By William Fisher
Nearly two dozen of Egypt’s most respected human rights organizations charged yesterday that the changes made by country’s “temporary” military rulers are cosmetic and intended to paper over the “vast gulf” that separates those whose efforts won the revolution and those who are now charged with running the country.
It is believed to be the strongest attack yet made by the human rights community against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt.
In a statement issued yesterday the coalition of human rights groups said it
“decisively condemns the exploitation of the political crisis between the forces of the revolution and those managing the country’s affairs in the transitional period as an excuse to employ the same repressive tools and means that the regime of deposed president Hosni Mubarak used against its enemies and critics.”
The group added, The SCAF has been “foregoing dialogue, negotiations, and political solutions in favor of the old security approach. Such security solutions lead to violence, oppression, and an increasing use of repressive legislation against opponents, be they political activists, media workers, or civil society and rights activists.”
Regrettably, the undersigned organizations have noticed that the policies recently embraced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government that heeds its dictates have entailed increasing political tension and have strengthened the belief that a vast gulf separates, on one hand, Egyptians’ aspirations for democracy, an end to the legacies of an obsolete despotic regime, and a clean break with the practices and policies of that repressive regime, and, on the other, the tendencies of those administering the country’s affairs, who are clearly and gradually preserving the primary components of the deposed president’s regime while attempting to give it a facelift by sacrificing several old regime figures.”
“This,” they added, “is an insult to the thousands who sacrificed and died in a vicious battle to overthrow the entire regime, not for the sake of a few new faces.”
The groups were most forceful in their condemnation of SCAF Decree (93/2011), “which not only revived the application of the emergency law—which has officially been in force since the Mubarak era—but also expanded the scope of the law to exceed the limits guaranteed in 2010 by the deposed president, who vowed to apply the law only in the context of crimes of terrorism and drug-trafficking.”
The SCAF’s decision “allows the emergency law to be invoked for disturbances to national security and the public order and to confront acts of thuggery, assaults on the freedom to work, vandalism of facilities, the obstruction of transportation and roads, and the dissemination of false news and statements.”
The group added, “The expansive language of the decree permits a broad interpretation of such acts that will allow for the intimidation and harassment of persons involved in peaceful protests, demonstrations, and strikes. It also constitutes a direct threat to freedom of expression and a free media.”
The groups also focused their wrath on what they characterized as the broader picture. They said, “The use of the emergency law to stifle basic liberties and to repress actions by forces of the revolution cannot be viewed separately from the broad, escalating assault on civil society institutions and various media outlets.”
The groups said, “It should be noted that in the run-up to the 2010 elections, the most infamous in Egypt’s history, the Mubarak regime launched an all-out attack on various forms of media, several of the most prominent political talk shows, and human rights organizations and civil society, impeding their ability to monitor the elections and expose irregularities.”
They added, “The course pursued by those currently administering the country’s affairs differs little from the ways of the Mubarak regime. They have clung to an electoral system that has been nearly unanimously rejected by all political forces and human rights groups, although these forces have proposed alternative electoral laws that advocate elections based on unconditional, proportional lists, whether for parties, coalitions, or independents.”
As a result, they said, “The electoral system chosen by the SCAF and the flagrant deficiencies in districting have provoked the anger of various parties, who believe that these measures will only reinstate a parliament dominated by the same forces that controlled Mubarak-era parliaments through the use of money, narrow partisan interests, and religious sentiment.”
“Adhering to the same policies pursued by Mubarak and his dissolved party, those administering the country’s affairs have preceded the impending parliamentary elections with a hostile assault on the media that has involved suspending licenses for new satellite stations and closely monitoring the satellite media as a prelude to taking legal action against satellite channels that “ignite civil strife,” in the words of the Minister of Information.”
“Under the pretexts of alleged ‘media chaos’ and of examining satellite channels’ sources of funding, the campaign began by targeting 16 satellite channels. For example, the office of al-Jazeera Egypt was shut down and the station’s transmitter was confiscated on the grounds that the station had not received a broadcast license, although the station had applied for a license four months ago and had been broadcasting in the interim without government objection,” the groups said, adding:
In tandem with this attack on the media, the campaign against civil society associations, human rights organizations, and some political groups involved in the January 25 revolution was redoubled. After the ouster of Mubarak, these groups have been subject to the same baseless accusations used by the Mubarak regime against human rights defenders and the same allegations by which that regime sought to stoke popular hostility to the revolution and those involved in it.
Under Mubarak, the issues of external funding and foreign agendas were used to stigmatize political activists and impugn the patriotism of hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Egypt’s public squares, as prelude to an attack by paid bands organized by the network of interests overseen by the ruling NDP and the police state apparatus at that time.
The groups say they “still hope that the SCAF will assume its responsibilities to achieve the democratic aims expressed by the Egyptian revolution, from which the SCAF derives its legitimacy in this transitional period. We emphasize that securing a safe transition to democracy requires those currently administering the country’s affairs to open up the public sphere to a democratic, equitable, institutional dialogue among all active parties in society, in order to reach a social consensus on the political system and the course it will take.”
The groups asked the SCAF to revoke its decision to activate and expand the emergency law, abolish the law criminalizing strikes and sit-ins, end the state of emergency, and suspend all exceptional trials, including trials of civilians in military courts, and all trials in the Emergency Supreme State Security Court.
In addition to urging the SCAF to end its campaign against NGOs, the group calls on the military men to reconsider the electoral system and electoral districting to be responsive to widespread demands for an unconditional, proportional list system in all seats in elections for the People’s Assembly and Shura Council; and release a time-bound agenda for the transitional period that includes specific dates for parliamentary and presidential elections and a referendum on the new constitution.
Some of the better known groups signing the statement include Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Arab Penal Reform Organization, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, and Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Bahrain’s Doctors
By William Fisher
As 20 of Bahrain’s physicians were being sentenced to prison terms of 5-15 years for treating victims of peaceful demonstrations, the US Government was readying the red bows on a package of $200m in military sales to the tiny Gulf nation.
The arms sale comes less than three months after the US included Bahrain on a list of human rights offenders requiring the United Nations' attention. According to Al Jazeera, the US Government report showed a $112m rise in sales to Bahrain, much of it involving aircraft and military electronics. The US also licensed $760,000 in exports of rifles, shotguns and assault weapons in 2010. US military exports to Bahrain in 2009 totaled $88m.
Bahrain, a tiny island nation that is home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet, occupies a strategic position in White House priorities. That position is enhanced by Bahrain’s proximity to the oil field of East Saudi Arabia. Saudi troops have been assistant Bahraini authorities in putting down the demonstrations.
Since mid-February, the kingdom has confronted demonstrators with cordons of armed military and police firing live ammunition. At least 31 people have died and hundreds more have been injured in the clashes.
The Kingdom is ruled by a Sunni monarch and his family, while the large majority of the king’s subjects are Shia. The Shia have complained for years of discrimination in employment, housing, health care and the minutiae daily life.
The Crown Prince of Bahrain has visited President Obama and State Department officials recently, complaining he was worried about Bahrain’s “image” for tourism. The country has recently retained the services of two high-profile US-based public relations firms to represent it.
In court proceedings, 20 Bahraini male and female doctors have been sentenced to 5-15 years imprisonment by Military Court for treating injured protesters. The sentenced doctors had been detained for 5 or more months, reportedly tortured, and deprived from access to lawyer and family most of time.
The doctors were working in Salmaniya hospital, frantically trying to save the lives of men, woman and children wounded by government security forces. It has been reliably reported that these forces then closed off the entrance to the hospital and would not let anyone in or out. Wounded patients were removed from their beds and taken to unknown government facilities, where many died.
Reuters reports that the possibility that American-built weapons might have been used against protesters has raised questions in the US Congress and led the department to review its defense trade relationships with several Middle East nations.
The Obama administration has been virtually silent on the subject of Bahrain. It has criticized the use of violence against dissenters by police and military units but has not exacted specific repercussions against Bahrain's government.
Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, told Mother Jones magazine that “the political upheaval across the Middle East has brought to light the problems of providing arms to repressive regimes. The hope is we'll now begin to see a rethinking of the willingness to do that".
The new report showed that licensed US defense sales to other Middle East and North African nations caught up in democracy protests remained mostly unchanged.
Maria McFarland of Human Rights Watch told Mother Jones, "This is exactly the wrong move after Bahrain brutally suppressed protests and is carrying out a relentless campaign of retribution against its critics. By continuing its relationship as if nothing had happened, the US is furthering an unstable situation."
In another legal case, Ali AlTaweel was sentenced to death by military court and Ali Attiya was sentence to life imprisonment for allegedly killing riot police officer AlMuraisi.
“Ten people were accused in the case of cutting the tongue of the Prayer Caller "Mo'athen" Erfan, two of which were charged with Incitement only. They were all sentenced to 15 years imprisonment despite the lawyers presenting substantial evidence against the allegations of the prosecution.
The military appeal court dismissed the appeal for the 14 prominent figures yesterday and upheld the sentences ranging between three years to life imprisonment. A number of those figures are still on hunger strike since the 24th of September demanding the release of the female detainees.
In a separate case, the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said 32 civilians were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for arson on a royal family member’s farm. Hussain Ahmed, who the group says “was arrested only because he is Abdulhadi Alkhawaja's son in law”, will have his verdict read on 2nd October. His lawyer stated that Hussain's case is unique because there is absolutely nothing against him, not even the usual posts on facebook or twitter, and all that is being held against him is his extracted confession under torture. He has been detained for 174 days, and is a 22 year old university student,” Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is a prominent human rights activist in Bahrain. He is currently in prison awaiting trial.
