By William Fisher
It was going to be a real long-shot, with million-to-one odds.
It was going to be the first time in living memory that the King of a country commissioned and funded a truly independent report on the widespread civil strife taking place in his country, personally heard the authors tell him his army was killing its own people and the police were torturing citizens they took into custody.
More amazing still, the King expressed ignorance of these dreadful actions, accepted the report, and promised reform.
As Steve Royston commented in Voice of the Middle East, “The report is extraordinary in that it deals with events so recent. In the United Kingdom it took a quarter of a decade for the government to commission an inquiry into the events in Londonderry known as Bloody Sunday. The Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances of the Iraq war of 2003 is not due to report until 2012. Truth and reconciliation commissions in a number of countries where human rights abuses have taken place typically review events from many years in the past.”
The report, prepared by a team headed by a distinguished Egyptian judge, Cherif Bassiouni, was presented to the Sunni monarch, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, on November 23rd 2011. Today is January 7, 2012. What has happened since?
A 15-year-old teenager was killed by a tear gas canister manufactured in the US and sold to the Bahraini regime. The boy was shot at close range by security forces during an anti-regime protest in Sitra, a town southeast of the capital Manama, on the last day of 2011.
Later, his funeral turned violent after security forces fired tear gas to disperse mourners. Dozens of people have been killed since the beginning of the peaceful demonstrations in February 2011.
An infant and a mother died from inhaling toxic tear gas fumes. Saudi- backed riot police attacked teenage protester stabbed him with a knife during a protest in Malkiya village.
Thousands have been arrested and many of them suffered torture at the hands of the police. Even more thousands have been fired from their jobs for participating in peaceful demonstrations. Students have been dismissed from the University for the same reason.
A large number of doctors and nurses have been imprisoned and sentenced to absurdly long sentences for providing hospital care for people who were injured in the protests.
The country’s leading opposition party said, the courts “are still sentencing the victims with harsh verdicts in cases related to the right of speech and the right of peaceful rallying, no week passes by without a number of victims whose right of freedom and physical integrity are being violated by these verdicts.”
All of those arrested and imprisoned are Shia Muslims, as it the majority of the Bahraini population.
There is more, much more that could be written about the brutality and the mindless roundups of ordinary Bahrainis who started their campaign seeking reforms from the King, but hardened into non-negotiable abdication when the King – or whoever in the Palace is giving the orders – continually ramped up the campaign of repression.
But the Royal Family was not idle. It hired Miami police chief John Timoney, known for his trampling on civil rights of protesters to the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas.
It also hired a covey of high-priced public relations firms and communications consultants to do what PR people do: attempt to spin a positive narrative of the All the King’s Men that would supplant the images of soldiers firing tear gas and live ammo on peaceful demonstrators, including women and children.
One of the early fruits of this initiative was an Op-Ed in the conservative Washington Times. The piece appeared under the byline of the King himself. His piece extolled the economic opportunities awaiting foreign investors in peaceful Bahrain. Of the current conflict, he wrote, “Unfortunately, the legitimate demands of the opposition were hijacked by extremist elements with ties to foreign governments in the region.”
But then Justin Elliott at Salon reported that a top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place the op-ed. But the newspaper didn’t bother to tell its readers of the role of the regime’s lobbyists. So how could they know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain?
The link between Bahrain and Lockheed Martin isn’t complicated: Each year defense contractor sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military hardware to the tiny island kingdom. This was Washington-style Customer Service 101.
The Crown Prince has also been active, traveling to Washington for consultations with the US State Department and a meeting with President Obama, for whom Bahrain has a special strategic priority because it’s the home of the US Fifth Fleet (the fleet now in the center of the dispute with Iran over access to the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf).
Obama, seeming to walk on eggs for fear of offending America’s friends, the Saudis, evenhandedly expressed the hope that the government and the people of Bahrain would be able to resolve their differences peacefully.
Seemingly, the only concrete action taken by the Obama Administration was to hold up a scheduled shipment of arms to Bahrain.
So, it seems to me there is only one reasonable conclusion to be drawn from the current perilous situation in Bahrain: The promise of dialogue and reform from His Majesty is rapidly gaining all the credibility of one of Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s resignation letters.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Who Puts Kids in the Slammer for Life? We Do!
By William Fisher
You probably know that the United States has more people in the slammer than any other country in the world. The staggering number is 2.3 million. China, which has four times as many people as the US, is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
What you may not know is that the US also tops the charts in the numbers of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons. The score? The world: 0; the US: 2,570.
