an utter failure to apply the rule of law and respect citizens’ rights and the right to life and security, and an inability to comprehend the political repercussions of mismanaging this crisis over the last six weeks. As a result, largest number of people was killed in the shortest span of time in a political assembly since January 28, 2011, while people’s lives are now at risk in the coming months and years due to a potential increase in terrorist acts.

In response to the storming of the sit-ins, members and supporters of the MB terrorized citizens in the capital and other provinces and attempted to storm several government facilities and police stations, killing some officers. They also attacked churches in Upper Egypt and Sinai, destroying and torching several of them, and threatened Christian citizens with further physical violence in several cities. Although the undersigned organizations previously cautioned the MB against such deplorable conduct and asked it to stop its incitement against Christians, the group disregarded these pleas and showed no concern for the lives of citizens it claims to be legitimately empowered to govern.

The increased scope of these criminal acts indicate that the Muslim Brotherhood has decided to pursue political violence and terrorism for the time being; instead of engaging in self-criticism and recognizing its failure to maintain the trust of citizens who voted for it, the group seeks to spur the country toward a civil war, a possibility that first reared its head in November. In December, MB supporters killed their political opponents and tortured others, while Brotherhood leaders began fomenting anti-Christian sectarian incitement. The anti-Coptic incitement and threats continued unabated up to the demonstrations of June 30 and, with the removal of President Morsy on July 3, morphed into sectarian violence, which was sanctioned by the MB, both by their complicit silence and refusal to condemn these crimes and by the continued anti-Coptic rhetoric heard from the group’s leaders on the stage at Rabia al-Adawiya throughout the sit-in. Despite this, the security apparatus took no action to protect the lives of Christian citizens and their houses of worship, and therefore bear responsibility for failing to stop the violence.

The undersigned organizations fear that increased terrorism and the threat of civil war may lead the authorities to take further exceptional measures to protect citizens’ lives, but instead the state must immediately adopt a serious plan to contain the violence and restore the political process hijacked by security solutions in the capital and, before that, Sinai, where security has failed to protect even police stations and government facilities. Here we note that wereminded the new political authority after June 30 of the need to avoid the mistakes of previous governments that ignored demands for security and political reform.

We again urge members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to immediately cease violence and incitement to violence against Christian citizens and the group’s political opponents, denounce all MB leaders who incited to or practiced violence, accept the political outcome of the June 30 uprising, return to peaceful politics, and develop the group’s religious and political discourse. Finally, we renew our demands for independent investigations of the extrajudicial killing of citizens since July 3 and the prosecution of all those directly involved.

The undersigned groups also demand an accounting for the cause of the many deaths yesterday and the burning of dozens of corpses during the storming of the sit-in. We further ask for the investigation of MB leaders and supporters involved in incitement to religious hatred, violence, torture, killing, and attacks on journalists and the prosecution of any person involved in these crimes.

Signatory Organizations

 

  1. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.
  2. Arab Network for Human Rights Information.
  3. Arab Penal Reform Organization.
  4. Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.
  5. Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights.
  6. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
  7. Hesham Mubarak Law Center.
  8. Nazra for Feminist Studies.
  9. The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of the Prisoners.

 

 

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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