Meanwhile, Bahrain said on Tuesday it had released 25 Shi'ite women arrested last week over protest for political reforms and denied that they had been abused in detention.
Police detained 45 women who shouted anti-government slogans in a Manama mall a day before parliamentary by-elections boycotted by the main Shi'ite opposition party, Wefaq.
An Interior Ministry official said allegations of mistreatment in detention were not true, the statement said. Amnesty International said on Monday it feared the detainees had been tortured.
"They were apprehended without arrest orders, interrogated without lawyers present and some of them reportedly tortured or otherwise ill-treated," the London-based group said.
Bahraini security forces have arrested and beaten more than 40 females protesting against the parliamentary by-elections in Bahrain, the country's main opposition group, al-Wefaq, says.
The female Bahrainis, including seven minors aged between 12 and 15, were arrested on Friday, one day before the by-elections -- boycotted by the opposition -- to replace 18 lawmakers who resigned from the parliament in protest to the crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.
"More than 40 Bahraini women were savagely arrested... in a commercial center,” al-Wefaq said in a statement on Monday, adding that they were "beaten and humiliated."
Al-Wefaq condemned the females' arrests as "savage and inhumane,'' saying that they had only been expressing their "right to freedom of expression".
Election results in Bahrain show that more than 80 percent of the electorate refused to vote in the by-elections in the country.
According to a Bahraini government website, less than one in every five voters cast their ballots on Saturday.
Of the 144,513 eligible voters in 14 districts only 25,130 came out to vote, representing a 17.4 percent turnout, the Bahraini government's elections website (www.vote.bh) reported.
The Al-Wefaq leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, said the results showed that Bahrainis rejected the king's reforms, adding, “There is no such thing as Bahraini democracy. There has to be peaceful rotation of power.”
“If there is no transition, Bahrain will remain in a crisis of security and human rights, this is a historic moment,” he added.
Finally, Mahdi Abu Deeb, president of the Bahrain Teacher's Society, who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, is “still on hunger strike and his life and well being is at threat.” He started his hunger strike on September 11 and stopped taking his medication on the 16th.
As 20 of Bahrain’s physicians were being sentenced to prison terms of 5-15 years for treating victims of peaceful demonstrations, the US Government was readying the red bows on a package of $200m in military sales to the tiny Gulf nation.
The arms sale comes less than three months after the US included Bahrain on a list of human rights offenders requiring the United Nations' attention. According to Al Jazeera, the US Government report showed a $112m rise in sales to Bahrain, much of it involving aircraft and military electronics. The US also licensed $760,000 in exports of rifles, shotguns and assault weapons in 2010. US military exports to Bahrain in 2009 totaled $88m.
Bahrain, a tiny island nation that is home to the US Navy's 5th Fleet, occupies a strategic position in White House priorities. That position is enhanced by Bahrain’s proximity to the oil field of East Saudi Arabia. Saudi troops have been assistant Bahraini authorities in putting down the demonstrations.
Since mid-February, the kingdom has confronted demonstrators with cordons of armed military and police firing live ammunition. At least 31 people have died and hundreds more have been injured in the clashes.
The Kingdom is ruled by a Sunni monarch and his family, while the large majority of the king’s subjects are Shia. The Shia have complained for years of discrimination in employment, housing, health care and the minutiae daily life.
The Crown Prince of Bahrain has visited President Obama and State Department officials recently, complaining he was worried about Bahrain’s “image” for tourism. The country has recently retained the services of two high-profile US-based public relations firms to represent it.
In court proceedings, 20 Bahraini male and female doctors have been sentenced to 5-15 years imprisonment by Military Court for treating injured protesters. The sentenced doctors had been detained for 5 or more months, reportedly tortured, and deprived from access to lawyer and family most of time.
The doctors were working in Salmaniya hospital, frantically trying to save the lives of men, woman and children wounded by government security forces. It has been reliably reported that these forces then closed off the entrance to the hospital and would not let anyone in or out. Wounded patients were removed from their beds and taken to unknown government facilities, where many died.
Reuters reports that the possibility that American-built weapons might have been used against protesters has raised questions in the US Congress and led the department to review its defense trade relationships with several Middle East nations.
The Obama administration has been virtually silent on the subject of Bahrain. It has criticized the use of violence against dissenters by police and military units but has not exacted specific repercussions against Bahrain's government.
Jeff Abramson, deputy director of the Arms Control Association, told Mother Jones magazine that “the political upheaval across the Middle East has brought to light the problems of providing arms to repressive regimes. The hope is we'll now begin to see a rethinking of the willingness to do that".
The new report showed that licensed US defense sales to other Middle East and North African nations caught up in democracy protests remained mostly unchanged.
Maria McFarland of Human Rights Watch told Mother Jones, "This is exactly the wrong move after Bahrain brutally suppressed protests and is carrying out a relentless campaign of retribution against its critics. By continuing its relationship as if nothing had happened, the US is furthering an unstable situation."
In another legal case, Ali AlTaweel was sentenced to death by military court and Ali Attiya was sentence to life imprisonment for allegedly killing riot police officer AlMuraisi.
“Ten people were accused in the case of cutting the tongue of the Prayer Caller "Mo'athen" Erfan, two of which were charged with Incitement only. They were all sentenced to 15 years imprisonment despite the lawyers presenting substantial evidence against the allegations of the prosecution.
The military appeal court dismissed the appeal for the 14 prominent figures yesterday and upheld the sentences ranging between three years to life imprisonment. A number of those figures are still on hunger strike since the 24th of September demanding the release of the female detainees.
In a separate case, the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said 32 civilians were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for arson on a royal family member’s farm. Hussain Ahmed, who the group says “was arrested only because he is Abdulhadi Alkhawaja's son in law”, will have his verdict read on 2nd October. His lawyer stated that Hussain's case is unique because there is absolutely nothing against him, not even the usual posts on facebook or twitter, and all that is being held against him is his extracted confession under torture. He has been detained for 174 days, and is a 22 year old university student,” Abdulhadi Alkhawaja is a prominent human rights activist in Bahrain. He is currently in prison awaiting trial.
Meanwhile, Bahrain said on Tuesday it had released 25 Shi'ite women arrested last week over protest for political reforms and denied that they had been abused in detention.
Police detained 45 women who shouted anti-government slogans in a Manama mall a day before parliamentary by-elections boycotted by the main Shi'ite opposition party, Wefaq.
An Interior Ministry official said allegations of mistreatment in detention were not true, the statement said. Amnesty International said on Monday it feared the detainees had been tortured.
"They were apprehended without arrest orders, interrogated without lawyers present and some of them reportedly tortured or otherwise ill-treated," the London-based group said.
Bahraini security forces have arrested and beaten more than 40 females protesting against the parliamentary by-elections in Bahrain, the country's main opposition group, al-Wefaq, says.
The female Bahrainis, including seven minors aged between 12 and 15, were arrested on Friday, one day before the by-elections -- boycotted by the opposition -- to replace 18 lawmakers who resigned from the parliament in protest to the crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.
"More than 40 Bahraini women were savagely arrested... in a commercial center,” al-Wefaq said in a statement on Monday, adding that they were "beaten and humiliated."
Al-Wefaq condemned the females' arrests as "savage and inhumane,'' saying that they had only been expressing their "right to freedom of expression".
Election results in Bahrain show that more than 80 percent of the electorate refused to vote in the by-elections in the country.
According to a Bahraini government website, less than one in every five voters cast their ballots on Saturday.
Of the 144,513 eligible voters in 14 districts only 25,130 came out to vote, representing a 17.4 percent turnout, the Bahraini government's elections website (www.vote.bh) reported.
The Al-Wefaq leader, Sheikh Ali Salman, said the results showed that Bahrainis rejected the king's reforms, adding, “There is no such thing as Bahraini democracy. There has to be peaceful rotation of power.”
“If there is no transition, Bahrain will remain in a crisis of security and human rights, this is a historic moment,” he added.
Finally, Mahdi Abu Deeb, president of the Bahrain Teacher's Society, who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, is “still on hunger strike and his life and well being is at threat.” He started his hunger strike on September 11 and stopped taking his medication on the 16th.
Will the Generals Ever Leave?
By William Fisher
Nearly two dozen of Egypt’s most respected human rights organizations charged yesterday that the changes made by country’s “temporary” military rulers are cosmetic and intended to paper over the “vast gulf” that separates those whose efforts won the revolution and those who are now charged with running the country.
It is believed to be the strongest attack yet made by the human rights community against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt.
In a statement issued yesterday the coalition of human rights groups said it
“decisively condemns the exploitation of the political crisis between the forces of the revolution and those managing the country’s affairs in the transitional period as an excuse to employ the same repressive tools and means that the regime of deposed president Hosni Mubarak used against its enemies and critics.”
The group added, The SCAF has been “foregoing dialogue, negotiations, and political solutions in favor of the old security approach. Such security solutions lead to violence, oppression, and an increasing use of repressive legislation against opponents, be they political activists, media workers, or civil society and rights activists.”
Regrettably, the undersigned organizations have noticed that the policies recently embraced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government that heeds its dictates have entailed increasing political tension and have strengthened the belief that a vast gulf separates, on one hand, Egyptians’ aspirations for democracy, an end to the legacies of an obsolete despotic regime, and a clean break with the practices and policies of that repressive regime, and, on the other, the tendencies of those administering the country’s affairs, who are clearly and gradually preserving the primary components of the deposed president’s regime while attempting to give it a facelift by sacrificing several old regime figures.”
