CAF Letter Protesting the Detention and Prosecution of Cairo University Professor Ayman Mansour Nada

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Nov 18, 2021 Egypt
CAF Letter Protesting the Detention and Prosecution of Cairo University Professor Ayman Mansour Nada

CAF Letter Protesting the Detention and Prosecution of Cairo University Professor Ayman Mansour Nada

By : Committee on Academic Freedom (MESA)

[The following letter was issued by the Middle East Studies Association on 12 November 2021 in response to the Egyptian government's detention and prosecution of Cairo University Professor Ayman Mansour Nada.]

His Excellency Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
President, Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: +20-2-390-1998 

Chancellor Hamada El-Sawy
Office of the Public Prosecutor
Fax: +20-2-25774716

Prime Solicitor-General Khaled Diauddin
Supreme State Security Prosecution in the Arab Republic of Egypt
Fax: +20-2-26381956

Dear President al-Sisi, Chancellor El-Sawy and Prime Solicitor-General Diauddin,

We write to you on behalf of the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America to express our deep concern regarding the detention and prosecution of Professor Ayman Mansour Nada, the chair of the Radio and Television Department at Cairo University’s Faculty of Mass Communication. Professor Nada has been in pretrial detention since September and faces multiple charges related to his criticisms of Cairo University’s leadership, as well as his critical commentary on the state of Egypt’s media sector. Professor Nada’s detention and prosecution constitute a clear violation of his academic freedom and reflect the ongoing government crackdown on scholars and researchers in the country.

MESA was founded in 1966 to support scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the International Journal of Middle East Studies and has almost 2800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and elsewhere.

On 28 March 2021, the head of the state-appointed Supreme Council for Media Regulation filed a complaint with the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) accusing Professor Nada of insulting the Council’s chair and its members on social media. This complaint was eventually referred to court (Case No. 9840/2021; Fifth Settlement Misdemeanor). Then on 29 March, Cairo University announced the suspension of Professor Nadafor three months in response to a complaint filed by Professor of Radio and Television Barakat Abdel-Aziz accusing him of “committing transgressions contradicting university values and norms.” His suspension coincided with attacks leveled against him by television talk show hosts with a long history of defending the government’s positions. Some of them filed complaints with the PPO against Professor Nada in retaliation against his criticism of their performance and the state of the media sector more generally. Among them was a complaint filed on behalf of television talk show host Ahmed Moussa in early March. A third complaint was filed [Case No. 23/2021 (limiting Cairo Appeals)] by Cairo University’s president and advisors in response to articles Professor Nada allegedly wrote and in which he detailed reports of financial and administrative misconduct on the part of University officials. Professor Nada has been held in remand detention since 27 September 2021 in conjunction with the aforementioned cases; his employment at Cairo University remains suspended. His detention is also very concerning because the medical conditions from which he reportedly suffers put his health at great risk.

Professor Nada’s detention and prosecution reflect the ongoing deterioration of academic freedom in the country, a concern we raised in a letter dated 15 June 2021. Despite recent proclamations by the government expressing its readiness to enhance human rights protections in line with the National Strategy for Human Rights released in September 2021, academic freedom in the country remains under attack, and many of the rights integral to academic freedom, such as freedom of speech, are routinely violated. Examples of this trend include the cases of Master’s in Sociology/Social Anthropology student at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna Ahmed Samir Santawy (see our letter dated 22 February 2021); researcher Ismail Alexandrani (see our letters dated 15 June 2021 and 8 February 2016); Alexandria University Assistant Professor of Political Science Ahmed Al Tohamy Abdel-Hay (see our letter dated 24 November 2020); University of Bologna postgraduate student Patrick George Zaki (see our letters dated 18 February 2021 and 25 February 2020); head of the Translation Unit of the publication department at Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) Kholoud Said; and freelance translator Marwa Arafa (see our letters dated 6 May 2021 and 28 May 2020). The state also continues to retaliate against scholars’ exercise of academic freedom by banning them from travel, as exemplified by the case of University of Washington doctoral candidate in political science Walid Khalil el-Sayed Salem (see our letters dated 15 June 2021, 4 November 2020, 14 August 2019, and 6 July 2018). We have learned that Cairo University Political Science Professor Hassan Nafaa is banned from travel as well.

These arbitrary arrests and the extension of the detentions of academics and researchers in Egypt are violations of the 2014 Constitution’s Article 65 concerning the freedom of speech and all means of expression and publications, and Article 23, which provides for the freedom of scientific research, among other things. While we note the recent release of some political prisoners and the lifting of the State of Emergency, as well as the government’s encouraging (albeit unfulfilled) promises regarding forthcoming improvements in human rights conditions in the country, we urge you to release Professor Ayman Mansour Nada, drop all charges against him, and reinstate his employment at Cairo University without delay. We also urge you to release all other scholars and prisoners of conscience in Egypt. Finally, we reiterate our hope that the government will take steps toward improving the state of academic freedom in the country in the accordance with the “First Seven Steps Statement” released by Egyptian human rights organizations in May 2021.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Dina Rizk Khoury
MESA President
Professor, George Washington University

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

cc:

Dr. Hanafi Gebali, Speaker, Egyptian Parliament

Motaz Zahran, Ambassador, Embassy of Egypt, Washington, D.C.

Mohamed Fathi Ahmed Edrees, Permanent Representative of Egypt to the UN

Amb. Moushira Khattab, President, National Council for Human Rights, Cairo, Egypt

The Honorable Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Honorable Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders

Maria Arena, Chair of the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights

Viktor Almqvist, Press Officer for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament

Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Kati Piri, Member, Committee on Foreign Affairs, European Parliament

Irene Khan, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression

Yael Lempert, Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State, United States Government

Philip McDaniel, Foreign Policy Advisor: Congressman Tom Malinowski (NJ-7), Member of Egypt Human Rights Caucus

Nancy Chen, Legislative Fellow: Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), Member of Egypt Human Rights Caucus
Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
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