Joint Statement: Verdict Against Mahienour El-Massry Must be Renunciated, The Protest and Public Assembly Law Needs to be Revised

[Logo of Nazra for Feminist Studies] [Logo of Nazra for Feminist Studies]

Joint Statement: Verdict Against Mahienour El-Massry Must be Renunciated, The Protest and Public Assembly Law Needs to be Revised

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the below signatories on 21 May 2014 and published by Nazra for Feminist Studies.]

 

Confirmation of the Verdict against Mahienour El-Massry: A New Episode in the Series of Incarcerating Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs)…The Verdict Must be Renunciated and the Law Needs to be Revised

 

The undersigned organizations and groups denounce the continuity of issuing judicial verdicts against Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) and Women Human Rights Defenders (WHRDs) according to the violation of the Protest and Public Assembly Law, and call for the renunciation of the verdict against activist Maheinour El-Massry and revision of the faulty law itself and the verdicts issued on its basis against a large number of civilians.

The Sidi Gaber Misdemeanor Court in Alexandria confirmed on May 20, 2014 a verdict the El-Manshia Misdemeanor Court in Alexandria had issued against Mahienour on January 2, 2014 by incarceration in prison for 2 years and a fine amounting to 50000 Egyptian Pounds, due to charges of demonstrating without permit and assaulting security forces. The verdict issued is based on the participation of Mahienour, along with others HRDs, including Loay Mohamed AbdelRahman, Omar AbdelAziz Hussein, Islam Mohamed Ahmed, Nasser Abu ElHamad Ibrahim, Hassan Moustafa, Moussa Hussein and Hassan ElSayad, in a peaceful demonstration on December 2, 2013 during the conduction of one of the court sessions of the case of the murder and torture of Khaled Said. Security forces had resorted to excessive force in the dispersal of the demonstration. When one of the demonstrators, namely Dr. Taher Moukhtar, previous member of the Physicians Syndicate and one of the founders of Doctors Without Borders Movement, was injured as a result of being beaten with a steel baton on his head by one of the police officers present, a number of those participating gathered to separate between them, but they were beaten via punches and batons and random arrests took place, including student Islam Mohamed Hassanein who was on his way to board a vehicle to travel to his village close to Rashid, after he had attended an academic exam in a nearby place. It is also worth mentioning that what happened in the court session yesterday is a violation to the right to defense, as Mahienour’s lawyers were unable to present their defense either before the court or the prosecution, as she did not attend the investigation before the prosecution, in addition to the court’s denial of requests by the defense of referral of the case to the Head of Alexandria Court for assigning a different judicial district, due to the fact that the judge presiding the case had a firm belief regarding the case, and the defense had requested time to prepare for pleading the case, which the judge who issued the concerned verdict yesterday had ignored.

And the organizations view this verdict as part of targeting HRDs and WHRDs by using repressive laws that have been issued in the absence of an elected parliament and were designed specifically to target and punish various opposition figures who shed light on continued human rights violations. And the organizations affirm their fear of the use of the judicial system in silencing voices of opposition, which forecasts the demise of the pillars of a nation of law, which is a primary pillar of the legitimacy of the nation in the eyes of its citizens.

And the undersigned organizations and groups are gravely concerned that those responsible for incarcerating Mahienour will conduct various violations against her that include torture, which have become a common practice by the authorities, according to the continued documentation that organizations and groups in the field of human rights conduct.

Signing Organizations and Groups:

1. Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies. 
2. Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development.
3. Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression.
4. Cairo Center for Development and Human Rights.
5. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.
6. Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance.
7. Daughter of the Land Association.
8. Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. 
9. Egyptian Foundation for Advancement of Childhood Conditions.
10. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
11. Egyptian Women’s Union.
12. El Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture.
13. Hisham Mubarak Law Center.
14. Misryon Against Religious Discrimination.
15. National Community for Human Rights and Law.
16. Nazra For Feminist Studies.
17. New Woman Foundation.
18. The Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement.
19. Women and Memory Forum.
20. Women’s Committee of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party.

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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