“This,” they added, “is an insult to the thousands who sacrificed and died in a vicious battle to overthrow the entire regime, not for the sake of a few new faces.”
The groups were most forceful in their condemnation of SCAF Decree (193/2011), “which not only revived the application of the emergency law—which has officially been in force since the Mubarak era—but also expanded the scope of the law to exceed the limits guaranteed in 2010 by the deposed president, who vowed to apply the law only in the context of crimes of terrorism and drug-trafficking.”
The SCAF’s decision “allows the emergency law to be invoked for disturbances to national security and the public order and to confront acts of thuggery, assaults on the freedom to work, vandalism of facilities, the obstruction of transportation and roads, and the dissemination of false news and statements.”
The group added, “The expansive language of the decree permits a broad interpretation of such acts that will allow for the intimidation and harassment of persons involved in peaceful protests, demonstrations, and strikes. It also constitutes a direct threat to freedom of expression and a free media.”
The groups also focused their wrath on what they characterized as the broader picture. They said, “The use of the emergency law to stifle basic liberties and to repress actions by forces of the revolution cannot be viewed separately from the broad, escalating assault on civil society institutions and various media outlets.”
The groups said, “It should be noted that in the run-up to the 2010 elections, the most infamous in Egypt’s history, the Mubarak regime launched an all-out attack on various forms of media, several of the most prominent political talk shows, and human rights organizations and civil society, impeding their ability to monitor the elections and expose irregularities.”
They added, “The course pursued by those currently administering the country’s affairs differs little from the ways of the Mubarak regime. They have clung to an electoral system that has been nearly unanimously rejected by all political forces and human rights groups, although these forces have proposed alternative electoral laws that advocate elections based on unconditional, proportional lists, whether for parties, coalitions, or independents.”
As a result, they said, “The electoral system chosen by the SCAF and the flagrant deficiencies in districting have provoked the anger of various parties, who believe that these measures will only reinstate a parliament dominated by the same forces that controlled Mubarak-era parliaments through the use of money, narrow partisan interests, and religious sentiment.”
“Adhering to the same policies pursued by Mubarak and his dissolved party, those administering the country’s affairs have preceded the impending parliamentary elections with a hostile assault on the media that has involved suspending licenses for new satellite stations and closely monitoring the satellite media as a prelude to taking legal action against satellite channels that “ignite civil strife,” in the words of the Minister of Information.”
“Under the pretexts of alleged ‘media chaos’ and of examining satellite channels’ sources of funding, the campaign began by targeting 16 satellite channels. For example, the office of al-Jazeera Egypt was shut down and the station’s transmitter was confiscated on the grounds that the station had not received a broadcast license, although the station had applied for a license four months ago and had been broadcasting in the interim without government objection,” the groups said, adding:
In tandem with this attack on the media, the campaign against civil society associations, human rights organizations, and some political groups involved in the January 25 revolution was redoubled. After the ouster of Mubarak, these groups have been subject to the same baseless accusations used by the Mubarak regime against human rights defenders and the same allegations by which that regime sought to stoke popular hostility to the revolution and those involved in it.
Under Mubarak, the issues of external funding and foreign agendas were used to stigmatize political activists and impugn the patriotism of hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Egypt’s public squares, as prelude to an attack by paid bands organized by the network of interests overseen by the ruling NDP and the police state apparatus at that time.
The groups say they “still hope that the SCAF will assume its responsibilities to achieve the democratic aims expressed by the Egyptian revolution, from which the SCAF derives its legitimacy in this transitional period. We emphasize that securing a safe transition to democracy requires those currently administering the country’s affairs to open up the public sphere to a democratic, equitable, institutional dialogue among all active parties in society, in order to reach a social consensus on the political system and the course it will take.”
The groups asked the SCAF to revoke its decision to activate and expand the emergency law, abolish the law criminalizing strikes and sit-ins, end the state of emergency, and suspend all exceptional trials, including trials of civilians in military courts, and all trials in the Emergency Supreme State Security Court.
In addition to urging the SCAF to end its campaign against NGOs, the group calls on the military men to reconsider the electoral system and electoral districting to be responsive to widespread demands for an unconditional, proportional list system in all seats in elections for the People’s Assembly and Shura Council; and release a time-bound agenda for the transitional period that includes specific dates for parliamentary and presidential elections and a referendum on the new constitution.
Some of the better known groups signing the statement include Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Arab Penal Reform Organization, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, and Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination.
Nearly two dozen of Egypt’s most respected human rights organizations charged yesterday that the changes made by country’s “temporary” military rulers are cosmetic and intended to paper over the “vast gulf” that separates those whose efforts won the revolution and those who are now charged with running the country.
It is believed to be the strongest attack yet made by the human rights community against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt.
In a statement issued yesterday the coalition of human rights groups said it
“decisively condemns the exploitation of the political crisis between the forces of the revolution and those managing the country’s affairs in the transitional period as an excuse to employ the same repressive tools and means that the regime of deposed president Hosni Mubarak used against its enemies and critics.”
The group added, The SCAF has been “foregoing dialogue, negotiations, and political solutions in favor of the old security approach. Such security solutions lead to violence, oppression, and an increasing use of repressive legislation against opponents, be they political activists, media workers, or civil society and rights activists.”
Regrettably, the undersigned organizations have noticed that the policies recently embraced by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and the government that heeds its dictates have entailed increasing political tension and have strengthened the belief that a vast gulf separates, on one hand, Egyptians’ aspirations for democracy, an end to the legacies of an obsolete despotic regime, and a clean break with the practices and policies of that repressive regime, and, on the other, the tendencies of those administering the country’s affairs, who are clearly and gradually preserving the primary components of the deposed president’s regime while attempting to give it a facelift by sacrificing several old regime figures.”
“This,” they added, “is an insult to the thousands who sacrificed and died in a vicious battle to overthrow the entire regime, not for the sake of a few new faces.”
The groups were most forceful in their condemnation of SCAF Decree (193/2011), “which not only revived the application of the emergency law—which has officially been in force since the Mubarak era—but also expanded the scope of the law to exceed the limits guaranteed in 2010 by the deposed president, who vowed to apply the law only in the context of crimes of terrorism and drug-trafficking.”
The SCAF’s decision “allows the emergency law to be invoked for disturbances to national security and the public order and to confront acts of thuggery, assaults on the freedom to work, vandalism of facilities, the obstruction of transportation and roads, and the dissemination of false news and statements.”
The group added, “The expansive language of the decree permits a broad interpretation of such acts that will allow for the intimidation and harassment of persons involved in peaceful protests, demonstrations, and strikes. It also constitutes a direct threat to freedom of expression and a free media.”
The groups also focused their wrath on what they characterized as the broader picture. They said, “The use of the emergency law to stifle basic liberties and to repress actions by forces of the revolution cannot be viewed separately from the broad, escalating assault on civil society institutions and various media outlets.”
The groups said, “It should be noted that in the run-up to the 2010 elections, the most infamous in Egypt’s history, the Mubarak regime launched an all-out attack on various forms of media, several of the most prominent political talk shows, and human rights organizations and civil society, impeding their ability to monitor the elections and expose irregularities.”
They added, “The course pursued by those currently administering the country’s affairs differs little from the ways of the Mubarak regime. They have clung to an electoral system that has been nearly unanimously rejected by all political forces and human rights groups, although these forces have proposed alternative electoral laws that advocate elections based on unconditional, proportional lists, whether for parties, coalitions, or independents.”
As a result, they said, “The electoral system chosen by the SCAF and the flagrant deficiencies in districting have provoked the anger of various parties, who believe that these measures will only reinstate a parliament dominated by the same forces that controlled Mubarak-era parliaments through the use of money, narrow partisan interests, and religious sentiment.”
“Adhering to the same policies pursued by Mubarak and his dissolved party, those administering the country’s affairs have preceded the impending parliamentary elections with a hostile assault on the media that has involved suspending licenses for new satellite stations and closely monitoring the satellite media as a prelude to taking legal action against satellite channels that “ignite civil strife,” in the words of the Minister of Information.”
“Under the pretexts of alleged ‘media chaos’ and of examining satellite channels’ sources of funding, the campaign began by targeting 16 satellite channels. For example, the office of al-Jazeera Egypt was shut down and the station’s transmitter was confiscated on the grounds that the station had not received a broadcast license, although the station had applied for a license four months ago and had been broadcasting in the interim without government objection,” the groups said, adding:
In tandem with this attack on the media, the campaign against civil society associations, human rights organizations, and some political groups involved in the January 25 revolution was redoubled. After the ouster of Mubarak, these groups have been subject to the same baseless accusations used by the Mubarak regime against human rights defenders and the same allegations by which that regime sought to stoke popular hostility to the revolution and those involved in it.
Under Mubarak, the issues of external funding and foreign agendas were used to stigmatize political activists and impugn the patriotism of hundreds of thousands of people who gathered in Egypt’s public squares, as prelude to an attack by paid bands organized by the network of interests overseen by the ruling NDP and the police state apparatus at that time.
The groups say they “still hope that the SCAF will assume its responsibilities to achieve the democratic aims expressed by the Egyptian revolution, from which the SCAF derives its legitimacy in this transitional period. We emphasize that securing a safe transition to democracy requires those currently administering the country’s affairs to open up the public sphere to a democratic, equitable, institutional dialogue among all active parties in society, in order to reach a social consensus on the political system and the course it will take.”
