Denial and Democracy in Egypt – New York Times:
In recent weeks, Egypt’s government has further trampled the rights of its citizens, closing several branches of the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, which provides much needed legal assistance to workers. This comes at a time when a growing number of government critics have been thrown in jail and on the heels of constitutional amendments that restrict rights and weaken standards for arrest and detention.
All of this somehow has escaped the Bush administration’s ambassador to Egypt who, in a recent television interview in Cairo, painted a chillingly sunny picture of President Hosni Mubarak’s government. While he acknowledged there were “some infringements and violations” of human rights, he declared himself “optimistic” about democratic progress in Egypt, adding that the judiciary and the government’s “commitment to the opinion of the common Egyptian citizen” would carry the day.
That not only contradicts reality — freedom of expression and assembly is actually diminishing — it contradicts the State Department’s latest human rights report, which says that Egypt’s rights record remains poor. Egypt’s jailed bloggers and beaten protesters can certainly attest to that.
After crackdowns weakened or destroyed so many of Egypt’s independent political organizations, democratic activists are hoping the burgeoning trade union movement will pick up the fight for democratic change. Which is why Mr. Mubarak has ordered the shuttering of the trade union centers.
With so many other things to worry about in the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Bush also seem to have lost their earlier fervor for Egyptian democracy. Washington must warn Mr. Mubarak clearly about the costs — for Egypt’s long-term stability and its relationship with the United States — of such anti-democratic moves. Happy talk and denial just damage America’s credibility and enable more repression.
Ambassadors should have to get training to restrain from heaping free praise to regimes that don’t deserve it. One can complain about Ambassador Ricciardone’s upbeat appearances on Egyptian TV, but much more distasteful was his counterpart in Tunis’ statements a few weeks ago that Tunisia “is a model for the region.” But overall, I can’t help feeling this op-ed is soooo last year — has the NYT only now realized that the Bush administration has backpedaled on Egypt?
Ambassadors should have to get training to restrain from heaping free praise to regimes that don’t deserve it.
Amen!
You are so predictable, it is funny.
[…] to get training to restrain from heaping free praise to regimes that don’t deserve it,” writes Egypt-based blogger Issandr El Amrani, who links to a New York Times article on recent developments […]
Aww, come on. Good for the NYT, I say (though not very often). Nobody but NOBODY from the Wesetern press has picked up on the CTUWS story. Kudos to the Times for putting it in the lede of an editorial.
I see the NY Sun is http://www.nysun.com/article/53752?page_no=1“ rel=”nofollow”>calling for the ambassador’s recall. Oy gevalt. While I applaud their concern for human rights in Egypt, Ambassador Ricciardone is, on balance, the best US ambassador to Egypt of the recent crop. Instead of recalling him, the Bush administration should ask him to be a little less generous with his praise… and get Condi to make clear, strong statements about human rights in Egypt.
The ambassador certainly could stand not to suck up to the Baqr-ids more than he is absolutely required to, and do his job by presenting as accurate a picture of the situation in Egypt as possible rather than transmitting the NDP version thereof. But one wonders how much of a free hand he has because, as Tim pointed out, the message comes from the top, and the ambassador probably can’t make stern statements without authorisation or threats to back them up.
Mr. Crocodile,
as noted in this blog, AFP mentioned the CTUWS closure soon after it happened and even quoted an HRW press release about the matter. In fact rather than just mention the event, it put it in context of a wider response to a resurgent labor movement. Of course it depends whether you consider AFP “Western”, a strange catch-all phrase that to some just seems to mean anglo-american media. By most counts, France is part of the western world.
In all fairness, we can’t blame everything on the diplomats; Egypt isn’t their country, after all. It isn’t mine either, but for those Egyptians who live abroad and wish to see democracy in their country, I have http://solomon2.blogspot.com/2007/05/open-letter-to-egyptian-ex-pat.html“ rel=”nofollow”>a modest proposal.
Apologies, Paul. AFP was there, and good on ’em. But I wonder how many papers picked up the story? Not faulting the local correspondents, but rather the editors in New York or Paris or London or wherever who saw the story and thought, “Too much detail, too complicated. Who cares? Where’s the terrorism angle?”
But point well taken.