Month: September 2007

Akbar Ganji’s open letter on Iran

I don’t care about Mahmoud Ahmednijad, who is cruel and petty (as opposed to Lee Bollinger, who is just petty), but I do care about this open letter by Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji and co-signed by an A-list of academics and intellectuals.

Open Letter from Akbar Ganji to the UN Secretary-General

September 18, 2007

To His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations,

The people of Iran are experiencing difficult times both internationally and domestically. Internationally, they face the threat of a military attack from the US and the imposition of extensive sanctions by the UN Security Council. Domestically, a despotic state has – through constant and organized repression – imprisoned them in a life and death situation.

Far from helping the development of democracy, US policy over the past 50 years has consistently been to the detriment of the proponents of freedom and democracy in Iran. The 1953 coup against the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and the unwavering support for the despotic regime of the Shah, who acted as America’s gendarme in the Persian Gulf, are just two examples of these flawed policies. More recently the confrontation between various US Administrations and the Iranian state over the past three decades has made internal conditions very difficult for the proponents of freedom and human rights in Iran. Exploiting the danger posed by the US, the Iranian regime has put military-security forces in charge of the government, shut down all independent domestic media, and is imprisoning human rights activists on the pretext that they are all agents of a foreign enemy. The Bush Administration, for its part, by approving a fund for democracy assistance in Iran, which has in fact being largely spent on official institutions and media affiliated with the US government, has made it easy for the Iranian regime to describe its opponents as mercenaries of the US and to crush them with impunity. At the same time, even speaking about “the possibility” of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran. No Iranian wants to see what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan repeated in Iran. Iranian democrats also watch with deep concern the support in some American circles for separatist movements in Iran. Preserving Iran’s territorial integrity is important to all those who struggle for democracy and human rights in Iran. We want democracy for Iran and for all Iranians. We also believe that the dismemberment of Middle Eastern countries will fuel widespread and prolonged conflict in the region. In order to help the process of democratization in the Middle East, the US can best help by promoting a just peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, and pave the way for the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. A just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state would inflict the heaviest blow on the forces of fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East.

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Continue reading Akbar Ganji’s open letter on Iran

Egypt’s attack on the press continues

Egypt jails three journalists:

CAIRO (AFP) – A court on Monday sentenced the editor of an opposition newspaper and two other journalists to two years in jail for “damaging the image of justice”, in the latest case against Egypt’s media.

Al-Wafd’s editor Anwar al-Hawari, Mahmud Ghallab and Amir Othman were jailed for “having published untrue information which damaged the reputation of the justice system and the justice ministry”, the court ruled.

The three, who did not attend the hearing and remain free on bail pending an appeal, were also ordered to pay small fines, a judicial source said.

The judge accepted the case filed by several Egyptian lawyers after Al-Wafd had in January quoted Justice Minister Mamduh Mari as saying that 90 percent of Egyptian judges were not up to the job.

Mari said he had been misquoted and the lawyers then claimed the reports had indirectly damaged their image.

“We are not at war, we didn’t reveal military secrets. We only did our job as professional journalists,” Hawari told AFP after the sentencing, insisting on the accuracy of the quote.

It’s worth noting that this is the same Mahmoud Marei whom, for the past year, has led a multi-pronged attack on the judiciary by cutting salaries, denying funds to independent judges, reassigning them, refusing to meet with Judges’ Club leadership for months, etc.

Bomber strikes Sunni-Shiite reconciliation meeting

Bomber strikes Sunni-Shiite meeting:

BAQOUBA, Iraq – A suicide bomber struck a U.S.-promoted reconciliation meeting of Shiite and Sunni tribal sheiks as they were washing their hands or sipping tea Monday, killing at least 15 people, including the city’s police chief, and wounding about 30 others.

Two U.S. soldiers were also wounded in the 8:30 p.m. blast at a Shiite mosque in Baqouba, a former al-Qaida in Iraq stronghold about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials, who gave the overall casualty toll.