The groups asked the SCAF to revoke its decision to activate and expand the emergency law, abolish the law criminalizing strikes and sit-ins, end the state of emergency, and suspend all exceptional trials, including trials of civilians in military courts, and all trials in the Emergency Supreme State Security Court.
In addition to urging the SCAF to end its campaign against NGOs, the group calls on the military men to reconsider the electoral system and electoral districting to be responsive to widespread demands for an unconditional, proportional list system in all seats in elections for the People’s Assembly and Shura Council; and release a time-bound agenda for the transitional period that includes specific dates for parliamentary and presidential elections and a referendum on the new constitution.
Some of the better known groups signing the statement include Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Arab Penal Reform Organization, Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, Center for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance, Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, and Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Rick Perry, The For-Profit Jailer
By William Fisher
Given what we know about Gov. Rick Perry’s keen predilection toward ‘crony capitalism,’ we should not be surprised to learn that he’s a big fan of private for-profit prisons.
Lobbyists and executives from that industry have contributed generously to Perry’s reelection campaign, and he returned the favor by proposing policies that would benefit the prison industry. “Coincidence?” asks Tim Murphy of Mother Jones magazine in a major article that examines the governor’s relationships with the for-profit prison industry.
Murphy writes: “Under the banner of closing the state's $27 billion deficit last winter, Texas Gov. Rick Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network. Whether the plan would actually save the state any money was a matter of debate, but one thing was clear: The move would have been a boon for private-prison executives and lobbyists, including Perry's former chief of staff, who had donated generously to his 2010 reelection campaign.”
He added, “The plan met bipartisan resistance in the state Legislature, but it was just one of a handful of recent proposals by Perry's office that would have benefited the industry—all in the name of deficit reduction.”
Murphy goes on to tell us that private prisons are a big business in Texas, where the combination of federal immigration policies and one of the nation's largest inmate populations has led to a boom in construction over the last two decades.
Murphy continues: “As governor, Perry, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has supported privatizing everything from public lands to highways, but according to Scott Henson, a criminal-justice watchdog who runs the blog Grits for Breakfast, the governor had remained largely quiet on the prisons issue—until this year. That coincided with an influx of campaign contributions from private-prison executives and lobbyists, among them his former top aide, Michael Toomey, a political powerbroker who represents the nation's largest private corrections contractor, Corrections Corporation of America.”
CCA, per its website, "provides health care services to male and female inmates and youthful offenders who are housed in local jails, detention facilities, and correctional institutions around the country."
And there are more private prisons in Texas than in any other state in the country.
(Toomey told Mother Jones he had not lobbied Perry's office or the state Legislature on the prison health care plan; Perry's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations. The industry’s so-called “think tank”, known as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), employs all three strategies and also undertakes to prepare “templates” for legislation that will benefit its members.
For example, there is significant evidence that ALEC worked with Arizona officials in the crafting of the infamous “papers please” legislation. It is also reported that, on the basis of that work, it was also able to help Alabama with the crafting of its immigration law.
Given Perry’s record in similar situations – for example, the contributions from Merck & Co. and their relationship to Perry’s executive order mandating HTD inoculations to help young Texas girls avoid cervical cancer – the Justice Policy Institute was not a minute too late in issuing a new report, “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies.”
The report examines how private prison companies are able to influence legislators and criminal justice policy, a collaboration that ultimately results in harsher criminal justice policies and the incarceration of more people, the JPI asserts.
The report says that over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent. Private prison populations, during the same period, increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistics.
The providers of private prisons have been reaping the benefits. In 2010 alone, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, had combined revenues of $2.9 billion.
The JPI report says, “not only have private prison companies benefited from this increased incarceration, but they have helped fuel it.”
The report notes a “triangle of influence” built on campaign contributions, lobbying and relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. Through this strategy, private prison companies have gained access to local, state, and federal policymakers and have back-channel influence to pass legislation that puts more people behind bars, adds to private prison populations and generates tremendous profits at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
“For-profit companies exercise their political influence to protect their market share, which in the case of corporations like GEO Group and CCA primarily means the number of people locked up behind bars,” said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI. “We need to take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.
That their lobbying and political contributions is funded by taxpayers, through their profits on government contracts, makes it all the more important that people understand the role of private prisons in our political system,” Velasquez says.
Paul Ashton, principal author of “Gaming the System,” noted, “This report is built on concrete examples of the political strategies of private prison companies.
From noting campaign donations, $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000, to the proposed plan from Ohio Governor John Kasich to privatize five Ohio prisons followed by the appointment of a former CCA employee to run the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, “Gaming the System” shows that private prison companies’ interests lie in promoting their business through maintaining political relationships rather than saving taxpayer
dollars and effectively ensuring public safety,” Ashton says.
Other organizations have also investigated the private prison industry and have their own serious concerns about their political influence. “In the South and Southwest, the private prison industry has consistently targeted poor
communities,” said Bob Libal the Texas Campaigns Coordinator for Grassroots Leadership.
“We believe that it’s important to fight, particularly in these communities, to end for-profit incarceration and reduce reliance on criminalization and detention, and ultimately build lasting movements for social justice. This important report helps shed light onto this particularly troubling industry,” he said.
Shakyra Diaz, policy director of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio added, “Research has shown that private prisons do not save taxpayer dollars and can in fact cost taxpayers more than public prisons. Additionally, privatizing prisons may undermine cost effective sentencing reforms and increase recidivism rates.
Despite these well-documented concerns, private prison companies continue to promote policies that put money in their pockets and people behind bars.”
The JPI declared that “if states and the federal government are interested in providing cost-effective, proven public safety strategies, investments in private prison companies will not help achieve that goal. “Gaming the System” includes a number of recommendations for criminal justice policies that are cost-effective and will improve public safety:
The report says that states and the federal government “should look for real solutions to the problem of growing jail and prison populations. A number of states are already utilizing innovative strategies for reducing the number of people behind bars in their state. Reducing the number of people entering the justice system, and the amount of time that they spend there, can lower prison populations, making private, for-profit prisons unnecessary, and improving public safety and the lives of individuals.”
“Private prison companies have been very successful in their effort to promote harsher sentencing policies and the privatization of correctional systems, and when they win, we all lose,” added Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI.
“Taxpayers lose when their money is used to generate profits for shareholders and to promote policies that increase incarceration; communities lose when policies proven to be ineffective for public safety are pushed through state legislatures, and people involved in the criminal justice system lose when they are locked up in underfunded and sometimes unsafe facilities,” she says.
But they have not been anywhere near as successful in operating professional-grade lockups. The Federal Government and several States have shut down a number of facilities that were found to be overcrowded, unsafe, and deficient in health and hygiene. There have been a number of deaths in detention. There has also been a lack of transparency in dealings between the public and several leading private prison companies.
According to Paul Ashton, principal author of the report, “While private prison companies may try to present themselves as just meeting existing demand for prison beds and responding to current market conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create markets for their product. As revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration.”
He added: “As policymakers and the public are increasingly coming to understand that incarceration is not only breaking the bank, but it’s also not making us safer, will this shrink the influence of private prison companies? Or will they use their growing financial muscle to consolidate and expand into even more areas of the justice system?”
He continues: “Much will depend on the extent that people understand the role for-profit private prison companies have already played in raising incarceration rates and harming people and communities, and take steps to ensure that in the future, community safety and well-being, and not profits, drive our justice policies. One thing is certain: in this political game, the private prison industry will look out for their own interests.”
Given what we know about Gov. Rick Perry’s keen predilection toward ‘crony capitalism,’ we should not be surprised to learn that he’s a big fan of private for-profit prisons.
Lobbyists and executives from that industry have contributed generously to Perry’s reelection campaign, and he returned the favor by proposing policies that would benefit the prison industry. “Coincidence?” asks Tim Murphy of Mother Jones magazine in a major article that examines the governor’s relationships with the for-profit prison industry.
Murphy writes: “Under the banner of closing the state's $27 billion deficit last winter, Texas Gov. Rick Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network. Whether the plan would actually save the state any money was a matter of debate, but one thing was clear: The move would have been a boon for private-prison executives and lobbyists, including Perry's former chief of staff, who had donated generously to his 2010 reelection campaign.”
He added, “The plan met bipartisan resistance in the state Legislature, but it was just one of a handful of recent proposals by Perry's office that would have benefited the industry—all in the name of deficit reduction.”
Murphy goes on to tell us that private prisons are a big business in Texas, where the combination of federal immigration policies and one of the nation's largest inmate populations has led to a boom in construction over the last two decades.
Murphy continues: “As governor, Perry, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, has supported privatizing everything from public lands to highways, but according to Scott Henson, a criminal-justice watchdog who runs the blog Grits for Breakfast, the governor had remained largely quiet on the prisons issue—until this year. That coincided with an influx of campaign contributions from private-prison executives and lobbyists, among them his former top aide, Michael Toomey, a political powerbroker who represents the nation's largest private corrections contractor, Corrections Corporation of America.”
CCA, per its website, "provides health care services to male and female inmates and youthful offenders who are housed in local jails, detention facilities, and correctional institutions around the country."
And there are more private prisons in Texas than in any other state in the country.
(Toomey told Mother Jones he had not lobbied Perry's office or the state Legislature on the prison health care plan; Perry's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations. The industry’s so-called “think tank”, known as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), employs all three strategies and also undertakes to prepare “templates” for legislation that will benefit its members.