Right. The US is only country in the world that incarcerates people in adult prisons for crimes they committed when they were below the age of 18.
Furthermore, those prisoners experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. That’s the depressing conclusion of a new study by Human Rights Watch, “Against All Odds: Prison Conditions for Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole Sentences in the United States.”
Three months from now, in March, the US Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the life-without-parole sentence for youth offenders.
The 47-page report draws on six years of research, and interviews and correspondence with correctional officials and hundreds of youth offenders serving life without parole. Human Rights Watch found that nearly every youth offender serving life without parole reported physical violence or sexual abuse by other inmates or corrections officers. Nationwide statistics indicate that young prisoners serving any type of sentence in adult prison, as well as those with a slight build and low body weight, are most vulnerable to attack.
“Children who commit serious crimes and who inflict harm on others should be held accountable,” said Alison Parker, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “But neither youth offenders, nor any other prisoner, should endure any form of physical abuse.” Most of the life-without-parole inmates have been convicted of homicide offenses.
“The penalty [of life without parole] forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal…. For juvenile offenders, who are most in need of and receptive to rehabilitation, the absence of rehabilitative opportunities or treatment makes the disproportionality of the sentence all the more evident,” the report says.
This new research sheds light on the severity of prison conditions for those serving this sentence, Human Rights Watch said.
“ scared to death,” said a youth offender serving life without parole in California. “I was all of 5’6”, 130 pounds and they sent me to PBSP (Pelican Bay State Prison in California). I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t stand what the voices in my head was saying…. ‘You’re gonna get raped.’ ‘You won't ever see your family again.’”
Youth offenders are serving life without parole sentences in 38 states and in federal prisons. They often enter adult prison while still children, although some have reached young adulthood by the time their trials end and they begin serving their sentences. Prison policies that channel resources to inmates who are expected to be released often result in denying youth serving life without parole opportunities for education, development, and rehabilitation, Human Rights Watch found.
Youth offenders commonly reported having thoughts of suicide, feelings of intense loneliness, or depression. Isolation was frequently compounded by solitary confinement. In the past five years, at least three youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States have committed suicide.
The federal government and the states should abolish the sentence of life without parole for crimes committed by children, Human Rights Watch said. Government officials responsible for youth offenders should reform confinement conditions to accommodate their particular vulnerabilities, needs, and capacities to mature, reflect upon the harm they have caused, and change.
“Because children are different, shutting the door to growth, development, and rehabilitation turns a sentence of life without parole into a punishment of excessive cruelty,” said Parker. “Youth offenders should be given a path to rehabilitation while in prison – not forced to forfeit their future.”
Yet, lifers with the opportunity of parole (LWOP’s) experience a lack of educational opportunities. “LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates…. The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday,” the report says, quoting a youth offender serving life without parole in California.
Another inmate, this one in Arkansas, told Human Rights Watch (HRW), “I would be ever grateful… for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan…or jump on the first manned mission to Mars…. if the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.”
The HRW report said, “Our research has found that youth offenders are among the inmates most susceptible to physical and sexual assault during their incarceration. Many are placed in isolated segregation to protect them or to punish them, some spending years without any but the most fleeting human contact.
Because of their sentence, youth offenders serving life without parole face the additional burden of being classified in ways that deprive them of meaningful opportunities while in prison. Many are denied access to educational and vocational programs available to other inmates. Finally, facing violence, stultifying conditions, and the prospect of lifelong separation from family and friends, many youth offenders experience depression and intense loneliness. Failed by prison mental health services, many contemplate and attempt suicide; some succeed.”
The report found that none of the 560 youthful offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch had managed to avoid violence in prison. When prison officials tolerate such violence, it constitutes a serious human rights abuse.
Youth offenders often spend significant amounts of their time in US prisons isolated from the general prison population. Such segregation can be an attempt to protect vulnerable youth offenders from the general population, to punish infractions of prison rules, or to manage particular categories of inmates, such as alleged gang members.
Youth offenders frequently described their experience in segregation as a profoundly difficult ordeal. Life in long-term isolation usually involves segregating inmates for 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch described the devastating loneliness of spending their days alone, without any human contact, except for when a
guard passes them a food tray through a slot in the door, or when guards touch their wrists.