The brazen attack, which bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida in Iraq, represented a major challenge to U.S. efforts to bring together Shiites and Sunnis here in Diyala province, scene of some of the bitterest fighting in Iraq.

About two hours after the blast, U.S. soldiers at nearby Camp Warhorse fired artillery rounds at suspected insurgent positions near Baqouba. There were no reports of damage or casualties.

Witnesses and officials said the bomber struck when most of the victims were in the mosque courtyard cleaning their hands or drinking tea during Iftar, the daily meal in which Muslims break their sunrise-to-sunset fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

What a terrible, terrible mess.

White House criticizes Egypt on rights

White House criticizes Egypt on rights:

NEW YORK – The White House on Monday voiced displeasure with recent decisions in Egypt to crack down on dissenting voices within the media and to close a human rights group, saying it is “deeply concerned” about the moves.

“These latest decisions appear to contradict the Egyptian government’s stated commitment to expand democratic rights,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

The unusual public statement of discontent with the leadership in Egypt came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was having dinner in New York with Egypt’s foreign minister.

One supposes that this may have more to do with being embarrassed by the Washington Post again than anything else — another statement that carries no teeth and serves a domestic purpose.

Israeli blockbuster: “The Band’s Visit”

Egypt and Israel team up for award-winning film ‘The Bands Visit’:

Written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Eran Kolirin, “The Band’s Visit” centers around the plight of the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra after it arrives in Israel to open an Arab Cultural Center, only to find itself stranded at the airport without a welcoming committee or place to stay. The band finds an unexpected sanctuary at a café that sits at the outskirts of a remote desert town. Before the night is over, both the Egyptian musicians and their Israeli hosts will have grown a little wiser about their respective cultural idiosyncra

This film won several awards in Israel’s version of the Oscars. It sounds potentially funny — I just hope it’s not saccharine, especially as I am allergic to peace orchestras. In any case, one rarely hears about Israeli cinema — the last thing I saw is the very moving (French-Israeli) film about a young Sudanese boy who pretends to be Falasha Jew to become a refugee in Israel: Va, Vis et Deviens. (Update: You can get it on Amazon France.)

Blogging Egypt’s Factory Strikes

Blogging Egypt’s Factory Strikes:

Whether or not this is picked up in the American press shouldn’t matter. It’s a story to pay attention to, however you can.

The textile factory at Ghazl el-Mahalla in the Nile Delta is Egypt’s largest, with over 27,000 workers. Nearly all of the factory’s workers went on strike last December to demand their yearly bonuses, which had been withheld and which provide most of their annual salary.

On Sunday, some 10,000 of those factory workers went on strike again, demanding 150-day shares of annual profits, improved industrial safety, and a raise in their monthly bonuses.

Within a few hours the number swelled to 15,000 as Egyptian police surrounded the factory.

The Egyptian government quickly declared the strike “illegal.”

“The numbers of strikers are expected to rise in the coming few hours…the factory is under police siege,” according to posts today by Egyptian blogger Hossam el-Hamalawy. His blog, 3arabawy, is one of Egypt’s most widely read in English. Along with Wael Abbas, an Egyptian blogger who gained international attention last year by posting (and continuing to post) videos of police brutality, el-Hamalawy is a go-to source on the rumblings of a wide scale labor movement in Egypt.

Keep track of Hossam’s frequent updates to follow news of the strike. And come on, American journalists in Cairo, make the effort to do a different kind of story and head over to Mahalla al-Kubra. They make the best taamiya in Egypt.

Update: AP has a report on the arrest of labor leaders.

Marcel Khalife banned from playing in San Diego?

Update: This story appears confirmed from a press release by Khalife’s publicist.

Reports are emerging that the great oud player and composer Marcel Khalifé (a UNESCO “Artist for Peace” was barred from giving a scheduled performance in San Diego because the venue felt he should be “balanced out” with an Israeli musician:

Khalifé has a sizable number of North American tour dates ahead of him over the next few months at places like the Kennedy Center and Boston’s Berklee College of Music’s Performance Hall. In other words, Khalifé ain’t no dimestore oud player, and venues who regularly host Lebanese classical music ought to be honored by his interest.