For example, there is significant evidence that ALEC worked with Arizona officials in the crafting of the infamous “papers please” legislation. It is also reported that, on the basis of that work, it was also able to help Alabama with the crafting of its immigration law.
Given Perry’s record in similar situations – for example, the contributions from Merck & Co. and their relationship to Perry’s executive order mandating HTD inoculations to help young Texas girls avoid cervical cancer – the Justice Policy Institute was not a minute too late in issuing a new report, “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies.”
The report examines how private prison companies are able to influence legislators and criminal justice policy, a collaboration that ultimately results in harsher criminal justice policies and the incarceration of more people, the JPI asserts.
The report says that over the past 15 years, the number of people held in all prisons in the United States has increased by 49.6 percent. Private prison populations, during the same period, increased by 353.7 percent, according to recent federal statistics.
The providers of private prisons have been reaping the benefits. In 2010 alone, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison companies, had combined revenues of $2.9 billion.
The JPI report says, “not only have private prison companies benefited from this increased incarceration, but they have helped fuel it.”
The report notes a “triangle of influence” built on campaign contributions, lobbying and relationships with current and former elected and appointed officials. Through this strategy, private prison companies have gained access to local, state, and federal policymakers and have back-channel influence to pass legislation that puts more people behind bars, adds to private prison populations and generates tremendous profits at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
“For-profit companies exercise their political influence to protect their market share, which in the case of corporations like GEO Group and CCA primarily means the number of people locked up behind bars,” said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI. “We need to take a hard look at what the cost of this influence is, both to taxpayers and to the community as a whole, in terms of the policies being lobbied for and the outcomes for people put in private prisons.
That their lobbying and political contributions is funded by taxpayers, through their profits on government contracts, makes it all the more important that people understand the role of private prisons in our political system,” Velasquez says.
Paul Ashton, principal author of “Gaming the System,” noted, “This report is built on concrete examples of the political strategies of private prison companies.
From noting campaign donations, $835,514 to federal candidates and $6,092,331 to state-level candidates since 2000, to the proposed plan from Ohio Governor John Kasich to privatize five Ohio prisons followed by the appointment of a former CCA employee to run the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, “Gaming the System” shows that private prison companies’ interests lie in promoting their business through maintaining political relationships rather than saving taxpayer
dollars and effectively ensuring public safety,” Ashton says.
Other organizations have also investigated the private prison industry and have their own serious concerns about their political influence. “In the South and Southwest, the private prison industry has consistently targeted poor
communities,” said Bob Libal the Texas Campaigns Coordinator for Grassroots Leadership.
“We believe that it’s important to fight, particularly in these communities, to end for-profit incarceration and reduce reliance on criminalization and detention, and ultimately build lasting movements for social justice. This important report helps shed light onto this particularly troubling industry,” he said.
Shakyra Diaz, policy director of American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio added, “Research has shown that private prisons do not save taxpayer dollars and can in fact cost taxpayers more than public prisons. Additionally, privatizing prisons may undermine cost effective sentencing reforms and increase recidivism rates.
Despite these well-documented concerns, private prison companies continue to promote policies that put money in their pockets and people behind bars.”
The JPI declared that “if states and the federal government are interested in providing cost-effective, proven public safety strategies, investments in private prison companies will not help achieve that goal. “Gaming the System” includes a number of recommendations for criminal justice policies that are cost-effective and will improve public safety:
The report says that states and the federal government “should look for real solutions to the problem of growing jail and prison populations. A number of states are already utilizing innovative strategies for reducing the number of people behind bars in their state. Reducing the number of people entering the justice system, and the amount of time that they spend there, can lower prison populations, making private, for-profit prisons unnecessary, and improving public safety and the lives of individuals.”
“Private prison companies have been very successful in their effort to promote harsher sentencing policies and the privatization of correctional systems, and when they win, we all lose,” added Tracy Velázquez, executive director of JPI.
“Taxpayers lose when their money is used to generate profits for shareholders and to promote policies that increase incarceration; communities lose when policies proven to be ineffective for public safety are pushed through state legislatures, and people involved in the criminal justice system lose when they are locked up in underfunded and sometimes unsafe facilities,” she says.
But they have not been anywhere near as successful in operating professional-grade lockups. The Federal Government and several States have shut down a number of facilities that were found to be overcrowded, unsafe, and deficient in health and hygiene. There have been a number of deaths in detention. There has also been a lack of transparency in dealings between the public and several leading private prison companies.
According to Paul Ashton, principal author of the report, “While private prison companies may try to present themselves as just meeting existing demand for prison beds and responding to current market conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create markets for their product. As revenues of private prison companies have grown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with which to build political power, and they have used this power to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration.”
He added: “As policymakers and the public are increasingly coming to understand that incarceration is not only breaking the bank, but it’s also not making us safer, will this shrink the influence of private prison companies? Or will they use their growing financial muscle to consolidate and expand into even more areas of the justice system?”
He continues: “Much will depend on the extent that people understand the role for-profit private prison companies have already played in raising incarceration rates and harming people and communities, and take steps to ensure that in the future, community safety and well-being, and not profits, drive our justice policies. One thing is certain: in this political game, the private prison industry will look out for their own interests.”
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Egypt: The Murder of Dissent
By William Fisher
On August 14, two young bloggers, Asma Mahfouz and Loay Nagaty, were arrested on charges of defaming Egypt’s military rulers. In a blogpost that went viral on YouTube, Mahfouz called them a "council of dogs."
Both were referred to a military court. That prompted activists, as well as presidential hopefuls including Mohamed ElBaradei and Ayman Nour, to protest their being charged in a military court.
(To date, more than 12,000 Egyptians have been charged before military courts, whose use has become the subject of a major point of conflict and contention between the pro-democracy forces and the military council.)
The outcry of popular support for the two was deafening. It was particularly strong for Mahfouz, a 26-year-old university student who was well known as one of the founders of the April 6 movement and credited with major contributions to the incredible revolution that begin in Tahrir Square.
On August 18, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) caved to the will of the people and ordered the military prosecution drop all charges.
But other voices of dissent have not been so lucky. Bloggers are routinely arrested – and NOT released. Instead, they are scheduled for trials before military courts. The more traditional journalistic communities – newspapers, magazines, radio and television channels – expected that the overthrow of the Mubarak regime would open a new avenue to press freedom. And they are deeply disappointed since the country’s military rulers have changed almost nothing to improve on Mubarak’s hawk-eyed censors.
One of the most revelatory of the military’s attitudes toward press freedom came this week with the military council reactivating the emergency law. In effect under Mubarak for three decades, it gives the state security apparatus broad powers to arrest and detain, without charges, and with the victims having no access to lawyers or to their families.
As reported in The Guardian, journalists fear that this law, ostensibly reintroduced in the wake of the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, will be used to muzzle the media.
Earlier, the military council committed to annul the law by September -- this has always been central to the demands of the protesters.
The Guardian reported: “A day after the old law was re-introduced, police raided the offices of an Al-Jazeera affiliate, Mubasher Misr, and shut it down. Broadcasting equipment was seized and the station's chief engineer, Islam al-Banna, was arrested and detained overnight. The authorities also jammed the station's live broadcasts from another location, at the media production city, outside Cairo.”
The Al-Jazeera affiliate began broadcasting in February. Its director, Ayman
Gaballah, said it had been promised a license. But the license never appeared and Al Jazeera’s staff say they were “repeatedly told by the ministry that they could go on broadcasting without a problem.”
The Guardian reports that research by local representatives of the New York-based press freedom watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), indicates that this was merely a pretext to silence the critical broadcaster.
The nation’s military rulers have now placed a "temporary freeze" on issuing broadcasting licences for new satellite television stations, the news channel Al-Arabiya reported.
Al Jazeera reports that hundreds of people have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the recent expansion of the Egypt's emergency law, amid palpable anger over the military's handling of transition from autocratic rule. Earlier this week, following a violent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo and attempts to storm security buildings, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said it would enforce the Emergency Law at least until the end of this year, on articles relating to the spreading of misinformation, arms possession and interfering with traffic.
The highly respected Reporters Without Borders (RWB) organization says it is “very disturbed by information minister Osama Heikal’s 7 September decision, after consulting with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to temporarily freeze the granting of satellite TV licences to recent applicants without saying how long the freeze will last.”
RWB also charged that Heikal threatened other TV stations, accusing them of indiscipline and saying he was asking the relevant agency to “take legal measures against satellite TV stations that jeopardize stability and security.” He said the measures were needed to restore order to the “increasingly chaotic media scene” and because of “concerns over incitement to violence.”
“His announcement and comments amount to a declaration of war on the broadcast media and, in particular, independent satellite TV stations that dare to criticize the Supreme Council’s policies. It is very disturbing that the council regards news media as sources of ‘harm to the country’s security and stability,’” RWB added.
The group said, “It is a return to the past, to the era of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. Since taking over after Mubarak’s removal, the Supreme Council has repeatedly taken decisions that negatively affect media freedom in Egypt, endangering something that Egyptians fought hard for during their 18-day uprising.”
The crackdown has affected scores of individual journalists as well as journalistic institutions.
Here are several examples – though the list is far from complete.
Imad Bazzi, a Lebanese blogger who is the founder of the Arab Blogging Forum, was denied entry at Cairo airport last week and deported after being told he had been "blacklisted" as a security concern.
