Even Great Journalism Leaves Questions!

By William Fisher

A lot of the news coming out of Egypt these days is truly professional journalism at its best. And because it is at its best, it is also heart-breaking and maddening.

But regardless of how excellent some of the reporting has undoubtedly been, readers are left with nagging questions that just won’t go away. And maybe that’s as it should be, because it draws us in for more answers.

Last week, two of the best journalists covering the Egypt story filed spine-chilling accounts of former political prisoners and their relatives rampaging through the Ministry of Interior – which ran the security police and made the life and death decisions about torture – looking for the files of their loved ones. Some of those loved ones has been secretary executed. Some had been tortured until they died. Many had been “disappeared” and would probably never be heard from or about again.

Those journalists are Hannah Allam of McClatchy Newspapers and Andrea Bruce of The New York Times.

Here’s how Hannah Allam begins her piece, which is datelined Cairo:

“Trudging through dungeon-like cells and mounds of shredded documents, hundreds of Egyptians on Saturday surged into the Cairo headquarters of the dreaded State Security apparatus for an unprecedented look inside buildings where political prisoners endured horrific torture.”

“Some former prisoners sobbed as they saw their old cells, recalling electric
shocks and severe beatings. Families held passport photos of missing relatives and were desperate to explore the dank chambers for clues to their fates.”

How could you not read on?

Allam continued: “Dismantling State Security, the shadowy and all-powerful intelligence force, was a key demand of protesters who forced the resignation last month of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. When the military-led interim authority failed to dissolve the agency immediately, protesters in Cairo and the port city of Alexandria descended on State Security offices this weekend to seize files they hoped would cement Mubarak's legacy of prisoner abuse and disappearances.

"I thought my brother would be found there," said Leila Mahmoud, 47, who was distraught when she learned the buildings had been evacuated. "He was taken on April 2, 2005, and we've been looking for him since then. We haven't heard a word from him since. Not a word."

“Security forces and the police routinely torture or ill-treat detainees, particularly during interrogation. In most cases, officials torture detainees to obtain information and coerce confessions, occasionally leading to death in custody."

“For those who jailed at the complex, the memories are haunting,” she says.
"I saw people's nails being ripped out and people hung from the ceiling by their arms or legs," said Adel Reda, 39, trembling as he recounted his nine months inside the complex. "They would throw our food in sand before giving it to us and splash us with cold water day and night. Sometimes it was so dark you couldn't see your hands."

When asked whether he was ever allowed access to an attorney, Reda raised his hands heavenward and replied: "My lawyer was God."

Allam’s piece goes on recounting citizen after citizen telling their stories of loved ones snatched from the beds or their offices or their cars, whisked to this torture factory, in all likelihood disappeared as if they had never lived.

I found the last three paragraphs of Allam’s piece particularly poignant.

“"My brother was detained because he was trying to send food and medicine to Gaza," said Ingy Qutb, 25. "They kept him three months and tortured him and..."

“Her voice broke and tears spilled onto her black veil. "This place must be destroyed," she said softly.

“Egypt’s once-powerful and feared interior minister, Habib el-Adly, pleaded not guilty Saturday to corruption charges in the first of an expected series of speedy, high-profile cases against ministers ousted with former President Hosni Mubarak.”

The New York Times’s Andrea Bruce toggled between the torture factory at the Ministry of the Interior and the trial of Habib al-Adly, Egypt's former interior minister, who appeared in court in New Cairo amid protestors chanting slogans denouncing him.

Bruce wrote, “That did not happen,” Mr. Adly calmly said twice when the judge asked whether he had profited illegally from his office and laundered money; the charges involve a total of about $1.6 million.”

“Dressed in a white prison uniform with a white cap on his head, Mr. Adly stood in the heavy metal cage that serves as the docket in Egyptian courts. It was an extraordinary sight in a country where Mr. Adly, until his Feb. 17 arrest, had controlled all police forces since he became interior minister in 1997.”

“As if to underscore the change, hundreds of protesters in Cairo stormed a
headquarters of the state security police, a hated organization that Mr. Adly
used to run. Protesters also took over or massed outside other security
compounds around the country, with one center in Alexandria going up in flames Friday night,” she wrote.

“At the courthouse, the proceedings were dominated by a group of often unruly lawyers, who had tacked public interest lawsuits onto the government’s case, seeking huge compensation for Interior Ministry victims.”

“This was Egypt’s executioner!” yelled Hussein Abou Eissa, a lawyer, at Judge Al-Mohammadi Qunsua, before hurling similar invective at the accused. The judge, known in Egypt for his independence, barked at the lawyers to remain orderly and quickly postponed the case until April 2.

The charges read by the prosecutor revolve around a piece of land the ministry controlled that it said Mr. Adly had sold to a private contractor working for the ministry, plus money found in his bank account that the government said did not belong there. Defense lawyers asked for more time to study the documents.”

She observed, “Few details seem too small to escape all manner of fly-on-the wall reports. One former minister ordered food delivered from home rather than eat prison swill, newspapers said. At one point, when Mr. Adly opened the tap in his cell and no water came out, a guard said it would start flowing “right now,” although it was still not working an hour later, the semiofficial newspaper Al Akhbar reported.”

“The word ‘now’ used to mean that things would happen within five minutes at the Interior Ministry,” the newspaper reported Mr. Adly yelling at his guards.”

“That’s over now,” one guard retorted and Andrea Bruce faithfully recorded.

Reading the entire stories filed by these two pros, one almost had the feeling of beginning to understand what was happening at ground level those thousands of miles away.

Yet, these stories left a great black hole. It was: Just who were these incredibly cruel, sadistic, bloodthirsty young men who were doing the torturing and the killing? Were they incredibly cruel, sadistic, bloodthirsty young men when they were hired? Or did they “grow into it,” as they say? If so, how and under whose tutelage?

Most important of all to understand: Were these people just “bad seeds?” Or were they conditioned by their lack of education, their poverty, their absense of opportunity, to be sociopaths? Or was it some other combination of factors?

We learned nothing about who they are. And it seems to me that information is essential if Egypt wants to avoid hiring the same types of jailers next time around.

Those of us who have lived and worked in Egypt accept that many Egyptians have two faces.

There is the face shown to the public, especially the expat or foreign tourist public. This is the face of charm, of impeccable manners, of open-handed hospitality, even among poor Egyptians, who are usually happy to share their food with you although they don’t have enough to feed themselves, and who are honored that you are visiting their home.

I have gone to the University of Cairo to talk to young undergrads about life in America, warts and all. There were, I was told later, half a dozen jihadis in the group. I was astonished when I learned that the young man who invited me to his home to continue the discussion over dinner was one of the hottest firebrand jihadis! He had some of his facts wrong, and I had a few, but we had a spirited and constructive conversation nevertheless. And I had the feeling we were talking to one another, not past one another.

Then, I’m told, there is the dark side. In my mind, the dark side consists of the dead-enders (HT Mr. Rumsfeld) who can not find employment other than employment that involves maiming and killing people, and getting off on the unspeakable sounds of unspeakable pain. As the attributes of these people were explained to me, the words took on an affinity with the vocabulary used to describe the really dangerous American street gangs. In other words, criminals in training.

Were these the people the Ministry of Interior was recruiting? If that’s the case, the Egyptian people need to know more about who they are and how they were motivated –so that Egypt never goes down that road again!

New P.M. Chosen to Placate Pro-Democracy Demonstrators

By William Fisher

As Egypt’s military rulers fired their prime minister to head off another huge pro-democracy demonstration in downtown Cairo after Friday prayers,
a government fact-finding committee revealed that it has heard testimony that police snipers shot protesters from tops of buildings in Tahrir Square.

The committee’s statement was announced on state TV Thursday, but omitted from the State web site. The committee said that pro-democracy protesters were “injured, killed and intimidated” by figures associated with the Mubarak regime.

The Committee said that police snipers shot protesters from atop the Mugamma, Ramses Hilton hotel, American University of Cairo and Interior Ministry buildings during the height of the Tahrir Square protests.

When asked about authorization, the committee said it had heard from two former senior policemen who said snipers would not fire on protesters without permission from the government, the Washington Post reported. The committee was tasked with investigating oppression during recent protests.

The Committee reportedly talked with around 120 eyewitnesses of the clashes in Cairo and Giza on 28 January. They said police shot protesters with live ammunition, killing some and injuring others.

