Tag: egypt

The politics of hypocrisy

Washington has decided not to “kick sand in the face� of a strategic ally… but has instead kicked dirt in the face of democracy activists once more. Thanks Washington, keep those dollars coming baby…

House Narrowly Rejects Punitive Cut In Aid To Egypt
Friday, June 9, 2006
The Wall Street Journal
By David Rogers
WASHINGTON — Amid conflicting signals from the Bush administration, the Republican-led House narrowly rejected a bid to cut $100 million from U.S. aid to Egypt as a protest of its suppression of political dissent. Continue reading The politics of hypocrisy

Meet the bloggers..

The Center for Socialist Studies in Giza, whose director Kamal Khalil is currently detained in Tora Prison, will be hosting a talk, tomorrow Saturday, titled “Egyptian bloggers.. New Media.. New Policy,” featuring several Egyptian bloggers:

Nora Younis, Wael Abbass, Malek Mustafa (one of the bloggers recently released from Tora), 3amr 3ezzat, Yehya Megahed, Shahinaz 3abdel Salam, and others.

The lecture will start at 7pm. The Center’s address: 7 Mourad St., Giza.

Ahmed Abdalla on Egyptian Islamists

MERIP Editor Chris Toensing has posted a 1993 article late, lamented Ahmed Abdalla‘s on the then growing confrontation between Islamists and the state. A reminder of what a great service MERIP is and of Abdalla’s scholarship.

It has been 20 years since the Egyptian state first unleashed the Islamists against the left. Today the Islamic upsurge has taken on dimensions far beyond state manipulation. The mid-term confrontation, marked by the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981, ended in a draw. Now, more than a decade later, the battle rages more fiercely than before. Violence, and not just “Islamic” violence, now characterizes the temperament of this supposedly placid nation. In the general atmosphere of state violence and citizen violence, Islamist terrorists are no strangers. When ordinary citizens rioted in 1992 against the authorities in Edku and Abu Hammad in the Delta (where things are generally calmer than in Upper Egypt), no Islamists were involved. The riot was a spontaneous reaction against police brutality. A similar dynamic almost recurred in Cairo itself, in novelist Naguib Mahfouz’s favorite Gamaliyya district.

The Egyptian state is now paying for its belated action against the Islamists, not to mention its earlier complicity. Deferring confrontation was an instinctual tradeoff, not a carefully thought-out state policy. The government turned a blind eye to grassroots state power. In return, the Islamists did not confront state corruption and inefficiency, especially in Upper Egypt.

Read the rest. While not a card-carrying leftist myself, I’ve long believed that the demise of the left in the Arab world (and worldwide) is one of the worse things that happened for respect of human rights and democracy in the region. It’s not that the left was perfect, but that it was the most serious secular counter-force to religious conservatism that was available.

Police stalls detainees’ release

News has been circulating among the activist circles that the police is stalling the release of three detainees as ordered by the State Security prosecutor two days ago. 

Nadda al-Qassas, Rasha 3azab and Ashraf Ibrahim, spent last night in Dokki, Bassateen, and 3abdeen police stations, respectively. Continue reading Police stalls detainees’ release

Letter from Ayman Nour

Gameela Ismail has sent a letter by her husband Ayman Nour smuggled out of prison three days ago. The letter is intended for Edward McMillian-Scott, a Conservative MEP and the vice president of the European parliament. McMillian-Scott has been quite active on the Nour case and human rights in Egypt in recent years, driving the European parliament’s involvement in the affair. Gameela also notes that the Egyptian authorities have now prevented Nour from writing letters for three months. The letter urges MEPs to make their voice heard for his case.

An English translation follows.

Continue reading Letter from Ayman Nour

Renditions exposed

The Council of Europe today came out with a bashing report on the US “ghost flights” in Europe, identifying a “spider’s web” of landing points around the world airports, used by the CIA for its “extraordinary rendition” program, whereby Islamist suspects are moved around the world to secret detention and interrogation centers. The report also exposed 14 European countries, which are either “involved in or complicit” in the suspects’ illegal transfer and detention.

Washington and several European capitals, stand accused, have rejected the report, saying it’s solely based on “allegations.” Continue reading Renditions exposed

Youssef Darwish passes away

I received more troubling news in the morning–another prominent leftist figure passed away. Youssef Darwish, an Egyptian Jewish Communist legend, died today at the age of 91. Darwish joined the communist movement in the 1930s. He was an active campaigner against the British occupation, the Egyptian royal system, and the Zionist movement.

Darwish, the son of a Jewish jeweler, devoted his life to working class issues. He, together with veteran lawyer Ahmad Nabil el-Hilaly, led a split from the underground Egyptian Communist Party (ECP) in the late 1980s, protesting Ref3at el-Sa3eed’s authoritarian command over the organization. Darwish and Hilaly formed a faction inside the ECP around 1984, denouncing el-Sa3eed’s revisionist views on Mubarak’s regime and the state of Egyptian capitalism. El-Sa3eed then claimed there were divisions within the regime, between the institution of the presidency, which he claimed represented the “progressives” (sic), and other institutions like the interior ministry, etc. El-Sa3eed also claimed there was a difference between “parasitic” capitalism and “patriotic” capitalism. The job of the Communists, he stated, was to support the latter against the former.
The two veteran activists also opposed el-Sa3eed’s drive to merge the ECP with the licensed Tagamu3 Party. They were careful to outline the limits of “legalism� in the Egyptian context, and the necessitiy for the Egyptian working class to organize itself independently in a revolutionary party.
The faction finally split from the ECP sometime between 1987 and 1989, forming the People’s Socialist Party (PSP), which maintained presence in Ain Shams University, Cairo University and some industrial centers.
There was also a debate within the left then on the position towards the rising Islamist giant. El-Sa3eed’s line on Islamism regarded the Muslim militant groups as “fascists,” who should be repressed by the government at any cost. Thus, during the 1990s, the Egyptian Communist Party foolishly allied itself with Mubarak’s regime in his “war on Islamic fascists.” Continue reading Youssef Darwish passes away

State Security Prosecutor renews Sharqawi’s and Sha3er’s detention

State Security Prosecutor renewed today the detention of Mohamed el-Sharqawi and Kareem el-Sha3er, the two Youth for Change activists who were detained and brutally tortured by State Security police on May 25, 2006.

The very kind-hearted prosecutor also decided that Sharqawi could finally start receiving medical treatment at El-Manial Hospital.

Moreover, the prosecutor extended today the detention of 50 Muslim Brotherhood activists, who were also detained in the May pro-reform demos. AP journalist Nadia Abou El-Magd reports: Continue reading State Security Prosecutor renews Sharqawi’s and Sha3er’s detention