A popular TV personality, Dina Abd-Al Rahman, was fired as a presenter of the Dream TV program, “Sabah Dream,” following an altercation on the air with a former air force officer, Abd Al-Monem Kato.
Many online commentators and activists have expressed their outrage about her dismissal, describing Dream TV owner Ahmed Bahgat, an ally of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as a businessman opposed to media freedom on his own TV channel. While there is no evidence that the council had a role in her dismissal, the military has taken direct action against journalists on many occasions in recent months.
For example, a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds was imposed on Kareem Reda, who writes the blog Sarkha, was upheld on appeal. The blogger was fined as a result of a suit by Petrograde, a natural gas company, that accused him of defaming and insulting the company, damaging its interests and trying to harm the national economy because he launched a page on Facebook calling on people to boycott its services and not pay their gas bills it as long as it continued to export gas to Israel at below-market prices.
Maikel Nabil Sanad, a blogger and conscientious objector, was sentenced to three years in prison on 10 April for posting a report on his blog disputing the apparent neutrality of the armed forces during the January and February demonstrations and accusing them of arresting and torturing protesters.
He was convicted of insulting the armed forces, spreading false information and disturbing public order. He began a hunger strike in Cairo’s Al-Marg prison on 23 August despite suffering from heart problems. He subsequently stopped drinking as well, with the result that he had to be rushed to the prison infirmary. He insists that he will resume the hunger strike regardless of the outcome.
Another blogger, Botheina Kamel, was summoned by a military court for interrogation on 15 May after she criticized the armed forces in a program on Nile TV.
The blogger Hossam Al-Hamalawy and journalists Rim Magued and Nabil Sharaf Al-Din were interrogated on 31 May for nearly three hours about their appearances on the station ON-TV. Speaking on Magued’s program on 26 May, Al-Hamalawy accused military police of violating human rights.
The next day, Al-Din talked about the chances of an alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army as part of a political transition.
Rasha Azab, a reporter for the newspaper Al-Fajr, and Adel Hammuda, its editor, were interrogated by a military prosecutor on 19 June and were told they are to be tried because an article Azab wrote for Al-Fajr’s 12 June issue. Azab is facing a possible jail sentence for publishing “false information liable to disturb public security” while Hammuda is facing a possible fine for alleged negligence in his role as editor.
Hassan Bahgat, 70, a former army officer who used to head ABC’s Cairo bureau, was sentenced to six months in prison by a military court on 17 August on a charge of “chanting anti-army slogans liable to defame the armed forces” in Tahrir Square at 1 a.m. on 6 August. The sentence was suspended but it could be activated at any time.
A smear campaign has meanwhile been launched in the government media against Egyptian NGOs that get funding from the United States. It is targeting only those that criticize the Supreme Council and poses a threat to many national human rights organizations.
Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the CPJ's Middle East and north Africa program coordinator, summed up the current state of play: "For months now, the ruling Supreme Military Council of the Armed Forces has been going to great lengths to hamstring the media and snuff out critical reporting. As the self-proclaimed guardian of the revolution, the military council ought to facilitate the work of long-silenced voices in the media instead of shutting them down and threatening them with repressive state security proceedings."
But this is unlikely to happen any time soon. The generals who sit on the Supreme Council are generals; they tend to know little about the need for press freedom. Indeed, they seem to fear it. Moreover, they know little about governing. They also appear to have great difficulty actually hearing what their constituents are telling them; a major reason is that they don’t regard the heroes of Tahrir Square as constituents.
And we should remember that all of these men were Mubarak’s military comrades. It must pain them greatly to see their fellow soldier being tried in open court for murder and corruption. It would appear that this was at least one of their motivations in closing the Mubarak court proceedings to the press.
To a significant extent, the generals are looking at a self-inflicted wound. They have failed to lay out any long-term vision for Egypt’s future. That sows confusion and contention among those who risked so much to give Egypt another chance to join the 21st Century. Absent such a vision, the Tahrir Square protestors are chaotically clamoring for an unconnected series of populist “fixes.”
But, as Egypt apparently must learn the hard way, populism is not policy.
On August 14, two young bloggers, Asma Mahfouz and Loay Nagaty, were arrested on charges of defaming Egypt’s military rulers. In a blogpost that went viral on YouTube, Mahfouz called them a "council of dogs."
Both were referred to a military court. That prompted activists, as well as presidential hopefuls including Mohamed ElBaradei and Ayman Nour, to protest their being charged in a military court.
(To date, more than 12,000 Egyptians have been charged before military courts, whose use has become the subject of a major point of conflict and contention between the pro-democracy forces and the military council.)
The outcry of popular support for the two was deafening. It was particularly strong for Mahfouz, a 26-year-old university student who was well known as one of the founders of the April 6 movement and credited with major contributions to the incredible revolution that begin in Tahrir Square.
On August 18, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) caved to the will of the people and ordered the military prosecution drop all charges.
But other voices of dissent have not been so lucky. Bloggers are routinely arrested – and NOT released. Instead, they are scheduled for trials before military courts. The more traditional journalistic communities – newspapers, magazines, radio and television channels – expected that the overthrow of the Mubarak regime would open a new avenue to press freedom. And they are deeply disappointed since the country’s military rulers have changed almost nothing to improve on Mubarak’s hawk-eyed censors.
One of the most revelatory of the military’s attitudes toward press freedom came this week with the military council reactivating the emergency law. In effect under Mubarak for three decades, it gives the state security apparatus broad powers to arrest and detain, without charges, and with the victims having no access to lawyers or to their families.
As reported in The Guardian, journalists fear that this law, ostensibly reintroduced in the wake of the storming of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, will be used to muzzle the media.
Earlier, the military council committed to annul the law by September -- this has always been central to the demands of the protesters.
The Guardian reported: “A day after the old law was re-introduced, police raided the offices of an Al-Jazeera affiliate, Mubasher Misr, and shut it down. Broadcasting equipment was seized and the station's chief engineer, Islam al-Banna, was arrested and detained overnight. The authorities also jammed the station's live broadcasts from another location, at the media production city, outside Cairo.”
The Al-Jazeera affiliate began broadcasting in February. Its director, Ayman
Gaballah, said it had been promised a license. But the license never appeared and Al Jazeera’s staff say they were “repeatedly told by the ministry that they could go on broadcasting without a problem.”
The Guardian reports that research by local representatives of the New York-based press freedom watchdog, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), indicates that this was merely a pretext to silence the critical broadcaster.
The nation’s military rulers have now placed a "temporary freeze" on issuing broadcasting licences for new satellite television stations, the news channel Al-Arabiya reported.
Al Jazeera reports that hundreds of people have gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the recent expansion of the Egypt's emergency law, amid palpable anger over the military's handling of transition from autocratic rule. Earlier this week, following a violent attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo and attempts to storm security buildings, the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces said it would enforce the Emergency Law at least until the end of this year, on articles relating to the spreading of misinformation, arms possession and interfering with traffic.
The highly respected Reporters Without Borders (RWB) organization says it is “very disturbed by information minister Osama Heikal’s 7 September decision, after consulting with the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to temporarily freeze the granting of satellite TV licences to recent applicants without saying how long the freeze will last.”
RWB also charged that Heikal threatened other TV stations, accusing them of indiscipline and saying he was asking the relevant agency to “take legal measures against satellite TV stations that jeopardize stability and security.” He said the measures were needed to restore order to the “increasingly chaotic media scene” and because of “concerns over incitement to violence.”
“His announcement and comments amount to a declaration of war on the broadcast media and, in particular, independent satellite TV stations that dare to criticize the Supreme Council’s policies. It is very disturbing that the council regards news media as sources of ‘harm to the country’s security and stability,’” RWB added.
The group said, “It is a return to the past, to the era of the ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. Since taking over after Mubarak’s removal, the Supreme Council has repeatedly taken decisions that negatively affect media freedom in Egypt, endangering something that Egyptians fought hard for during their 18-day uprising.”
The crackdown has affected scores of individual journalists as well as journalistic institutions.
Here are several examples – though the list is far from complete.
Imad Bazzi, a Lebanese blogger who is the founder of the Arab Blogging Forum, was denied entry at Cairo airport last week and deported after being told he had been "blacklisted" as a security concern.
A popular TV personality, Dina Abd-Al Rahman, was fired as a presenter of the Dream TV program, “Sabah Dream,” following an altercation on the air with a former air force officer, Abd Al-Monem Kato.
Many online commentators and activists have expressed their outrage about her dismissal, describing Dream TV owner Ahmed Bahgat, an ally of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces as a businessman opposed to media freedom on his own TV channel. While there is no evidence that the council had a role in her dismissal, the military has taken direct action against journalists on many occasions in recent months.
For example, a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds was imposed on Kareem Reda, who writes the blog Sarkha, was upheld on appeal. The blogger was fined as a result of a suit by Petrograde, a natural gas company, that accused him of defaming and insulting the company, damaging its interests and trying to harm the national economy because he launched a page on Facebook calling on people to boycott its services and not pay their gas bills it as long as it continued to export gas to Israel at below-market prices.
Maikel Nabil Sanad, a blogger and conscientious objector, was sentenced to three years in prison on 10 April for posting a report on his blog disputing the apparent neutrality of the armed forces during the January and February demonstrations and accusing them of arresting and torturing protesters.