Some eyewitnesses told the Committee that Mubarak thugs, not protesters, had set the National Democratic Party headquarters on fire, according to the Washington Post.

The committee’s statement also reported that it had viewed a video of two armored police vehicles -- one mowing over protesters while the other reversed to hit others.

In other developments, the replacement of Prime Minister Shafiq was expected after members of the pro-democracy movement labeled him a Mubarak “crony.” The Military Council appointed Essam Sharaf, a former transportation minister, to succeed Shafiq and would start forming a new government. The statement was carried on the military's Facebook page and then confirmed by a military spokesman.

Whether Shafiq's dismissal would mollify pro-democracy demonstrators remained to be seen. Friday was to be a "Day of Determination." Protestors would demand a new government, the dissolution of the state security apparatus, a new constitution, and the formation of a civilian presidential council.

Shafiq’s resignation illustrates his unsuccessful efforts to “polish himself while many people dislike him,” according to Cairene Mohammad Gomaa, an international consultant. He told this reporter, “Shafik as an ex-military person thinks that people must stop disturbance; he thinks they should make their requests and then must go home, to let him govern in peace.”

“He was surely very nervous with people asking him to go. He was mostly behind this rough treatment (by the military) that happened Friday night,” Gomaa said.

Many protesters are now saying that they believe the military is moving too slowly in meeting their demands. They are calling for sweeping actions, not minor concessions.

Pro-democracy forces are still furious about the military crackdown last Friday night, when masked police deployed electric prods to chase people out of the square and arrested and detained several protestors.

Demonstrators – especially the young – see the behavior of the police as evidence that the military still doesn't “get it.”

The task facing Sharaf is daunting. Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks notes:

“It is becoming urgent that the transitional authorities in Egypt demonstrate
that they are moving forward in responding to demands for more democracy, more political freedom and a government that responds to the needs of the people.”

Last week, Human Rights First outlined a series of steps to support Egypt’s
leaders in achieving a more democratic Egypt and a government more capable of responding to the needs of the Egyptian people. The United States should press for these reforms, which include:

· Military willingness to share executive power, even in this transitional period, by bringing credible civilian figures who are not tainted by association with the previous regime into an interim executive council. This would indicate the military council’s readiness to submit to civilian rule under a new elected government and revised constitution.

· Government repeal of repressive legislation including the Emergency Law, laws restricting political parties, and laws that undermine the independence of professional associations and non-governmental organizations.

· The release of all political prisoners. Reports indicate that not all
political prisoners have been released.

· An end to arbitrary detention and torture. This was a widespread practice under Mubarak and there are reports that the problem is ongoing, though on a much smaller scale.

· Meaningful progress on Constitutional reform. A review of key parts of the Constitution that must be changed to enable free elections to take place is under way. This process must result in real change soon.

· Establish an immediate transitional and independent authority to regulate Egypt’s telco and ISP sector. This would create a more stable business climate, ensure the free flow of information and privacy of communications, as well as avert the temptation to use SMS and other services to hack into or malign political opposition.

Chip Pitts, former chief executive of Amnesty USA and a law lecturer at Stanford University, agreed that the tasks facing the new government are monumental and will take some time. He told The Public Record that, while “lifting the emergency laws and releasing political prisoners are the two biggest tasks” facing the new Prime Minister, “There are other urgent tasks the military with others must address.” These include:

(i) Building credibility by fostering broader and better stakeholder engagement” with protesters and opposition leaders and empowering new and more legitimate faces beyond the new PM (the relatively untainted prior transport minister Essam Sharaf), now that Mubarak crony and interim PM Shafik has been forced out, so that the Egyptian people and the international community can be more confident that priority reforms will be implemented more effectively and quickly;

(ii) Settling upon the best approaches to handle the major economic challenges facing the regime and especially the half of the populace living on less than $2 a day (including by repudiating prior methods of corrupt crony capitalism and securing the international technical and financial assistance needed), while avoiding a repeat of the IMF structural adjustment debacle of the 1990s;

(iii) More clearly preparing for truly open and democratic presidential and parliamentary elections to take place later this year as promised;

(iv) Continuing and extending the process of constitutional reform, including adding measures that guarantee pluralism, tolerance, and fundamental human rights for all citizens consistent with the best traditions of Islam -- as opposed to debased interpretations that some groups would want to use to justify discrimination against women, homosexuals, and religious or other minorities; and

(v) In addition to “lifting the emergency laws” and removing the formal negative legal and institutional tools of the prior regime (including the secret police and military tribunals), the state and military must immediately reinforce in all conceivable ways the positive state duty to protect citizens and peaceful dissenters, re-establishing the rule of law and preventing crime while avoiding any hint of return to the prior culture of repression.

(As with any hierarchical organization, this requires clear communication from the top, modeling the behavior among the top officers, and implementation through concrete actions on the ground and punishment of those abusing rights).

Less urgent but just as important will be, over the medium and long-term, encouraging use of the newfound freedoms to nurture a strong and vibrant civil society, nongovernmental organizations, authentic political parties and competition, and clear inclusion rather than exclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood (since demonizing the organization based on inaccurate stereotypes will only risk re-radicalizing the group); and ensuring that the accountability processes already started regarding Mubarak and the others most responsible for the corruption and violence against the Egyptian people are brought to meaningful conclusion.

Is That a Light at the End of the Tunnel? Or an Oncoming Train?

By William Fisher

Human rights groups including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called on Egyptian military authorities for the immediate release of a peaceful pro-democracy demonstrator tried and convicted in a military court.

The organizations also charged that military courts should not be used to prosecute civilians.

The military should “halt detentions of peaceful demonstrators and end violence by soldiers against protesters and detainees,” one of the organizations, Human Rights Watch (HRW), said yesterday.

“Egyptian military authorities are continuing one of the worst practices of the Hosni Mubarak government by prosecuting civilians in military tribunals,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Authorities have no business arresting people merely for participating in a peaceful demonstration in the first place.”

In one recent case, on February 26, soldiers arrested at least nine people during demonstrations in and near Tahrir Square, in central Cairo. The Defense Ministry, in a March 1 news release, announced that it was investigating them for having “sneaked in among the youth,” protesting in the square and “causing unrest.”

In fact, on that day, a military court had convicted one of them, Amr Abdallah al-Bahari, 32, for assaulting a soldier and breaking curfew, his lawyer, Adel Ramadan, told HRW. Soldiers physically abused al-Bahari when they arrested him on February 26, a witness said.

Al-Bahari’s brother, Mohammed, told HRW that soldiers arrested al-Bahari after midnight February 26 when the army raided Tahrir Square and a nearby street in front of parliament to clear the area of demonstrators. The brother said that the soldiers held al-Bahari incommunicado and refused him access to lawyers. Ramadan discovered al-Bahari’s conviction while inspecting records at a military courthouse in the Nasr City district of Cairo on March 2.

In another case, Amnesty said it has received information on Maaty Ahmed Hamed Abu Arab who was arrested on February 3 in Tahrir Square while on his way to buy food. He was sentenced to five years in prison by a military court for breaking curfew and possession of a weapon. He, along with many others, is now held in Al Wadi Al Gadid prison, in the remote western desert.

Another man, named al-Khatib, was detained at a military checkpoint on February 2 while he was traveling by taxi to a bus station to return home to the city of Suez. He said the military detained him for nine days and then brought him to a military prosecutor, along with 20 other detainees. The prosecutor told al-Khatib he had violated military curfew, a charge al-Khatib contested, saying that soldiers had stopped him at 1 p.m.

A military court session for al-Khatib and seven other defendants lasted 10 minutes, al-Khatib said. They were permitted neither to speak, except to deny the charges, nor to consult with court-appointed lawyers. Each defendant received a three-month suspended sentence, al-Khatib said, and soldiers then released them on the Suez-Ismailiya road near Hikstep, east of Cairo.

According to HRW, military courts have convicted dozens of civilians, all charged with criminal offenses, including possession of weapons, since the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces took control of Egypt on February 11, 2011.

Reports of military trials of civilians, in particular people accused of weapons offenses and other crimes, have surfaced in the past week. While there may be cause to detain and prosecute people suspected of committing crimes, military courts typically do not meet international fair trial standards, HRW said. In at least one case, a military court convicted detainees without the presence of lawyers. The court later dropped the charges.