HRW makes a series of recommendations to federal, state and local judges and prison officials. All are preceded by HRW’s longstanding call to state and federal governments to “abolish the life without parole sentence for all youth offenders and abolish the automatic trial of youth in adult criminal courts and their mandatory incarceration in adult prisons.”
You probably know that the United States has more people in the slammer than any other country in the world. The staggering number is 2.3 million. China, which has four times as many people as the US, is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners.
What you may not know is that the US also tops the charts in the numbers of youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in adult US prisons. The score? The world: 0; the US: 2,570.
Right. The US is only country in the world that incarcerates people in adult prisons for crimes they committed when they were below the age of 18.
Furthermore, those prisoners experience conditions that violate fundamental human rights. That’s the depressing conclusion of a new study by Human Rights Watch, “Against All Odds: Prison Conditions for Youth Offenders Serving Life without Parole Sentences in the United States.”
Three months from now, in March, the US Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the life-without-parole sentence for youth offenders.
The 47-page report draws on six years of research, and interviews and correspondence with correctional officials and hundreds of youth offenders serving life without parole. Human Rights Watch found that nearly every youth offender serving life without parole reported physical violence or sexual abuse by other inmates or corrections officers. Nationwide statistics indicate that young prisoners serving any type of sentence in adult prison, as well as those with a slight build and low body weight, are most vulnerable to attack.
“Children who commit serious crimes and who inflict harm on others should be held accountable,” said Alison Parker, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “But neither youth offenders, nor any other prisoner, should endure any form of physical abuse.” Most of the life-without-parole inmates have been convicted of homicide offenses.
“The penalty [of life without parole] forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal…. For juvenile offenders, who are most in need of and receptive to rehabilitation, the absence of rehabilitative opportunities or treatment makes the disproportionality of the sentence all the more evident,” the report says.
This new research sheds light on the severity of prison conditions for those serving this sentence, Human Rights Watch said.
“ scared to death,” said a youth offender serving life without parole in California. “I was all of 5’6”, 130 pounds and they sent me to PBSP (Pelican Bay State Prison in California). I tried to kill myself because I couldn’t stand what the voices in my head was saying…. ‘You’re gonna get raped.’ ‘You won't ever see your family again.’”
Youth offenders are serving life without parole sentences in 38 states and in federal prisons. They often enter adult prison while still children, although some have reached young adulthood by the time their trials end and they begin serving their sentences. Prison policies that channel resources to inmates who are expected to be released often result in denying youth serving life without parole opportunities for education, development, and rehabilitation, Human Rights Watch found.
Youth offenders commonly reported having thoughts of suicide, feelings of intense loneliness, or depression. Isolation was frequently compounded by solitary confinement. In the past five years, at least three youth offenders serving life without parole sentences in the United States have committed suicide.
The federal government and the states should abolish the sentence of life without parole for crimes committed by children, Human Rights Watch said. Government officials responsible for youth offenders should reform confinement conditions to accommodate their particular vulnerabilities, needs, and capacities to mature, reflect upon the harm they have caused, and change.
“Because children are different, shutting the door to growth, development, and rehabilitation turns a sentence of life without parole into a punishment of excessive cruelty,” said Parker. “Youth offenders should be given a path to rehabilitation while in prison – not forced to forfeit their future.”
Yet, lifers with the opportunity of parole (LWOP’s) experience a lack of educational opportunities. “LWOPs cannot participate in many rehabilitative, educational, vocational training or other assignments available to other inmates with parole dates…. The supposed rationality is that LWOPs are beyond salvagability and would just be taking a spot away from someone who will actually return to society someday,” the report says, quoting a youth offender serving life without parole in California.
Another inmate, this one in Arkansas, told Human Rights Watch (HRW), “I would be ever grateful… for the chance to spend my life now for some good reason. I would go to the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan…or jump on the first manned mission to Mars…. if the state were to offer me some opportunity to end my life doing some good, rather than a slow-wasting plague to the world, it would be a great mercy to me.”
The HRW report said, “Our research has found that youth offenders are among the inmates most susceptible to physical and sexual assault during their incarceration. Many are placed in isolated segregation to protect them or to punish them, some spending years without any but the most fleeting human contact.
Because of their sentence, youth offenders serving life without parole face the additional burden of being classified in ways that deprive them of meaningful opportunities while in prison. Many are denied access to educational and vocational programs available to other inmates. Finally, facing violence, stultifying conditions, and the prospect of lifelong separation from family and friends, many youth offenders experience depression and intense loneliness. Failed by prison mental health services, many contemplate and attempt suicide; some succeed.”
