December 21, 2013 12:08 AM
By Rami G. Khouri
| The Daily Star |
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"There are many indicators that one could use to gauge the condition of political cultures and governance systems in the Arab world at any given moment. One of the most useful is the prison system, and who is being detained and prevented from carrying out their normal activities as free citizens. The situation across much of the Arab world in this respect is bad and worsening, as governments are increasingly arresting individuals who speak out for personal rights, or harass and close down human rights and other civil society organizations that work to ensure the social, economic and political rights of citizens.
It was troubling to learn that last Wednesday night a contingent of heavily armed military men stormed the Cairo premises of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. They roughed up and then detained members of the staff overnight, and continue to hold one person in jail: Mohammad Adel, a leader of the April 6 youth movement that played a central role in the popular uprising against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
As Bahey Eldin Hassan, the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, pointed out to the New York Times Thursday, Adel’s detention means that “the four most important youth symbols of the revolution are now in jail. This has never happened at any moment since the 25th of January 2011.”
The three others he was referring to are Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Ahmad Douma and Ahmad Maher, who are in custody on various charges, including their challenge to a law that the government passed a few weeks ago that severely restricts public protests.
Such heavy-handed moves against human rights organizations and civil society activists suggest that the military-installed transitional government in Egypt is moving to stifle protests and activism by a wider range of human rights groups, beyond its harsh repression of the Muslim Brotherhood organization that had won major elections in Egypt in 2011-2012. Thousands of Egyptians are in jail – the estimates vary from 2,000 to 15,000. This includes supporters and colleagues of deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi, as well as Adel and other human rights activists who are not Islamists – some of whom actively criticized the brutish excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood when Morsi was still in power.
In recent months some human rights activists in Egypt have publicly accused the military-installed transitional government of being as bad as, or even worse than, the Mubarak government. Just last month the ECESR, jointly with 56 other non-governmental organizations, had submitted to the United Nations’ Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights a powerful report that reviewed human and civil rights conditions in Egypt. This impressive document is available on the ecesr.com website and is well worth reading by anyone who wonders why Arab governments continue to crack down on their citizens’ personal freedoms and the ability to organize and mobilize citizens for the pursuit of justice and rights.
However, Egypt is not alone. Arab societies broadly continue to suffer from clampdowns by governments on the ability of individuals or groups to speak out in defense of human rights, and to challenge the uncontested authority of families or small groups of officers to decide the fate of entire societies with hundreds of millions of citizens.
The Gulf region in particular is punishing and harassing individuals who use social media to make their views known, often simply to demand greater freedoms to speak out in public, or to seek more public participation in government decisions.
Human Rights Watch has just released a report about how Saudi activists using social media to call for change are facing repressive moves, harassment and imprisonment. The report, titled “Challenging the Red Lines: Stories of Rights Activists in Saudi Arabia,” accuses the authorities of “arresting, prosecuting, and attempting to silence rights defenders and to quash their calls for change.” The report outlines cases of bloggers who have been jailed for months because of their actions, noting that social media activism is on the rise because the government does not allow independent civil society organizations.
Many other examples across the Gulf and the Arab world paint a frightening picture of a region whose leaders exercise the disgraceful deed of denying their own citizens not just their civil rights, but also their fundamental humanity. Being able to speak freely and articulate one’s aspirations or grievances is the essential foundation of any stable and decent society. This remains elusive across most of the Arab world, where prisons are overflowing with human rights activists whose major crime seems to be their willingness to behave like human beings and citizens, rather than the lifeless robots their governments would prefer."
It was troubling to learn that last Wednesday night a contingent of heavily armed military men stormed the Cairo premises of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights. They roughed up and then detained members of the staff overnight, and continue to hold one person in jail: Mohammad Adel, a leader of the April 6 youth movement that played a central role in the popular uprising against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.
As Bahey Eldin Hassan, the director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, pointed out to the New York Times Thursday, Adel’s detention means that “the four most important youth symbols of the revolution are now in jail. This has never happened at any moment since the 25th of January 2011.”
The three others he was referring to are Alaa Abdel-Fattah, Ahmad Douma and Ahmad Maher, who are in custody on various charges, including their challenge to a law that the government passed a few weeks ago that severely restricts public protests.
Such heavy-handed moves against human rights organizations and civil society activists suggest that the military-installed transitional government in Egypt is moving to stifle protests and activism by a wider range of human rights groups, beyond its harsh repression of the Muslim Brotherhood organization that had won major elections in Egypt in 2011-2012. Thousands of Egyptians are in jail – the estimates vary from 2,000 to 15,000. This includes supporters and colleagues of deposed Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammad Morsi, as well as Adel and other human rights activists who are not Islamists – some of whom actively criticized the brutish excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood when Morsi was still in power.
In recent months some human rights activists in Egypt have publicly accused the military-installed transitional government of being as bad as, or even worse than, the Mubarak government. Just last month the ECESR, jointly with 56 other non-governmental organizations, had submitted to the United Nations’ Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights a powerful report that reviewed human and civil rights conditions in Egypt. This impressive document is available on the ecesr.com website and is well worth reading by anyone who wonders why Arab governments continue to crack down on their citizens’ personal freedoms and the ability to organize and mobilize citizens for the pursuit of justice and rights.
However, Egypt is not alone. Arab societies broadly continue to suffer from clampdowns by governments on the ability of individuals or groups to speak out in defense of human rights, and to challenge the uncontested authority of families or small groups of officers to decide the fate of entire societies with hundreds of millions of citizens.
The Gulf region in particular is punishing and harassing individuals who use social media to make their views known, often simply to demand greater freedoms to speak out in public, or to seek more public participation in government decisions.
Human Rights Watch has just released a report about how Saudi activists using social media to call for change are facing repressive moves, harassment and imprisonment. The report, titled “Challenging the Red Lines: Stories of Rights Activists in Saudi Arabia,” accuses the authorities of “arresting, prosecuting, and attempting to silence rights defenders and to quash their calls for change.” The report outlines cases of bloggers who have been jailed for months because of their actions, noting that social media activism is on the rise because the government does not allow independent civil society organizations.
Many other examples across the Gulf and the Arab world paint a frightening picture of a region whose leaders exercise the disgraceful deed of denying their own citizens not just their civil rights, but also their fundamental humanity. Being able to speak freely and articulate one’s aspirations or grievances is the essential foundation of any stable and decent society. This remains elusive across most of the Arab world, where prisons are overflowing with human rights activists whose major crime seems to be their willingness to behave like human beings and citizens, rather than the lifeless robots their governments would prefer."
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