The Supreme Military Court has announced numerous convictions in recent days, but it is not clear to what extent the prosecutions are related to demonstrations. On March 1 the Supreme Military Court issued a list of three convictions in the city of Ismailiya, and 15 in Cairo, for crimes including weapons possession, assault, and robbery.

On the same day, the state-run Al Ahram newspaper published statements from the Supreme Military Court listing the conviction of 13 other men in Cairo on charges of carrying rifles, explosives, knives, and other weapons, “terrorizing” citizens and violating curfew. Their sentences ranged from 5 to 15 years in prison.

On February 27 the Supreme Military Court announced sentences for 28 people charged with vandalism, carrying weapons, and other crimes at some point during the unrest of the past month. Some of those sentenced had destroyed an ATM machine, tried to steal a taxi, and carried an automatic weapon, the statement said.

On January 29 a group of people in street clothes turned eight men from Mahalla al-Kubra, a textile factory town in the Nile Delta, over to soldiers in the town’s Shobra al-Kheima neighborhood, Sayed al-Badrawi, an uncle of one of them, told Human Rights Watch.

Al-Badrawi said that on some unknown subsequent date, a military tribunal inside Wadi al-Gadid prison, 200 miles south of Cairo, convicted the eight men of carrying and using firearms, robbery, and breaking curfew. He said that on February 26, Mahmoud al-Hagrassi, a court official, told relatives of the defendants that the court had canceled these verdicts on February 23 but that the men had to appear in court in Cairo personally to gain release. The detainees could not appear, al-Badrawi said, because the prison officials declined to transport them to Cairo, citing security reasons. They remain in custody.

HRW has also received reports of abuse of protesters by soldiers. On February 26 soldiers abused protesters at Tahrir Square and the parliament building, including Amr Abdullah al-Bahari, with sticks and electric prods, a witness, Laila Soueif, who was participating in the demonstration, told Human Rights Watch. She said that when soldiers took al-Bahari into custody he had bruises and scratches on his face.

One of the other protesters at the site, Mohammed Musa, recounted brutal treatment he had received in a garage at a building housing cabinet offices, near the parliament. Soldiers, including officers, kicked him all over his body and head, he told Human Rights Watch. Soldiers stripped some detainees and sprayed them with water, and beat and shocked others with electric batons, he said.

Late on February 26 the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which currently rules Egypt, issued an apology, saying that what happened “was the result of unintentional confrontations between the military and the youth of the revolution.” The statement said, “All measures will be taken to ensure this will not happen again”

“An apology for this kind of brutal physical abuse of demonstrators and detainees is not nearly enough,” Whitson said. “Authorities need to hold the soldiers and officers responsible accountable.’’

As a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Egypt must ensure that people charged with criminal offenses have the right to a fair trial. Article 14 of the ICCPR requires “a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law and the right to review of any conviction and sentence by a higher tribunal.” Egypt’s military tribunals do not meet these core standards, Human Rights Watch said.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee – the body authorized to monitor compliance with the ICCPR – has stated that trials of civilians by military courts should be very exceptional and occur only under conditions that genuinely afford full due process. Under changes to Egypt’s Military Justice Code issued in April 2007, those convicted may appeal the ruling within 60 days, but only on procedural grounds.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), to which Egypt is also a state party, holds, in article 26, that state parties “shall have the duty to guarantee the independence of the courts.” The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the body created to monitor the implementation of the ACHPR, elaborated on these rights in its guidelines for a fair trial. “The only purpose of military courts shall be to determine offenses of a purely military nature committed by military personnel,” the commission wrote, “Military courts should not, in any circumstances whatsoever, have jurisdiction over civilians.’’

The Egyptian authorities should refer all civilian detainees to a civilian court, whose hearings are open to the public, Human Rights Watch said. Every detainee should be brought before an independent civilian judge immediately.

Egypt should also stop arbitrarily arresting peaceful demonstrators in the name of enforcing curfews, Human Rights Watch said.

“Egypt's emergency law was a major source of abuse under Mubarak and, alarmingly, these abuses are continuing,” Whitson said. “The state of emergency needs to be ended now.”

Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa program at Amnesty International, said, "The sentence against Amr Abdallah Al Beheiry should be dropped and he should be released if he was arrested simply for peacefully protesting. The Egyptian authorities cannot claim they are instigating reform while at the same time trying peaceful protesters before military courts."

The crackdown on protesters in Tahrir Square and outside the parliament who were calling for the dismissal of the current cabinet, carried on throughout Saturday morning.

More protesters were arrested and taken to military police stations behind the Egyptian museum in Tahrir Square, where Amnesty International documented the ill-treatment of previous detainees.

At around 8am on Saturday morning, a high ranking military police official reportedly apologized to the protesters for what happened and said the protesters would be released.

Later the Supreme Military Council said that while security forces meant to disperse the protest they did not intend to clash with the protesters.

"The excessive use of force against the protesters on Saturday cannot be justified. An apology cannot replace an investigation. The use of electric shock batons and the allegations of torture or other ill-treatment should be fully and impartially investigated and those responsible brought to justice," said Sahraoui.

A large group of protesters currently remains in Tahrir Square, following recent widespread protest calling for political reform.

Into this depressing background, one of Egypt’s most proficient analysts has injected a ray of sunlight.

Mohammed “Zaki” Gomaa, an international development consultant who has worked extensively with U.S. and international authorities on agribusiness development projects, told The Public Record that he believes the light at the end of the tunnel is not an oncoming train.

“There are significant differences between the military movement of 1952 and the revolution of 2011. In 1952, the revolution was initiated by the army, and then people joined and supported it. In 2011, the impetus came from the people and then army came to protect and support them. That’s a
Big Difference.”

He told us that the army would find it difficult to capture the revolution from people. “The big problem they have is the contradiction between their commitment to Mubarak -- to give him a peaceful out by making only marginal changes, and their commitment to the people to protect their revolution until it achieves the change it wants.

The army seems to have started to move more towards the people. They have started to release many who were arrested, accepted the removal of (Prime Minister) Shafik, started to listen more to the people, and accept that people want to stay in streets. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Iraq: Work in Progress, Wishful Thinking or Propaganda Vehicle?

By William Fisher

Almost eight years after US-led forces invaded Iraq, the country's transition to a functioning and sustainable democracy built on rule of law is far from
accomplished.

And knowledgeable observers are divided about whether the country is a work in progress full of growing pains, a case of wishful thinking – or a propaganda vehicle.

According to a new report from Human Rights Watch, “the rights of Iraq's most vulnerable citizens, especially women and detainees, are violated with impunity, and those who would expose official malfeasance or abuses by armed groups do so at enormous risk.”

“Iraq's future as a society based on respect for fundamental human rights depends in large part on whether Iraqi authorities will adequately defend those rights and establish a credible national criminal justice system embodying international standards with respect to torture, free expression, and violence against women and other vulnerable sectors of society,” the report says.

Bikya Masr, an independent Iraqi website, has reported on the latest outrage committed by Iraqis against other Iraqis. At about 2 a.m. on February 23, 2011, more than 20 armed men, some of them wearing brown military uniforms and red berets, and others wearing black military uniforms with skull-and-cross-bones insignia on their helmets, pulled up in Humvees outside the group’s office in Baghdad and broke in, a witness told
Human Rights Watch.

The security forces conducted a destructive search of the office that lasted more than an hour and seized the organization’s computers, external hard drives, cameras, cell phones, CDs, documents, and several flak jackets and helmets marked “Press,” the witness said.

“This raid on the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory shows the contempt of Iraqi authorities for groups that challenge the state’s human rights record,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
A spokesman for the Baghdad Operations Command confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the men were part of the Iraqi army but gave few other details.

Ziyad al-Ajili, the group’s executive director, told Human Rights Watch that the authorities “were obviously sending us a message to stop our work of supporting journalists…. This kind of governmental intimidation is precisely what we try to shed light on.” In Iraqi television interviews over the days leading up to the raid, al-Ajili voiced support for the right of Iraqis to protest peacefully and the media’s right to report on the protests.

Human Rights Watch visited the group’s office the morning after the raid and saw extensive damage, including broken furniture, destroyed equipment, kicked-in doors, and ripped-up posters and literature for the organization’s events, such as their annual “Press Courage Awards.” Framed photographs of journalists killed in Iraq since 2003 were strewn on the floor, covered in broken glass.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern that authorities would not return the computer hard drives and other electronic data storage devices seized from the group.