The report found that none of the 560 youthful offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch had managed to avoid violence in prison. When prison officials tolerate such violence, it constitutes a serious human rights abuse.
Youth offenders often spend significant amounts of their time in US prisons isolated from the general prison population. Such segregation can be an attempt to protect vulnerable youth offenders from the general population, to punish infractions of prison rules, or to manage particular categories of inmates, such as alleged gang members.
Youth offenders frequently described their experience in segregation as a profoundly difficult ordeal. Life in long-term isolation usually involves segregating inmates for 23 or more hours a day in their cells. Offenders contacted by Human Rights Watch described the devastating loneliness of spending their days alone, without any human contact, except for when a
guard passes them a food tray through a slot in the door, or when guards touch their wrists.
HRW makes a series of recommendations to federal, state and local judges and prison officials. All are preceded by HRW’s longstanding call to state and federal governments to “abolish the life without parole sentence for all youth offenders and abolish the automatic trial of youth in adult criminal courts and their mandatory incarceration in adult prisons.”
Obama Immigration Agency Exaggerating Deportations
By William Fisher
Analysts at Syracuse University have concluded that the Obama Administration’s figures for the number of people deported from the US are being grossly overestimated.
Analysis of government immigration data provided to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University in late December -- almost two years after TRAC had requested it -- show that “many fewer individuals were apprehended, detained and deported by the agency than were claimed in its official statements” — congressional testimony, press releases, and the agency's latest 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, TRAC said.
In its initial FOIA request in May 2010, TRAC asked for specific information about all individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country for the period beginning October 1, 2004 to date. According to TRAC, “in its initial and incomplete response, however, ICE so far has only provided TRAC with information through FY 2005. The agency said it would provide detailed information about the more recent years later.”
When compared with various public statements by the agency, however, TRAC's analysis of this limited case-by-case information provided found vast discrepancies. Among them: ICE statements claimed almost five times more individual apprehensions than revealed in the data, as well as 24 times more individuals deported and 34 times more detentions.
Those records were provided to TRAC by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
When the PBS series, “Frontline,” did an hour-long piece on the immigration situation in the US today, a White House immigration spokesperson confirmed that the Obama Administration is deporting 400,000 people every year and racking up the largest number of deportations of any president in American history
TRAC says, “Details about the vast differences between the agency activities documented by the data and its public statements are laid out in a FOIA appeal filed by TRAC on January 4. The surprising size of the discrepancies, the TRAC appeal said, indicated that either "ICE has been making highly exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the level of its enforcement activities," or it is "withholding on a massive scale."
TRAC's appeal emphasized that this was not an inconsequential bookkeeping problem, noting "that the alleged failure of the federal government to enforce the immigration laws has been a hotly debated topic during both the Bush and Obama administrations."
"Thus, the agency's apparent inability to substantiate the level of its claimed enforcement activities is a very significant matter," the appeal continued. "Indeed it is central to the current public debate on federal enforcement policy in the ongoing presidential election campaign."
Recent press accounts credit the Obama Administration, and President Obama specifically, for ordering the deportation of more undocumented persons than any other president in US history. However, the large numbers of deportees reported by government immigration authorities have themselves become problematic.
Various organizations that specialize in immigration matters have concluded that the total number of people deported has included a preponderance of those whose “crimes” have been minor – broken tail lights at traffic stops, expired driver’s licenses, other minor infractions of the law.
Many of these referrals for deportation have been made by a program that was supposed to isolate serious criminals – the Secure Communities program –in which local law enforcement authorities routinely enter fingerprints and other data of people they arrest locally into an immigration database.
Other parts of the database are provided through a program known as 287(g), which gives local law enforcement personnel the authority to act as proxies for Federal immigration officials in arresting and detaining people they believe are in the US illegally.
Both programs have come under heavy fire from immigration and human rights groups on issues including ethnic profiling, and the inexperience of local law enforcement officers with immigration law, which is one of the most complex branches of law.
TRAC seeks the ICE documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Given the long delay in responding to the FOIA request, TRAC requested a formal agency investigation of the matter or that it be referred to the Office of Inspector General.