That’s not the case for San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Theatre at the Salvation Army’s Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, who have forced Khalifé to look elsewhere for a place to play in the area. It’s not so much that the Kroc Theatre folks don’t like the cut of Khalifé’s jib: rather, they feel the show would be “divisive” and “unbalanced” without an Israeli performer taking the stage the same night, according to a press release issued by Khalifé’s camp.

This sounds so incredibly stupid I have a hard time believing it’s true, but considering these kind of tactics are used by pro-Israel activists routinely against academics, who knows…

Update: Once again, unbelievably it appears to be true.

Kassem given award, Diehl on Egyptian press

It’s with great pride that I learned that my friend and former boss Hisham Kassem, until a few months ago the publisher of al-Masri al-Youm, was given a well-earned National Endowment for Democracy 2007 Democracy Award. I also knew that he and the other recipients (from Burma, Thailand and Venezuela) got to spend 55 minutes with President Bush. Today Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl, who has led the newspaper’s campaign against the Egyptian regime, raises the issue of press freedom in Egypt and debriefed Kassem about his meeting with W:

The Egyptian publisher Hisham Kassem was in Washington last week to pick up the National Endowment for Democracy’s prestigious annual Democracy Award, in recognition of his role in jump-starting a free Egyptian press. Along with two other honorees, he spent nearly an hour in the Oval Office with President Bush, who spoke with feeling about his “freedom agenda” and his intention to pursue it after he leaves office.

But Kassem could not help but feel a little depressed. While he was being honored, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was directing a frontal assault against the island of liberty Kassem helped to create in Cairo — independent newspapers that have subjected Mubarak’s rotting autocracy to serious scrutiny for the first time. And hardly anyone in Washington seemed to care.

“Egypt was the least of his priorities,” Kassem said of Bush, who spoke more enthusiastically during their meeting about pushing for democracy in Burma, Venezuela and Russia. “You can feel Egypt is on the back burner right now. Everyone is in despair about the situation.”

Having spent some time with Egypt-watchers in and out of the administration in Washington last May, I came to the same conclusion.

The Saffron Army

Will break from the tradition of only discussing Middle Eastern issues in solidarity with the Buddhist monk-led protests in Burma/Myanmar:

YANGON, Myanmar – As many as 100,000 anti-government protesters led by a phalanx of Buddhist monks marched Monday through Yangon, the largest crowd to demonstrate in Myanmar’s biggest city since a 1988 pro-democracy uprising that was brutally crushed by the military.

From the front of the march, witnesses could see a one-mile stretch of eight-lane road was filled with people.

Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

The BBC World Service had an excellent piece of reportage about the monks on yesterday, if you can find.

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Haaretz’s Gideon Levy: Abbas humiliating his own people

Even Israelis are disgusted with Mahmoud Abbas:

Mahmoud Abbas has to stay home. As things stand right now, he must not go to Washington. Even his meetings with Ehud Olmert are gradually turning into a disgrace and have become a humiliation for his people. Nothing good will come of them. It has become impossible to bear the spectacle of the Palestinian leader’s jolly visits in Jerusalem, bussing the cheek of the wife of the very prime minister who is meanwhile threatening to blockade a million and a half of his people, condemning them to darkness and hunger.

If Abu Mazen were a genuine national leader instead of a petty retailer, he would refuse to participate in the summit and any other meetings until the blockade of Gaza is lifted. If he were a man of truly historic stature he would add that no conference can be held without Ismail Haniyeh, another crucial Palestinian representative. And if Israel really wanted peace, not only an “agreement of principles” with a puppet-leader that will lead nowhere, it should respect Abbas’ demand. Israel should aspire for Abu Mazen to be considered a leader in the eyes of his people, not only a marionette whose strings are pulled by Israel and the United States, or affected by other short-term power plays.