Al-Ajili said he fears that the authorities used the raid as a pretext to close
the office, which serves as an informal gathering point for local journalists.
In late January, the group held an awards ceremony in Baghdad, honoring
investigative journalists who had uncovered corruption and other wrongdoing.

Although improvements in security since 2008 have reduced the assaults against media workers, journalists and press freedom advocates remain at risk in Iraq.

In the months following the 2003 invasion, Iraq experienced a media boom as hundreds of new publications and television and radio channels sprung up across the country, and Iraqis gained access to satellite dishes and the Internet.

But media freedom was short-lived with the introduction of restrictive legislative and other barriers and an upsurge in violence that made Iraq one of the most the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist.

While improvements in security since 2008 have reduced the murder rate of media workers, journalism remains a hazardous occupation. Extremists and unknown assailants continue to kill media workers and bomb their bureaus. In addition, journalists now also have to contend with emboldened Iraqi and Kurdish security forces and their respective image-conscious central and regional political leaders.

Increasingly, journalists find themselves harassed, intimidated, threatened, arrested, and physically assaulted by security forces attached to government institutions and political parties. Senior politicians are quick to sue journalists and their publications for unflattering articles. The government should amend vague legislative and regulatory content-based restrictions that curtail the right to freedom of expression, and direct security forces not to harass, abuse, and intimidate journalists.

According to Human Rights Watch, the 2003 invasion and its resulting chaos “have exacted an enormous toll on Iraq's citizens. Over the past eight years, violence has claimed tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and millions continue to suffer from the effects of insecurity.”

Iraq has made some recent progress as it has pulled itself away from the civil strife that engulfed the country, especially in 2006 and 2007. “But terror attacks increased again in the run-up to the March 2010 parliamentary elections” and did not abate in the months that followed. Only
in November, eight months after those elections, did Iraq's political parties
finally agree to form a new coalition government ending the political crisis that has stunted progress on security and other fronts, including human rights.

The Human Rights Watch report is based on on-the-ground research conducted in April 2010, visiting seven cities across Iraq and interviewing 178 activists, lawyers, journalists, religious leaders, detainees (former and current), security officers, victims of violence, and ordinary Iraqis.

“We found that, beyond the continuing violence and crimes associated with it, human rights abuses are commonplace. This report presents those findings regarding violations of the rights of women and other vulnerable populations, the right to freedom of expression, and the right to be free from torture and ill-treatment in the 2009-2010 period,” HRW said.

The Rights of Women and Girls have also been adversely affected by the
deterioration of security, which has promoted a rise in tribal customs and
religiously-inflected political extremism. “This has had a deleterious effect
on women's rights, both inside and outside the home. For Iraqi women, who
enjoyed some of the highest levels of rights protection and social participation in the region before 1991, these have been heavy blows,” HRW said.

It added: “Militias promoting misogynist ideologies have targeted women and girls for assassination, and intimidated them to stay out of public life. Increasingly, women and girls are victimized in their own homes, sometimes killed by their fathers, brothers and husbands for a wide variety of perceived transgressions that allegedly shame the family or tribe. If they seek official protection from violence in the home, women risk harassment and abuse from Iraq's virtually all-male police and other security forces.”

HRW notes that “Iraqi law protects perpetrators of violence against women: Iraq's penal code considers ‘honorable motives’ to be a mitigating factor in
crimes including murder. The code also gives husbands a legal right to
discipline their wives. Trafficking in women and girls in and out of the country for sexual exploitation is widespread. There have been no reported convictions for trafficking, and a long-awaited anti-trafficking bill is on hold in the parliament, awaiting revisions.”

Outside of Kurdistan, there are no government-run shelters. The many women who have fled sectarian or other violence, who have been widowed, or who for other reasons are heads of households and dependent on state aid are particularly vulnerable to abuse.

The organization claims religious and government institutions are “sometimes complicit in their exploitation - in exchange for charity or benefits, widows have been asked to engage in "pleasure marriages," a previously banned traditional practice that critics say is akin to prostitution.”

The women who are coerced into the practice face stigmatization and have no recourse. Human Rights Watch calls on Iraq to immediately suspend and proceed to repeal sections in the penal code that allow mitigation of sentences on grounds of "honor" for violent crimes against women.

Women are but one of the groups being marginalized by the Iraqis. The country today has numerous communities whose marginalization has left them in dire straits.

Although the government has passed laws (including constitutional
safeguards) to protect some of these different communities, and in some cases has instituted significant assistance programs, it is still failing some of its most vulnerable citizens, such as internally displaced persons, minorities and persons with disabilities. Many of the government's assistance or protection programs are non-operational or sub-operational, and insufficient to meet the needs of target populations, despite Iraq's international and domestic commitments. More than 1.5 million Iraqis fled their neighborhoods as sectarian violence tore up their communities in 2006 and 2007.

Thousands of internally displaced persons now reside in squatter settlements without access to basic necessities such as clean water, electricity and sanitation. An over-stretched Ministry of Displacement has promised aid, but none of the more than a dozen displaced persons we interviewed had received any.

Human Rights Watch calls on Iraq's government to develop a coherent national strategy on refugees and internally displaced persons to facilitate their voluntary return, local integration in places of displacement, or relocation to other places in safety and dignity.

Armed groups proclaiming intolerant ideologies have continued their
assaults on minority communities, decimating Iraq's indigenous populations, and forcing thousands to flee abroad with no plans to return. The government has failed to stop such attacks targeting minority groups, including Sabian andaeans, Chaldo-Assyrians, Yazidis, and Shabaks. To end a climate of impunity, the government must conduct thorough and impartial investigations when attacks occur and bring those responsible to justice.

Years of armed conflict have resulted in thousands of war amputees and other persons with disabilities. Stigmatized, unable to find work, get adequate medical care, or obtain new prostheses and wheelchairs, persons with disabilities in Iraq find themselves relegated to the margins of society. The government needs to ensure access to education and employment, strengthen health-care services, and establish rehabilitation and psychosocial support facilities.

After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis hoped that torture as an instrument of state coercion would end. But US and British forces tortured Iraqi detainees at their facilities across Iraq, most famously at Abu Ghraib. And despite knowing there was a clear risk of torture, US authorities transferred thousands of Iraqi detainees to Iraqi custody, where Iraqi security forces have continued the torture tradition.

Iraqi interrogators routinely abuse detainees, regardless of sect, usually in order to coerce confessions. Interviews with dozens of detainees transferred from a secret detention facility outside Baghdad revealed the significant shortcomings of Iraq's criminal justice system. Interrogators sodomized and whipped detainees, burned them with cigarettes and pulled out their fingernails and teeth.

Yet Iraq's prime minister, instead of ordering a public inquiry and prosecuting those responsible for the abuse, dismissed both our findings and those of the Ministry of Human Rights as fictitious, and suspended the government's prison inspection team that initially uncovered the abuse. The government should launch independent and impartial investigations into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and institute disciplinary measures and criminal prosecution proceedings, as appropriate, against officials at all levels who are responsible for the abuse of detainees.

The United States and other governments should assist with legal reforms in Iraq by advising how to amend existing laws so that they are consistent with Iraq's obligations under international human rights standards. The international community should press Iraq to promptly investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment and criminally prosecute officials who are responsible for the abuse of detainees.

INTERPRESS News Service has reported that “the publication of a motherlode of secret field reports from the Iraq War is shining a bright light on heretofore unknown or underreported suspicions about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by their fellow Iraqis, often with their U.S. military counterparts “turning a blind eye.”

The Wikileaks documents offer graphic proof that U.S. servicemen and women often witnessed or were aware of Iraqi brutality against prisoners, but turned a blind eye.

While the Wikileaks documents are sparse on information about mistreatment of prisoners in U.S.-run detention facilities, they are heavy on the chilling details of abuse of Iraqis by Iraq's own army and police.

During the period covered by the Wikileaks documents, at least six prisoners died in Iraqi custody, most of them in recent years. Hundreds of reports referenced beatings, burnings and lashings. Such treatment appeared to be considered normal by the Iraqis.

According to The New York Times, “In one case, Americans suspected Iraqi Army officers of cutting off a detainee's fingers and burning him with acid. Two other cases produced accounts of the executions of bound detainees. And while some abuse cases were investigated by the Americans, most noted in the archive seemed to have been ignored, with the equivalent of an institutional shrug: soldiers told their officers and asked the Iraqis to investigate.”