TRAC said, “As the unlawful failure of ICE to provide the requested data continued well beyond the legal deadlines, TRAC engaged in numerous unsuccessful attempts to resolve the matter with agency officials and in late November of 2010 asked the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) for assistance in persuading the agency to act on our request.”
It added, “OGIS, located in the National Archives and Records Administration, was created by Congress in 2007 to serve as a FOIA ‘ombudsman’ resolving conflicts between requesters and agencies. But TRAC says this approach “was not very successful,” and in mid-October 2011 James V.M.L. Holzer, the Director of Homeland Security's Public Liaison and Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, intervened in the case.
The organization added, “The failure of ICE to abide by the mandate of the FOIA in a timely way about its immigration enforcement actions during the five-year period covered by our May 2010 request starkly contrasts with the repeated transparency statements of President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other administration officials since they came to office almost three years ago.”
TRAC also said ICE’s exaggeration “appears to be a part of a larger pattern.” It said that, in a three-page letter dated September of 2010, for example, ICE informed TRAC that key statistical data it had previously provided us were now "unavailable" and that the agency without explanation, was unilaterally imposing a $450,000 FOIA processing fee.
ICE also claimed that Syracuse University was not an educational institution. Earlier in the same year a sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — demanded an $111,930 processing fee.
“While time consuming, these and other Administration feints, have not stopped TRAC from its two decades long campaign to obtain revealing information from ICE, USCIS, the IRS, the Justice Department and other agencies, TRAC declared.
Analysts at Syracuse University have concluded that the Obama Administration’s figures for the number of people deported from the US are being grossly overestimated.
Analysis of government immigration data provided to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University in late December -- almost two years after TRAC had requested it -- show that “many fewer individuals were apprehended, detained and deported by the agency than were claimed in its official statements” — congressional testimony, press releases, and the agency's latest 2010 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, TRAC said.
In its initial FOIA request in May 2010, TRAC asked for specific information about all individuals who had been arrested, detained, charged, returned or removed from the country for the period beginning October 1, 2004 to date. According to TRAC, “in its initial and incomplete response, however, ICE so far has only provided TRAC with information through FY 2005. The agency said it would provide detailed information about the more recent years later.”
When compared with various public statements by the agency, however, TRAC's analysis of this limited case-by-case information provided found vast discrepancies. Among them: ICE statements claimed almost five times more individual apprehensions than revealed in the data, as well as 24 times more individuals deported and 34 times more detentions.
Those records were provided to TRAC by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
When the PBS series, “Frontline,” did an hour-long piece on the immigration situation in the US today, a White House immigration spokesperson confirmed that the Obama Administration is deporting 400,000 people every year and racking up the largest number of deportations of any president in American history
TRAC says, “Details about the vast differences between the agency activities documented by the data and its public statements are laid out in a FOIA appeal filed by TRAC on January 4. The surprising size of the discrepancies, the TRAC appeal said, indicated that either "ICE has been making highly exaggerated and inaccurate claims about the level of its enforcement activities," or it is "withholding on a massive scale."
TRAC's appeal emphasized that this was not an inconsequential bookkeeping problem, noting "that the alleged failure of the federal government to enforce the immigration laws has been a hotly debated topic during both the Bush and Obama administrations."
"Thus, the agency's apparent inability to substantiate the level of its claimed enforcement activities is a very significant matter," the appeal continued. "Indeed it is central to the current public debate on federal enforcement policy in the ongoing presidential election campaign."
Recent press accounts credit the Obama Administration, and President Obama specifically, for ordering the deportation of more undocumented persons than any other president in US history. However, the large numbers of deportees reported by government immigration authorities have themselves become problematic.
Various organizations that specialize in immigration matters have concluded that the total number of people deported has included a preponderance of those whose “crimes” have been minor – broken tail lights at traffic stops, expired driver’s licenses, other minor infractions of the law.
Many of these referrals for deportation have been made by a program that was supposed to isolate serious criminals – the Secure Communities program –in which local law enforcement authorities routinely enter fingerprints and other data of people they arrest locally into an immigration database.
Other parts of the database are provided through a program known as 287(g), which gives local law enforcement personnel the authority to act as proxies for Federal immigration officials in arresting and detaining people they believe are in the US illegally.
Both programs have come under heavy fire from immigration and human rights groups on issues including ethnic profiling, and the inexperience of local law enforcement officers with immigration law, which is one of the most complex branches of law.