He was convicted of insulting the armed forces, spreading false information and disturbing public order. He began a hunger strike in Cairo’s Al-Marg prison on 23 August despite suffering from heart problems. He subsequently stopped drinking as well, with the result that he had to be rushed to the prison infirmary. He insists that he will resume the hunger strike regardless of the outcome.
Another blogger, Botheina Kamel, was summoned by a military court for interrogation on 15 May after she criticized the armed forces in a program on Nile TV.
The blogger Hossam Al-Hamalawy and journalists Rim Magued and Nabil Sharaf Al-Din were interrogated on 31 May for nearly three hours about their appearances on the station ON-TV. Speaking on Magued’s program on 26 May, Al-Hamalawy accused military police of violating human rights.
The next day, Al-Din talked about the chances of an alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army as part of a political transition.
Rasha Azab, a reporter for the newspaper Al-Fajr, and Adel Hammuda, its editor, were interrogated by a military prosecutor on 19 June and were told they are to be tried because an article Azab wrote for Al-Fajr’s 12 June issue. Azab is facing a possible jail sentence for publishing “false information liable to disturb public security” while Hammuda is facing a possible fine for alleged negligence in his role as editor.
Hassan Bahgat, 70, a former army officer who used to head ABC’s Cairo bureau, was sentenced to six months in prison by a military court on 17 August on a charge of “chanting anti-army slogans liable to defame the armed forces” in Tahrir Square at 1 a.m. on 6 August. The sentence was suspended but it could be activated at any time.
A smear campaign has meanwhile been launched in the government media against Egyptian NGOs that get funding from the United States. It is targeting only those that criticize the Supreme Council and poses a threat to many national human rights organizations.
Mohamed Abdel Dayem, the CPJ's Middle East and north Africa program coordinator, summed up the current state of play: "For months now, the ruling Supreme Military Council of the Armed Forces has been going to great lengths to hamstring the media and snuff out critical reporting. As the self-proclaimed guardian of the revolution, the military council ought to facilitate the work of long-silenced voices in the media instead of shutting them down and threatening them with repressive state security proceedings."
But this is unlikely to happen any time soon. The generals who sit on the Supreme Council are generals; they tend to know little about the need for press freedom. Indeed, they seem to fear it. Moreover, they know little about governing. They also appear to have great difficulty actually hearing what their constituents are telling them; a major reason is that they don’t regard the heroes of Tahrir Square as constituents.
And we should remember that all of these men were Mubarak’s military comrades. It must pain them greatly to see their fellow soldier being tried in open court for murder and corruption. It would appear that this was at least one of their motivations in closing the Mubarak court proceedings to the press.
To a significant extent, the generals are looking at a self-inflicted wound. They have failed to lay out any long-term vision for Egypt’s future. That sows confusion and contention among those who risked so much to give Egypt another chance to join the 21st Century. Absent such a vision, the Tahrir Square protestors are chaotically clamoring for an unconnected series of populist “fixes.”
But, as Egypt apparently must learn the hard way, populism is not policy.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
THE “ENGINEERING OF CONSENT?”
By William Fisher
Well, Matt Lauer’s got his hands full.
No, not the TV Matt Lauer. The other Matt Lauer. The one who used to do public diplomacy work for the US State Department and now does PR for a Washington company called Qorvis Communications.
Why are his hands full? The good news is that his firm just got a big new account. The bad news is that it’s the Kingdom of Bahrain.
That’s bad news because it’s a little like getting the Pol Pot account; there wouldn’t seem to be a lot a PR firm could do to burnish Mr. Pol Pot’s “image.” Not even for $40,000 a month plus expenses.
King Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa is no Pol Pot. But he has unleashed the full fury of the government apparatus on peaceful demonstrators. His security police and army have killed many of these demonstrators. Hundreds have been wounded. Even larger numbers have been arrested and, according to reputable human rights groups, have been tortured and otherwise abused in prison, where they have little access to lawyers or even family members.
What do PR firms customarily do with high profile clients with deeply tarnished “images?” They’ll construct a narrative presenting the King’s version of what’s happened. They will have the King say, as he did this week, that he will forgive all the miscreants. He will make speeches about the openness of the government to “dialogue.” He may even empty his prisons of political prisoners as a pre-condition to dialogue.
They’ll issue an endless stream of press releases and films designed to reassure the world – and especially the tourist trade – that peace has been restored and all is well in the Kingdom. And they will need to reassure the sponsors of Formula One auto racing that it’s OK for them to drive in Bahrain.
Meanwhile, the improvised, home-grown PR machinery of the demonstrators will continue to push out story after story designed to heighten awareness of the dire human rights situation still prevailing in the tiny Kingdom. Journalists covering this story – and there are very few of them – will continue to receive pictures of corpses butchered by their jailers.
And e-mailed statements from those leaders not yet arrested or out on bail. And daily tallies of deaths and detentions and military trials and the usual array of police state toys.
Mr. Lauer’s task may be made a bit easier by the presence of Bahrain’s two most powerful friends. One is Saudi Arabia – also a client of Lauer’s firm --- which is just 20 minutes over the causeway to Bahrain. Saudi Arabia actually sent troops into Bahrain, where they are currently helping the King and his family to quell the protests. The last thing the Saudis want is a Shia controlled country 20 minutes away from their Eastern oilfields.
So Mr. Lauer and his colleagues are going to have to deal with the religious aspects of their client’s situation. The King and his family, you see, are Sunni Muslims, like the Saudis. The majority of the people of Bahrain are Shia Muslims, just like the Iranians. One of the Shia’s main protests is that they are systematically excluded from any job with any authority.
Mr. Lauer’s other advantage is the silence of the United States. The Crown Prince – the King’s son – has been dispatched to Washington to reassure the State Department and President Obama that his government is eager to engage in dialogue with the protesters but that they won’t play until unacceptable conditions have been met. The US Government has helped by emphasizing the important of dialogue.
Bahrain is of strategic importance to the US. Its Fifth Fleet is housed there. And the US can’t afford to annoy the Saudis too much, because we buy their oil, they’re still fretting about Obama letting Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak resign too soon, and they represent the Sunni balance of power in the Mideast.
When the Crown Prince visited Washington, he told the folks at the State Department that he was worried about Bahrain’s “image” and its negative impact on tourism. So that’s what Mr. Lauer and his team of warriors will try to correct in the eyes of the US Government and the Congress and in major nation capitals in Europe.
So we will see whether “the engineering of consent” – the phrase used by the father of PR to define this form of art – can trump the suffering of an undervalued, abused, and gutsy populace.
How will a public relations program explain – perhaps even attempt to justify – the death of a 14-year-old boy, Ali Jawad, who was participating with thousands of other peaceful Bahrainis in an Eid celebration. A member of the security forces fired a teargas canister at him at point-blank range.
The point is that most honest public relations practitioners will tell you that only limited change can be made in people’s attitudes until there are substantial and well-communicated changes in the policies that caused the problem in the first place.
If Mr. Lauer and his colleagues can do that, they should get a raise to $80,000 a month!
PS: After this post was written, I learned that Joe Trippi, the internet fund-raising guru who landed John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign among the big boys, has become the latest to join Bahrain's PR team. This is a huge disappointment to those of us who developed a great respect for Trippi during the campaign. Sadly, it reminded me of Andy Hatcher, JFK's African-American Deputy Press Secretary, who ended up flacking for the apartheid regime of South Africa before Mandela.
Well, Matt Lauer’s got his hands full.
No, not the TV Matt Lauer. The other Matt Lauer. The one who used to do public diplomacy work for the US State Department and now does PR for a Washington company called Qorvis Communications.
Why are his hands full? The good news is that his firm just got a big new account. The bad news is that it’s the Kingdom of Bahrain.
That’s bad news because it’s a little like getting the Pol Pot account; there wouldn’t seem to be a lot a PR firm could do to burnish Mr. Pol Pot’s “image.” Not even for $40,000 a month plus expenses.
King Hamad-Bin-Isa-Al-Khalifa is no Pol Pot. But he has unleashed the full fury of the government apparatus on peaceful demonstrators. His security police and army have killed many of these demonstrators. Hundreds have been wounded. Even larger numbers have been arrested and, according to reputable human rights groups, have been tortured and otherwise abused in prison, where they have little access to lawyers or even family members.
What do PR firms customarily do with high profile clients with deeply tarnished “images?” They’ll construct a narrative presenting the King’s version of what’s happened. They will have the King say, as he did this week, that he will forgive all the miscreants. He will make speeches about the openness of the government to “dialogue.” He may even empty his prisons of political prisoners as a pre-condition to dialogue.
They’ll issue an endless stream of press releases and films designed to reassure the world – and especially the tourist trade – that peace has been restored and all is well in the Kingdom. And they will need to reassure the sponsors of Formula One auto racing that it’s OK for them to drive in Bahrain.
Meanwhile, the improvised, home-grown PR machinery of the demonstrators will continue to push out story after story designed to heighten awareness of the dire human rights situation still prevailing in the tiny Kingdom. Journalists covering this story – and there are very few of them – will continue to receive pictures of corpses butchered by their jailers.
And e-mailed statements from those leaders not yet arrested or out on bail. And daily tallies of deaths and detentions and military trials and the usual array of police state toys.
Mr. Lauer’s task may be made a bit easier by the presence of Bahrain’s two most powerful friends. One is Saudi Arabia – also a client of Lauer’s firm --- which is just 20 minutes over the causeway to Bahrain. Saudi Arabia actually sent troops into Bahrain, where they are currently helping the King and his family to quell the protests. The last thing the Saudis want is a Shia controlled country 20 minutes away from their Eastern oilfields.