U.S. military orders said that if U.S. personnel were not directly involved in prisoner abuse, U.S. soldiers need not take any action. This order caused U.S. forces to look the other way in cases of the abuse of Iraqis by Iraqis.

When U.S. forces discovered and reported abuse, Iraqis frequently failed to act. One report said a police chief refused to file charges “as long as the abuse produced no marks.” Another police chief told military inspectors that his officers engaged in abuse “and supported it as a method of conducting investigations.”

The Wikileaks documents also show that U.S. forces sometimes used the threat of Iraqi brutality to persuade prisoners to cooperate with interrogators.

It was not until later in the war that some of the worst examples of Iraqi abuse came to light. For example, in August 2009, an Iraqi police commando unit reported that a detainee committed suicide in its custody, but an autopsy conducted in the presence of a U.S. official “found bruises and burns on the detainee's body as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs, and neck.” The report stated that the police “have reportedly begun an investigation.”

And in December, 12 Iraqi soldiers, including an intelligence officer, were caught on video in Tal Afar shooting to death a prisoner whose hands were tied, The Times reports.

Wikileaks reports that, while the U.S. forces told the local Iraqi Army commander, no inquiry was begun because U.S. soldiers were not involved.

It was not unusual, however, for U.S. soldiers to intervene. One U.S. soldier heard screams in a prison cell and found two badly dehydrated detainees with bruises on their bodies. He ordered them out of Iraqi custody.

In August 2006, Wikileaks documents show, a U.S. sergeant in Ramadi walked into an Iraqi military police station and found an Iraqi lieutenant using an electrical cable to slash the bottom of a detainee's feet. The sergeant stopped him, but later he found the same Iraqi officer whipping a detainee's back.

The Wikileaks disclosures, while reporting little that was unknown, paint a far more detailed picture of the military sea-change that defined the United States' involvement in Iraq. The New York Times says, “The early days of the Iraq war, with all its Wild West chaos, ushered in the era of the private contractor, wearing no uniform but fighting and dying in battle, gathering and disseminating intelligence and killing presumed insurgents.”

WikiLeaks is an international organization that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. Its website was launched in 2006.

Meanwile, Marian Wang of ProPublica, wrote that “Iraqi protesters clashed with Iraqi riot police on Feb. 25, 2011, in Baghdad's Tahrir square following a rally calling for improved public services, more jobs and less corruption.”

She continued: “As the Mideast protests and government crackdowns continue, one country to watch closely is Iraq, with whom the U.S. has a long-term partnership and where clashes between protesters and government forces recently turned violent. Even as Iraqi security forces detained and abused hundreds of intellectuals and journalists, the U.S. government—in keeping with a pattern of silence on Iraq's abuses—has withheld criticism of its strategic ally. (Salon noticed this too )

“Asked generally about the violence against Iraqi demonstrators on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said only “the approach we’ve taken with regard to Iraq is the same that we’ve taken with regard to the region,” which he said was to call on governments to respond to the protests peacefully. Neither the White House nor the State Department seem to have mentioned the matter since. Yesterday's State Department briefing discussed Libya, Egypt, Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Pakistan, Argentina, South Africa and Haiti—Iraq was never discussed.

ProPubica wrote that “nearly 30 people have been killed in the Iraqi unrest so far. Unlike in other Mideast countries, the Iraqis are demanding better services and an end to corruption, not an end to the government.

Four journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after they had left a protest of thousands at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit.

One journalist told the Washington Post that Iraqi soldiers used electric shocks on him.

It’s far from the first time the government of Iraq has been accused of detaining and abusing citizens, including journalists. Allegations of abuse by the post-Saddam Iraqi government have been made year after year , even at times by the U.S. government, which has also had to come to terms with its own detainee torture and abuse in American-run prisons in Iraq.

Last year, the Los Angeles Times uncovered a secret Baghdad prison where hundreds of Sunni men were detained and tortured by Iraqi security forces. “They beat people, they used electricity,” one Iraqi official told the Times. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to shut the prison, saying: “Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this. We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

Asked about the detention and torture by Iraqi forces in July 2010, a senior administration official said in a background briefing that the U.S. is "engaged with the Iraqis" on these kind of issues "on a regular basis." The administration official noted that what was "particularly striking" was that the Iraqi government took corrective action and "Iraqis are finding a way to use the political system."

Months later, Amnesty International released another report detailing continued widespread abuse and torture in Iraqi prisons. And earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a report that described yet another secret prison run by Maliki that was still operating. (Iraqi government officials denied the report.) Two Iraqi journalists told NPR their stories—one said he had been imprisoned at a secret facility for nine months; the other said his nephew was detained by Maliki’s personal combat brigade, which reportedly controls the secret prison.

Asked earlier this month about the latest prison allegations, a U.S. military spokesman made clear that U.S. troops were not involved and referred further questions to Maliki’s government, the Post reported

Finally, the Post reported on Sunday that Iraqi security forces detained about 300 people, including prominent journalists, artists and lawyers who took part in nationwide demonstrations Friday, in what some of them described as an operation to intimidate Baghdad intellectuals who hold sway over popular opinion.

On Saturday, the Post wrote, four journalists who had been released described being rounded up well after they had left a protest of thousands at Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They said they were handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit.

"It was like they were dealing with a bunch of al-Qaeda operatives, not a group of journalists," said Hussan al-Ssairi, a journalist and poet who described seeing hundreds of protesters in black hoods at the detention facility.

"Yesterday was like a test, like a picture of the new democracy in Iraq."
The Iraq protests were different from many of the revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa in that demonstrators were calling for reform, not for getting rid of the government. Their demands ranged from more electricity and jobs to ending corruption, reflecting a dissatisfaction with government that cuts across sectarian and class lines, the Post wrote.

Democracy A Minefield for Egypt’s Rulers

By William Fisher

As Egypt’s interim rulers unveiled proposed constitutional amendments and a timetable for elections, more than twenty Egyptian human rights organizations charged that the military is failing to “lay the foundation for a democratic, civil state that respects human rights -- the overriding goal for which Egyptians made costly sacrifices.”

The organizations acknowledged that “The armed forces acted as a pillar of support for the Egyptian revolution, helping to achieve its first goal of the removal of the former president and the dissolution of the People’s Assembly and Shura Council, which were stigmatized and delegitimized by flagrantly fraudulent elections.”

But they said the military wasn’t moving rapidly enough in many areas and too rapidly in a few others.

The Egyptian State web site reported that, “Members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces confirmed during a meeting with the Youth Union of the revolution, their full understanding of the demands of the January 25 Revolution paying attention to the legitimate people’s demands. The Supreme Council stressed that all promises given by the Armed Forced will be achieved.”

The Council pledged to hand the authority to the coming president in October, adding that, “within this period the Armed Forces have exerted efforts since January 28 and are still doing their best in order to achieve all people’s demands, but it takes time, as the Armed Forces is the only institution in charge shouldering the responsibility of everything where almost other bodies engaged in a sit-in which affect the production process.”

The accelerated elections timetable announced by the military has also drawn criticism from other quarters. Human Rights First, a U.S.-based human rights group believes the rapid timetable “could undermine efforts to reform the nation’s existing government.”

Human Rights First’s Neil Hicks declared, ““Today’s announcement raises concerns that the military leadership may be seeking an electoral rubber stamp to preserve the status quo of a military dominated government, which Egypt has had since 1952. This swift timetable will make it difficult for opposition political parties to organize or for new political groupings to coalesce and register.”

According to today’s SCAF announcement, a referendum on
constitutional amendments will take place in April 2011, followed by
parliamentary elections in June 2011 and a presidential election in October
2011.

Zyad El-Eleimy, a member of the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, said the council's timeframe for the referendum and the elections reflected its eagerness to hand over power; however many worry that the timeframe is not long enough to allow newer political parties to establish support and legitimacy.

The Coalition of the Youth Revolution warned against the fast-approaching elections, and called for all timetables to be delayed one year so as not to affect the revolution and its gains. The Youth Coalition has called for the presidential election to take place before the parliamentary elections, or at least for there to be a presidential council appointed beforehand

The interim ruling Coalition has proposed a 12-month interim government, with a presidential council of two lawyers or judges and one military figure ruling alongside a cabinet of technocrats. The army has refused to give a concrete timetable for the removal of the remaining ministers of the Mubarak regime.