TRAC seeks the ICE documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Given the long delay in responding to the FOIA request, TRAC requested a formal agency investigation of the matter or that it be referred to the Office of Inspector General.
TRAC said, “As the unlawful failure of ICE to provide the requested data continued well beyond the legal deadlines, TRAC engaged in numerous unsuccessful attempts to resolve the matter with agency officials and in late November of 2010 asked the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) for assistance in persuading the agency to act on our request.”
It added, “OGIS, located in the National Archives and Records Administration, was created by Congress in 2007 to serve as a FOIA ‘ombudsman’ resolving conflicts between requesters and agencies. But TRAC says this approach “was not very successful,” and in mid-October 2011 James V.M.L. Holzer, the Director of Homeland Security's Public Liaison and Director of Disclosure and FOIA Operations, intervened in the case.
The organization added, “The failure of ICE to abide by the mandate of the FOIA in a timely way about its immigration enforcement actions during the five-year period covered by our May 2010 request starkly contrasts with the repeated transparency statements of President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and many other administration officials since they came to office almost three years ago.”
TRAC also said ICE’s exaggeration “appears to be a part of a larger pattern.” It said that, in a three-page letter dated September of 2010, for example, ICE informed TRAC that key statistical data it had previously provided us were now "unavailable" and that the agency without explanation, was unilaterally imposing a $450,000 FOIA processing fee.
ICE also claimed that Syracuse University was not an educational institution. Earlier in the same year a sister agency in the Department of Homeland Security — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — demanded an $111,930 processing fee.
“While time consuming, these and other Administration feints, have not stopped TRAC from its two decades long campaign to obtain revealing information from ICE, USCIS, the IRS, the Justice Department and other agencies, TRAC declared.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Saudis to Reinforce Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters, AI
By William Fisher
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by “a new wave of repression” that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a “terrorist crime.”
In a new 61-page report, “Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security,” Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have “used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials.” The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
“Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region,” said Philip Luther of AI.
“While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses,” he said.
AI said that the government “continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife.”
In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the “deviant group,” meaning al-Qa’ida, had been
questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI’s release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it “absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law.” It said the new draft law is designed “to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity.”
But AI charges it would “allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.”
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, “If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations.”
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began – in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi’a Muslims in the restive eastern province.
Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 “Day of Rage” in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
“Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-‘Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with “inciting public opinion,” AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret
organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. “The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions,” AI said.
“Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make
legal the very worst practices we have documented,” according to AI’s Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods – potentially indefinitely – if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as
“endangering…national unity”, “halting the basic law or some of its articles”, or “harming the reputation of the state or its position”.
Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any “terrorist crimes” that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia’s international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to “reconsider this law and ensure that his people’s legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism.”
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law.
“Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them,” he said, adding:
“The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country’s obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries.”
“Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring – that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence – the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws,” he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, “Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile.”
The Arab Spring has been greeted in Saudi Arabia by “a new wave of repression” that saw authorities arresting and imprisoning peaceful protesters demanding political reforms. Now, the Saudi crackdown may be reinforced by a draft anti-terror law that would effectively criminalize dissent as a “terrorist crime.”
In a new 61-page report, “Saudi Arabia: Repression in the Name of Security,” Amnesty International (AI) said authorities have “used security concerns to justify the arrest of hundreds of people who have been imprisoned after unfair trials.” The draft anti-terror law would further strip away rights from those accused of such offenses, Amnesty said.
“Peaceful protesters and supporters of political reform in the country have been targeted for arrest in an attempt to stamp out the kinds of call for reform that have echoed across the region,” said Philip Luther of AI.
“While the arguments used to justify this wide-ranging crackdown may be different, the abusive practices being employed by the Saudi Arabian government are worryingly similar to those which they have long used against people accused of terrorist offenses,” he said.
AI said that the government “continues to detain thousands of people, many of them without charge or trial, on terrorism-related grounds. Torture and other ill-treatment in detention remain rife.”
In April 2011, an Interior Ministry spokesperson said that around 5,000 people connected to the “deviant group,” meaning al-Qa’ida, had been
questioned and referred for trials, Amnesty said.
Meanwhile, Saudi troops continue to serve in Bahrain on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), helping the rulers of the tiny oil-rich monarchy to put an end to many months of peaceful demonstrations seeking reform.