So Mr. Lauer and his colleagues are going to have to deal with the religious aspects of their client’s situation. The King and his family, you see, are Sunni Muslims, like the Saudis. The majority of the people of Bahrain are Shia Muslims, just like the Iranians. One of the Shia’s main protests is that they are systematically excluded from any job with any authority.
Mr. Lauer’s other advantage is the silence of the United States. The Crown Prince – the King’s son – has been dispatched to Washington to reassure the State Department and President Obama that his government is eager to engage in dialogue with the protesters but that they won’t play until unacceptable conditions have been met. The US Government has helped by emphasizing the important of dialogue.
Bahrain is of strategic importance to the US. Its Fifth Fleet is housed there. And the US can’t afford to annoy the Saudis too much, because we buy their oil, they’re still fretting about Obama letting Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak resign too soon, and they represent the Sunni balance of power in the Mideast.
When the Crown Prince visited Washington, he told the folks at the State Department that he was worried about Bahrain’s “image” and its negative impact on tourism. So that’s what Mr. Lauer and his team of warriors will try to correct in the eyes of the US Government and the Congress and in major nation capitals in Europe.
So we will see whether “the engineering of consent” – the phrase used by the father of PR to define this form of art – can trump the suffering of an undervalued, abused, and gutsy populace.
How will a public relations program explain – perhaps even attempt to justify – the death of a 14-year-old boy, Ali Jawad, who was participating with thousands of other peaceful Bahrainis in an Eid celebration. A member of the security forces fired a teargas canister at him at point-blank range.
The point is that most honest public relations practitioners will tell you that only limited change can be made in people’s attitudes until there are substantial and well-communicated changes in the policies that caused the problem in the first place.
If Mr. Lauer and his colleagues can do that, they should get a raise to $80,000 a month!
PS: After this post was written, I learned that Joe Trippi, the internet fund-raising guru who landed John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign among the big boys, has become the latest to join Bahrain's PR team. This is a huge disappointment to those of us who developed a great respect for Trippi during the campaign. Sadly, it reminded me of Andy Hatcher, JFK's African-American Deputy Press Secretary, who ended up flacking for the apartheid regime of South Africa before Mandela.
Muslim Advocates Calls for Investigation of FBI Training
By William Fisher
A prominent Muslim organization is calling for an immediate investigation into the FBI's use of “grossly inaccurate and bigoted trainers and training materials for its counterterrorism agents and other law enforcement.”
Muslim Advocates filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General.
The organization said that in materials disclosed to Wired magazine, “FBI agents were presented with slides and materials that, for example, stated that zakat, or charity, given by Muslims, is a ‘funding mechanism for combat’," and that the Prophet Muhammad was a "cult leader."
The group said this was “just the latest in a string of reports that the FBI has been using inflammatory and woefully inaccurate materials to train its agents across the country.”
The FBI has thus far either denied that the materials are being used or defended the use of bigots as welcoming a range of opinions. But Muslim Advocates said, “One cannot reasonably imagine the FBI defending the use of David Duke or a white supremacist leader as a trainer”
It added that “an investigation by the government watchdog overseeing the FBI is long overdue. That is why Muslim Advocates today filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Inspector General is tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct by employees of the Justice Department, including the FBI.”
The disclosures regarding the FBI training materials and instructors were unearthed by a journalist, Spencer Ackerman of Wired. He presented his material on a popular television program, The Rachel Maddow Show, on MSNBC, last Thursday. The content was based upon Ackerman’s acquisition of FBI counterterrorism training documents.
Ackerman writes in Wired, “The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that ‘main stream’ [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”
At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, he adds, “agents are shown a chart contending that the more ‘devout’ a Muslim, the more likely he is to be ‘violent’,” he said.
Maddow said that WorldNetDaily, a right-wing Internet-based journal, is providing some of the trainers who are working with the FBI. The publication has been an outspoken representative of Islamophobia.
Maddow described their FBI mission as essentially “trying to make a buck off the more gullible elements of the conservative base.”
She pointed to some of the group’s previous projects, such as their reports on the need to wage a war on Islam itself rather than on terrorists acting under their own fundamentalist interpretations.
Her guest, Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman, charged that the person behind WorldNetDaily’s reports regarding Islam has been instructing FBI counter-terrorism officers. Ackerman explains:
“What they [the FBI] did tell me is that this was training that agents who had two to three years of experience in counter-terrorism have gone through. And they said to me that this is just the opinions of this one particular author…We’re still trying to find out the extent of this training.”
When asked why someone within or close to the FBI is now offering him this information, Ackerman explained that the training has been “deeply upsetting” to counter-terrorism experts inside the FBI concerned over civil rights of Muslim Americans and the impression this sort of attitude might have on their impression of those meant to protect them and all law-abiding Americans.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) commented: “Seeing the materials FBI agents are being trained with certainly helps explain why we’ve seen so many inappropriate FBI surveillance operations broadly targeting the Muslim-American community, from infiltrating mosques with agents provocateur to racial- and ethnic-mapping programs,” Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Danger Room after being shown the documents. ”Biased police training can only result in biased policing.”
In another case, Muslim Advocates has filed a Friend of the Court brief supporting compensation in a computer destruction case. It is supporting Majd Kam-Almaz’s lawsuit, which demands compensation for the destruction of his laptop by the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Kam-Almaz, a U.S. citizen, works in the area of disaster relief services, and had his business computer seized at Dulles Airport during a trip returning home from work travel.
His computer was destroyed while in the possession of border agents, causing him to lose contracts of substantial value.
Muslim Advocates’ claims that travelers across the country have experienced similar improper searches and questioning at the border, including in some cases the destruction of their cell phones and laptops. Their amicus brief argues that individuals whose electronic devices are damaged or destroyed while in the possession of government agents should be compensated for their loss.
A prominent Muslim organization is calling for an immediate investigation into the FBI's use of “grossly inaccurate and bigoted trainers and training materials for its counterterrorism agents and other law enforcement.”
Muslim Advocates filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General.
The organization said that in materials disclosed to Wired magazine, “FBI agents were presented with slides and materials that, for example, stated that zakat, or charity, given by Muslims, is a ‘funding mechanism for combat’," and that the Prophet Muhammad was a "cult leader."
The group said this was “just the latest in a string of reports that the FBI has been using inflammatory and woefully inaccurate materials to train its agents across the country.”
The FBI has thus far either denied that the materials are being used or defended the use of bigots as welcoming a range of opinions. But Muslim Advocates said, “One cannot reasonably imagine the FBI defending the use of David Duke or a white supremacist leader as a trainer”
It added that “an investigation by the government watchdog overseeing the FBI is long overdue. That is why Muslim Advocates today filed a complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Inspector General is tasked with investigating allegations of misconduct by employees of the Justice Department, including the FBI.”
The disclosures regarding the FBI training materials and instructors were unearthed by a journalist, Spencer Ackerman of Wired. He presented his material on a popular television program, The Rachel Maddow Show, on MSNBC, last Thursday. The content was based upon Ackerman’s acquisition of FBI counterterrorism training documents.
Ackerman writes in Wired, “The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that ‘main stream’ [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”
At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, he adds, “agents are shown a chart contending that the more ‘devout’ a Muslim, the more likely he is to be ‘violent’,” he said.
Maddow said that WorldNetDaily, a right-wing Internet-based journal, is providing some of the trainers who are working with the FBI. The publication has been an outspoken representative of Islamophobia.
Maddow described their FBI mission as essentially “trying to make a buck off the more gullible elements of the conservative base.”
She pointed to some of the group’s previous projects, such as their reports on the need to wage a war on Islam itself rather than on terrorists acting under their own fundamentalist interpretations.
Her guest, Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman, charged that the person behind WorldNetDaily’s reports regarding Islam has been instructing FBI counter-terrorism officers. Ackerman explains:
“What they [the FBI] did tell me is that this was training that agents who had two to three years of experience in counter-terrorism have gone through. And they said to me that this is just the opinions of this one particular author…We’re still trying to find out the extent of this training.”
When asked why someone within or close to the FBI is now offering him this information, Ackerman explained that the training has been “deeply upsetting” to counter-terrorism experts inside the FBI concerned over civil rights of Muslim Americans and the impression this sort of attitude might have on their impression of those meant to protect them and all law-abiding Americans.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) commented: “Seeing the materials FBI agents are being trained with certainly helps explain why we’ve seen so many inappropriate FBI surveillance operations broadly targeting the Muslim-American community, from infiltrating mosques with agents provocateur to racial- and ethnic-mapping programs,” Mike German, a former FBI agent now with the American Civil Liberties Union, tells Danger Room after being shown the documents. ”Biased police training can only result in biased policing.”
In another case, Muslim Advocates has filed a Friend of the Court brief supporting compensation in a computer destruction case. It is supporting Majd Kam-Almaz’s lawsuit, which demands compensation for the destruction of his laptop by the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Kam-Almaz, a U.S. citizen, works in the area of disaster relief services, and had his business computer seized at Dulles Airport during a trip returning home from work travel.
His computer was destroyed while in the possession of border agents, causing him to lose contracts of substantial value.
Muslim Advocates’ claims that travelers across the country have experienced similar improper searches and questioning at the border, including in some cases the destruction of their cell phones and laptops. Their amicus brief argues that individuals whose electronic devices are damaged or destroyed while in the possession of government agents should be compensated for their loss.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