Legal experts and politicians have suggested that the presidential election be held before the parliamentary poll so no single group can seize parliament to mobilize support for a presidential candidate. Opposition groups have called for the postponement of parliamentary elections until political parties are strong enough to gain people's trust and build popular bases.

The human rights organizations said the Supreme Council must assume its responsibilities and honor its vows to respond to the demands and aspirations of the Egyptian people as expressed in the January 25 revolution.

Additionally, it must face the repercussions of the overthrow of the Mubarak regime and the disintegration and suspicious withdrawal of the security establishment that accompanied it.

The Council “must also expose and curb the catastrophic consequences of theft, financial and administrative corruption, and the ruination of the country’s political life perpetrated by a broad network of interests, including the office of the presidency, prominent figures of what was previously known as the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), and influential leaders within the parliament and the executive branch.”

The organizations made four principal observations:

1. Making a clean break with the former dictator’s regime required the immediate removal of the government created by him to mislead the people and contain their revolution. Attempts to repair this government with piecemeal changes will not dispel the legitimate fears many people feel about the political survival of certain figures close to the deposed president and cannot so easily shirk their responsibility for both the wide range of crimes committed during Mubarak’s tenure and the criminal misinformation campaigns designed to discredit the goals of the revolution and incite against those who were part of it.

2. Making a clean break with the policies and crimes of the Mubarak regime, restoring the rule of law, and subordinating state institutions to that law requires more decisive, transparent steps to hold accountable and punish figures responsible for crimes and grave abuses committed under Mubarak’s regime in public and fair trials.

The groups said the measures taken thus far by the military “seem selective and not aimed at establishing a legal system for accountability and punishment or announcing facts to the public.”

In particular, they note “severe shortcomings, or at the very least an unjustified secrecy, surrounding the measures that must be taken to ensure accountability for major crimes,”

These include:

a) The identification and prosecution of those responsible for issuing orders to open fire on demonstrators.
b) The identification and prosecution of those responsible for giving the green light to acts of murder and paid thuggery in the name of “loyalty to Mubarak.”
c) Making public the facts surrounding the agencies and persons responsible for the suspicious withdrawal and disappearance of police forces and the release of prisoners and criminals from prisons, which left the country vulnerable to widespread looting and theft.

d) Former Information Minister Anas al-Fiqqi must be prosecuted for his responsibility in managing the media campaigns aimed at misleading public opinion, smearing participants in the popular revolution, and the xenophobic campaign inciting hatred of foreigners.

3. Confirming the legitimacy of the demands of the Egyptian labor movement since 12 February demanding its social and economic rights, the undersigned organizations announce their solidarity with the labor strikes and urge the Supreme Council of Armed forces to:

a) Quickly implement court decisions to set a minimum wage that is truly compatible with prices;
b) Quickly transform temporary into permanent labor;
c) Set unemployment benefits;
d) Dissolve the board of directors of the Egyptian General Federation of Trade Unions and of the general labor unions, which their elections were held in violation to orders of the administrative courts and the Supreme Administrative Court;
e) Depose the heads and board members of holding companies, who took part in wasting public money and assets, crushing national industry, and overlooking labor rights.

4. Making a clean break with the police state, the systematic practices of torture, involuntary disappearance, and murder, and the executive’s control of the Public Prosecutor’s Office that have existed in Egypt for several decades requires the dissolution of the State Security apparatus. It is unfortunate that the leaders of this agency—responsible for grave human rights abuses, the destruction of political life, and the undermining of Egyptians’ dignity—are still walking the streets freely.

Thus far the public has been given only brief statements indicating that the director of the agency has been suspended and is being investigated, with no clarification as to the nature of these investigations. In addition, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces should open an immediate investigation in the documented reports indicating the involvement of members of the Military Police in cases of arbitrary detention and torture of detainees during the last period and refer those responsible to trial.

The organizations said they have previously stated that “the coming elections, both parliamentary and presidential, should come at the end of a transitional period of no less than one year during which civil liberties are fully respected, particularly the freedom to establish political parties, trade unions, NGOs, and all forms of media.”

Today, the groups accused the military of moving too quickly toward elections for which proper preparations have not been made.

Such haste, they said, “is liable to lead to the establishment of constitutional institutions in a manner that differs little from those under the Mubarak regime and will do little to enable the forces and youth movements that led this revolution to express themselves politically in new political parties and independent media.”

They added, “Indeed, as it currently stands, the outcome of the coming elections will continue to be disputed by the ability of NDP members to mobilize factional sentiment and money and the organizational ability of the Muslim Brotherhood to employ religion and charitable work to attract votes.”

The organizations cautioned that “holding elections after only minor constitutional revisions threatens aspirations for a real separation and balance of powers and runs the risk of preserving the same dictatorial prerogatives enjoyed by the president in the suspended constitution, with no accountability or genuine parliamentary oversight. This threatens the perpetuation of the same autocratic system, only without Mubarak and some of his supporters.”

“The democratic transition process – under the joint leadership of a presidential council and a new civil government – should enjoy the wide partnership of the people represented in the forces that led the revolution – women and men – and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. This needs opening an institutional dialogue with political parties and groups and civil society, led by youth groups who have instigated the revolution. The dialogue should not be reduced to discussion with individuals and must provide the opportunity for the widest societal dialogue to make the aspired future,” the groups said.

Signatories included virtually all of the major human rights groups in Egypt.

The military’s announcements came on the heels of more violence in Egypt over the weekend. Egyptian security forces used force to disrupt protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in the city of Mansoura. The Army later apologized to the peaceful demonstrators.

HRF’s Hicks observed that these actions and today’s announcement “are raising concerns that Egypt may be reverting to business as usual in its form of government.”

Over the weekend, the Constitutional Committee announced proposed constitutional amendments that ease restrictions on eligibility conditions for presidential elections, limit the number of presidential terms to two four-year periods and ensure full judicial monitoring of elections.

Specifically, the Articles planned for amendment are Article 75, 76, and 77, which deal with presidential term limits and nominations; Article 139, which will force the president to appoint a deputy; Article 189, which mandates next president to draft a new constitution within six months; Article 148, which will give parliament control over the emergency law; Article 93, which will give the Supreme Court control over the legitimacy of parliament; and Article 179, which will limit the government's power to infringe on rights in the name of stopping terrorism.

A national referendum on the changes is expected on March 19th. The Muslim Brotherhood has said the changes are reasonable, however they expressed concern that Article 5, which prohibits religious party formation, remains.

The April 6 Youth Movement has expressed contentment but proposed that each amendment receive a separate vote and there should be additional language protecting political freedoms. The amendments have garnered mixed reactions, as some groups feel more is needed.

While opposition groups welcomed the proposed amendments to the constitution, they maintain they are not enough to guarantee free and fair presidential elections.

Many voiced concerns that the proposed amendments still give the president the ultimate authority and does not change the fundamental system wherein the president can interfere directly in all aspects of government.

Others stressed that there is not enough protection for civil liberties and political parties.

The Egyptian Coalition for Civic Education and Women's Participation, which comprises over 100 NGOs, denounced amendments proposed to Articles 75, 76 and 189, saying they exclude women candidates from presidential elections. A widespread debate has emerged between human rights organizations in Egypt as to whether the proposed amendments will provide enough protection for Egyptian citizens.

It is worth noting that there has been something of a strain developing between the Army and the pro-democracy forces. During the height of the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, the Army was greeted affectionately by protestors, who felt the military had kept pro-Mubarak forces at bay outside Tahrir Square.

But the weekend violence by police toward demonstrators has perhaps taken some of the edge off those warm feelings. In addition, both the army and demonstrators are beginning to learn the full extent of what has to be changed before Egypt can have a democratic form of government – and both are feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task.

Finally, pro-democracy forces point out that every member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces owes his appointment to Hosni Mubarak. They question whether this panel can be independent enough and robust enough to rid the government of those who profited so handsomely from Mubarak’s crony capitalism.

Could Syria Be Next?

By William Fisher

As the state dominos continue to fall across the Arab Middle East and North Africa, “who’s next?” has become the most fashionable parlor game in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and points East.

Tunisia and Egypt have had their so-far successful uprisings. Pro-democracy demonstrators in Yemen and Bahrain are still trying to tip over their dominos. Libya’s domino is, as of five minutes ago, in a horizontal position. Morocco, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia appear to be vertical for the moment, with the Saudis offering its people the most aggressive rewards to stay quiet and enjoy the sunshine: cold hard cash.

But what about Syria? We haven’t heard much about this bastion of democracy, but that’s because the media tends to go where cataclysms have already happened, not those where the explosion is sometime in the future.

How far in the future, lord only knows. But assignment editors might do well to keep a special eye on Syria as possibly the next domino to fall.

Why not? It seems to have all the ingredients!

Syria’s 20 million people live under the authoritarian presidential regime of Bashar al-Asad. The president makes key decisions with counsel from a small circle of security advisors, ministers, and senior members of the ruling Ba'ath (Arab Socialist Renaissance) Party. The constitution mandates the primacy of Ba'ath party leaders in state institutions and society. President al-Asad and party leaders, supported by security services, dominate all three branches of government in what is characterized as a republic.

But, regardless of its structure, it is a dictatorship.

According to the U.S. State Department, in 2007 al-Asad was confirmed for another seven-year term in a "yes or no" referendum that local and international human rights advocates considered neither free nor fair.

What’s Syria’s human rights situation today? Probably as miserable as anywhere in the Middle East. But receiving a lot less attention from the U.S. press. When American journalists write about Syria, it’s generally within the context of its proximity to and violent history with neighboring Israel. Or Syria’s relationship with Iran, whose shipments of arms for Hezbollah must pass through Syrian territory.

But Syria could become a crashing domino for none of those reasons. It might happen because, in a neighborhood peopled by monster governments, Syria is a monster in its own right.

Just look at 2010 alone. In its annual report on human rights around the world, the State Department tells us that during 2010 “the government and members of the security forces committed numerous serious human rights abuses, and the human rights situation worsened.”

Here’s more from the State Department report:

During 2010, the government systematically repressed citizens' abilities to change their government. In a climate of impunity, there were instances of arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life.

Members of the security forces tortured and physically abused prisoners and detainees. Security forces arrested and detained individuals--including activists, organizers, and other regime critics -- without due process.

Lengthy pretrial and incommunicado detention remained a serious problem. During the year the government sentenced to prison several high-profile members of the human rights and civil society communities.

The government violated citizens' privacy rights and imposed significant restrictions on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, association, and travel. An atmosphere of corruption pervaded the government.

Violence and societal discrimination against women continued, as did sexual exploitation, increasingly aimed at Iraqi refugees, including minors. The government discriminated against minorities, particularly Kurds and Ahvazis, and severely restricted workers' rights.

During the year there were numerous reports of deaths in detention, torture, and people being disappeared. Security Services appear to act with total impunity and there are no reports of arrests, trials or even reprimands of law enforcement officials.

So sayeth our State Department.

There is no freedom of expression in Syria. The most recent outrage in this department is the arrest and jailing of a 20-year-old woman blogger, who has been sentenced after a closed-door trial to five years in jail on state security charges -- "divulging information to a foreign state."

It is widely believed that she was targeted for her online poems and
writings on political and social issues, such as on the fate of Palestinians
after the 2008 military operations in Gaza.

The State Security Court's verdict is final, and there is no possibility of
appeal.

Before the current president, Basher al-Assad, there was his father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country for more than thjirty years. His reign was brutal and retrograde. Syria’s support for terrorist groups isolated it even from the more moderate Arab governments.

While Assad has from time to time made gestures toward a more open and mild regime, Syria has remained a dictatorship.

Assad’s government demonstrated its hold on the country last month, while the Middle East and North Africa was exploding in a wave of protest and civil disobedience. Anti-Assad citizens ran campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, calling for demonstrations in Damascus on Feb. 4 and 5. But, as the New York Times reported, “no one showed up except for police officers and members of the security forces.”

The Times wrote: “In stark contrast to several other Arab capitals, where hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated against their governments, planned ‘Day of Rage’ in Damascus on Friday failed to attract any protesters against President Bashar al-Assad, a sign that he opposition here remains too weak to challenge one of the region’s most entrenched ruling parties.”

Syrian activists warn that Syria is “not ready" to sustain a Tahrir-type protest.

But authorities are taking no chances. On Friday, security officials arrested Ghassan al-Najjar, an Islamist who heads a small opposition group. He had called on Syrians in his city to demand more freedoms.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement last week that at least 10 people were summoned by the police in the previous 48 hours and pressed to not demonstrate. There were also reports that prominent opposition figures, many of whom spent years in jail for opposing the government, were also summoned. On Thursday, three Syrians were briefly detained and forced to sign pledges not to participate in future protests, after they protested, along with 12 others, against corruption and high cellphone costs.

At least 100 Syrians held a vigil in support of their Egyptian counterparts last Saturday near the Egyptian Embassy in Damascus, and quietly lit candles as police officers kept a watchful eye nearby.

Eventually, witnesses said, one of them shouted: “Oh blow, winds of change. Yesterday Tunisia became green, tomorrow Egypt will be free. Oh, winds of change, blow and sweep away injustice and shame.” As she finished, they said, officers quickly moved in, ordering them to leave immediately or else they would be detained.

“It is still soon for us,” a Syrian activist told the New York Times. “We have time. The street is definitely not ready yet,” he said.

One factor possibly discouraging Syrian activists from staging a Tahrir Square-type demonstration is the memory of The Hama massacre of February 1982,when the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. An estimated 17,000 to 40,000 people were killed, including about 1,000 soldiers, and large parts of the old city were destroyed. The attack has been described as possibly being "the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East".

But there are other fctors as well. Chip Pitts, a lecturer in law at Stanford and Oxford universities, told The Public Record, “Syria would certainly be more of an uphill battle, being relatively insular as compared to the other regimes in the region, and likely falling on the Libyan side of the equation, where economic and political pressures and latent resentment against the long-standing and repressive rule by the minority elite (the Alawites, in Syria) could result in even wider and more effective action than the fairly small protests seen to date.”

But, he addds, “the regime would almost certainly continue to resort to brutal force in order to defend and perpetuate itself as revealed in its recent reactions, its crackdowns on bloggers, and the alleged killings of prisoners who had started an uprising at Sednaya Prison last week.”

“The continued serious human rights violations and extreme intolerance of dissent under Syria’s ever-present emergency laws combine with the limited economic opportunity for the 65% of the populace under age 30, to set the stage for a wider revolt that could put the lie to the somewhat kinder, gentler, and less hated face presented by Bashar al-Assad (including in his turnabout in granting the recent civil pay rise and his stated willingness to embrace political reforms),” he said. President Assad lifted the three-year ban on Facebook and YouTube only three weeks ago.

Pitts added: “The Assad family has already proven itself capable, like Gaddafi, of repeatedly deploying the Syrian military against the Syrian people, especially including the Kurdish Syrians and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the notorious massacre of tens of thousands in the town of Hama in 1982 remains very much in everyone’s mind. Former staff colonel Bashar al-Assad still depends on the military and the secret police/intelligence Mukhaberat to retain power, and despite some perceptions to the contrary, is still his uncle’s nephew and his father’s son. That said, the ongoing events of the past few weeks certainly demonstrate that anything is possible –and long overdue change in Syria would be very welcome.”

Pitts concluded, “I also think it’s undoubtedly true that Bashar al-Assad is less hated than Ghadafi, in part because he hasn’t been in power for so long -- i.e. he’s a younger generation and the successor autocrat rather than the decades-long autocrat -- but also because he comes across as more normal and (relatively) less arbitrary. The fact that unemployment in Syria (8%) is only about one-third that of Libya (25%) probably also plays a role.”

Americans who have followed the “war on terror” as waged by the George W. Bush Administration may be familiar with Syrian justice through the ordeal experienced by Maher Arar.

Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin who was detained at Kennedy Airport in New York in September 2002, held in detention for two weeks, flown to Jordan, and then driven to Syria, where he was detained for ten months and, he says, tortured repeatedly.

It appears that Arar had been named by two other Canadians, `Abdullah al-Malki, of Syrian origin, and Ahmad al-Maati, of Egyptian origin, whom Syrian intelligence agents reportedly interrogated and tortured earlier in 2002. All three were eventually released without ever being charged with a criminal offense.

The Canadian Government convened a blue-ribbon inquiry into the circumstances of Arar’s “rendition” to Syria, determined that it had been guilty of providing false intelligence to U.S. authorities. The head of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police was forced to resign his post. The Canadian government apologized to Arar and awarded him a settlement of approximately $10 million.

Egypt: Army Attacks Pro-Democracy Demonstrators; Later Apologizes

By William Fisher

As press attention shifted away from Egypt in the wake of the unanimous vote of the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his cronies, Egypt was experiencing developments that some observers viewed with alarm while others downplayed as an “entirely predictable dynamic” we can “expect to see” in other countries undergoing similar changes.

These developments included brutal beatings of peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir Square by members of the military. The Army has since apologized for the abuse of peaceful demonstrators, but it remains unclear why the army attacked these citizens in the first place.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information reported that “hundreds of thousands” of Egyptians demonstrated in Tahrir Square on Friday in protest the continuation of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik in office. The group said the protestors demanded the dissolution of the state security apparatus and the release prisoners of conscience.

Despite continued cheers in support of the army, army units assaulted the protesters, beating and chasing them on the streets of Cairo using electric batons that led to many casualties, the organization charged.

One of the abused demonstrators, whose name is being withheld for his safety, blogged the following first hand account of what occurred:

“We were a little less than 150 people [in Tahrir Square] that night [February 25]. At around 11:30 in the evening of the 25th of February, army soldiers formed a cordon around us without violations; one of my friends thinks this might have been their way of kettling us and making sure our numbers don’t grow around the ministerial cabinet. They dismantled their human cordon at 15 minutes past midnight of the 26th of February. At around that time we started hearing news of the sit-in in Tahrir being violently dispersed. And at around 1:30 am that very night, the army started using electric batons to disperse the sit-in and of-course we ran. They continued to push, beat and kick at us, until they managed to disperse us.

“And then I was arrested…As I ran, I came across a fallen protestor, and stopped to check on him. An officer grabbed me and started to push and beat at me and I said to him “Don’t hit! Just arrest me!” And he replied “Come here ya ruh ummak,” and they pulled me into a garage in the ministerial cabinet; and this is where the physical and moral torture began.

“In the ministerial cabinet’s garage…I was shocked at the numbers of army personnel beating up protestors in the garage. At first I thought these must have been thugs, but before I had a chance to finish the thought, I was pulled very roughly and ordered to squat on the ground. With that they started to kick at every part of my body; I tried to cover my face to protect it, but one of the officers pulled my arm away and stepped on my face pushing it to the ground, while they tied my hands behind my back. They – Lieutenants, First Lieutenants and a row of officers and soldiers -- then proceeded to kick at my face as if my head were a soccer-ball.

“Others around me were much worse off. One was stripped bare in the cold and sprayed with water and beaten, while another was beaten until his shoulder was dislocated, while others were electrocuted with the electric batons. One protestor called out to declare he had a heart condition; and they shouted back at him to ask what he was doing in a protest if he had such a condition, as they proceeded to pull his hand away from his heart, and kick him where it was.

“Twice we heard what sounded like a high-ranking officer giving an order to end the beating “No one hit any of them anymore!”. But as soon as he would leave, the beating would start again; it was difficult to tell if they really weren’t following orders, or if the whole thing was just theatrical. For the beating never ceased.


“What was said in the Garage…What was worse than the beating and the insults, were the accusations that the officers and military personnel were throwing at us while we were in there. When I first got in they played the old reel of accusations related to treachery and our being spies; I could even hear an officer shout as he beat a protestor “And you’re getting 50 Euros to insult president Mubarak ya ruh ummak?!”.

“And while we were all hearing variations of this, each of us was specifically asked to say “Long live Hosni Mubarak”, and those who refused got a fresh course of beating. It was clear to us that they didn’t think they were dealing with thugs, but believed they were dealing with paid security threats.

“And one of the personal violations that I could note is their occasional calling out that “We’re in Abu Ghareeb [Abu Ghraib] here,” as they piled protestors un-top of each other and beat them.”

It remained unclear why the government soldiers assaulted the demonstrators. The Military has apologized for the beatings, according to Muhammed Tolba, Executive Secretary of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.
The apology is confirmed by one of those who was abused.

In his blog, he refers to “the kind treatment we received from the unit 28 military prosecution, as well as the respect and grace with which we were treated on the morning of the 26th of February when we were transferred to the military police administration. To be honest the Major General running the military police administration, and fellow officers and individuals were all very generous, and treated us like guests and not criminals.”

And he concludes, “And an extra thanks to the Major General for paying special attention to our cases – those who were beaten and assaulted the dawn of that very day – and taking me and a friend to Kobry El Qubba hospital in the company of an Officer to help with the ex-rays and check-ups and ensure our safety himself. They sent the rest back to Tahrir in a microbus at the same time.”

The assault on the Tahrir Square demonstrators came a few hours after Prime Minister Shafik issued instructions to cut a TV show by because guests of the show “criticized Shafiq and expressed solidarity with public demands to dismiss the prime minister.”

The group said that yesterday’s assault by the army “coincided with the return of police forces to practice repression, police forces assaulted thousands of peaceful demonstrators.” They added that “police used tear gas and batons.”

“The army assault on protestors calls for a clear apology from the army. To make [up] for this insult, the army must expel Ahmed Shafik and all the ministers loyal to Mubarak: Mahmoud Wagdy and Ahmed Aboul Gheit as well as dissolution of the state security department and prosecuting all its officers.”

The Network said, “The military’s insistence on keeping of the symbols deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak, and the attack on demonstrators, calls for an immediate apology to the Egyptian people and dismissing Shafik immediately.”

It added, “The Egyptians who made a revolution for their right to freedom and democracy, will not give up on deposing all symbols of dictatorship, starting with the dismissal of Shafik, the enemy of the people and enemy of freedom of the press, and reaching to dissolve state security and to prosecute all its officers, interior minister Mahmoud Wagdy on top.”

“The military has to know that there is no turning back. This revolution has sacrificed hundreds of martyrs for freedom and the Egyptians will not be give up by any force their the claim for a democratic civilian government clean of all symbols of dictatorship,” the Network added.

According to Chip Pitts, a long-time human rights defender and law lecturer at Stanford University, “The situation remains very fraught and uncertain, and I’m with the protesters. The government must move sooner rather than later to institutionalize truly new and democratic civilian rule.”

But he denied the Army’s action was a step backward. He told The Public Record, “I believe that this isn’t necessarily a regression, but is rather the entirely predictable dynamic arising as a result of the tumultuous changes now taking place in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa (and, I hope, elsewhere), and we can expect to see them in the other countries undergoing change as well.”

He added, “The continued resort to repression by Shafik and the remnants of the Mubarak regime represents their attempt to firmly manage and even co-opt the reform process through the same measures that have worked for decades. Thanks to the persistent courage of the protesters and the Egyptian people, those measures will work no longer and will only increase the risks that Shafik and his ilk will be held personally accountable for human rights violations if they don’t step forward fully onto the right side of this historic movement of peoples.”

The Arabic Network also said that the ministry of interior suppressed peaceful demonstrators in Mansoura on the same day.

It said, “The consecutive attacks on freedom of expression and media freedoms in Egypt during the past few days are similar to those of the days of police repression before January 25th . The attempts of Shafik to impose himself as a guest on a popular show despite the refusal of the producer is an unacceptable violation of freedom of expression and a breach to principles and objectives of the revolution.”

“We do not know the reasons for the insistence of the military council on keeping Shafik who was appointed by the deposed dictator despite his participation in crimes against the revolution of January 25 as PM. His government hired thugs to attack protesters with petrol bombs, camels and bladed weapons.”

Shafik is the interim Prime Minister of Egypt. He was appointed Prime Minister by then-president Hosni Mubarak on January 29, 2011 in response to the 2011 Egyptian protests.

After a career as a fighter pilot, squadron, wing and base commander, he served as the commander of the Egyptian Air Force from 1996–2002, and was nominated in 2002 to become the Egyptian Minister for Civil Aviation.

All the members of the Supreme Military Council currently governing Egypt owe their appointments to Mubarak. In addition, many Mubarak appointees are still in place in senior posts.

Yesterday, Saturday, was also the day when the committee appointed to amend several articles of the Egyptian constitution was to have turned its work over to the Supreme Council.

The articles were to be amended to make it easier to form and register political parties, enter candidates in political contests, and ensure fair and free elections in the future.