In a statement following AI’s release of the draft law, the Saudi government said it “absolutely has a responsibility to protect the public from violent attacks, but that has to be done within the boundaries of international law.” It said the new draft law is designed “to assist Saudi Security forces in tackling terrorist activity.”
But AI charges it would “allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.”
The organization says it has obtained copies of the Draft Penal Law for Terrorism Crimes and Financing of Terrorism. It says, “If passed it would pave the way for even the smallest acts of peaceful dissent to be branded terrorism and risk massive human rights violations.”
A Saudi Arabian government security committee reviewed the draft law in June but it is not known when or if it might be passed.
AI says that since February, when sporadic demonstrations began – in defiance of a permanent national ban on protests -- the government carried out a crackdown that included the arrest of hundreds of mostly Shi’a Muslims in the restive eastern province.
Since March over 300 people who took part in peaceful protests in al-Qatif, al-Ahsa and Awwamiya have been detained.
Khaled al-Johani, 40, the only man to demonstrate on the March 11 “Day of Rage” in Riyadh, was swiftly arrested. He told journalists he was frustrated by media censorship in Saudi Arabia. Charged with supporting a protest and communicating with foreign media, he is believed to have been held in solitary confinement for two months, Amnesty said.
“Nine months later, he remains in detention and has not been tried. A number of people who have spoken up in support of protests or reform have been arrested. Sheikh Tawfiq Jaber Ibrahim al-‘Amr, a Shi'a cleric, was arrested for the second time this year in August for calling for reform at a mosque. He has been charged with “inciting public opinion,” AI said.
On November 22, 16 men, including nine prominent reformists, were sentenced to five to 30 years in prison on charges they formed a secret
organization, attempted to seize power, financed terrorism as well as incitement against the King and money laundering.
Amnesty says their trial, which began in May, was grossly unfair. “The defendants were blindfolded and handcuffed and their lawyer was not allowed to enter the court for the first three sessions,” AI said.
“Unless it were radically altered, the proposed draft anti-terror law would make the current situation even worse, as it would entrench and make
legal the very worst practices we have documented,” according to AI’s Luther.
The draft law allows for suspects to be held in incommunicado detention for up to 120 days, or for longer periods – potentially indefinitely – if authorized by a specialized court.
Under the draft law, terrorist crimes would include such actions as
“endangering…national unity”, “halting the basic law or some of its articles”, or “harming the reputation of the state or its position”.
Violations of the law would carry harsh punishments. The death penalty would be applied to cases of taking up arms against the state or for any “terrorist crimes” that result in death.
Amnesty charges that a number of other key provisions in the draft law run counter to Saudi Arabia’s international legal obligations, including those under the UN Convention against Torture.
Amnesty is calling on King Abdullah to “reconsider this law and ensure that his people’s legitimate right to freedom of expression is not curtailed in the name of fighting terrorism.”
Prof. Chip Pitts of Stanford and Oxford, former Chair of Amnesty International USA, commented on the proposed new law.
“Having just renewed the USA Patriot Act, the United States has sadly continued to set the stage for and model such counterproductive, harsh, and illegal approaches, and undermined its ability to credibly and effectively question them,” he said, adding:
“The myopic and reactionary approach taken in the new Saudi draft law, which would violate the country’s obligations under international human rights law, shows that the Kingdom is battening down the hatches and preparing for a long period of continued feudal rule that contradicts the very premises of expanding human rights that have swept the world in recent centuries.”
“Neglecting the lessons of the Arab Spring – that repression ultimately breeds instability and violence – the Saudi regime apparently prefers to look backwards to an error of medieval justice and absolute monarchical power which brooks no dissent. Such backwardness condemns the Saudi regime to greater isolation over time, and the Saudi people and businesses to constricted options for economic and social development, unless wiser heads prevail and move toward more progressive instead of regressive laws,” he said.
Prof. Lawrence Davidson, who teaches history at West Chester University, sees the proposed new law in its longer-term context.
He said, “Laws like this essentially blur the lines between the criminal and the authorities. It makes it much harder to tell who is who. Presently, there are two aspects to Saudi power: Force of questionable legitimacy and the ability to buy the loyalty of a portion of their population. In a couple of generations the latter may well go away and then former will probably prove insufficient. This law will not lessen the probability that last of the Saudi royal line dying in exile.”
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Toothless and Tone Deaf
It took exactly one day for the Syrian protesters to figure out what the Arab League sent them to "observe" the state of civil strife in that poor unfortunate country.
At the League, the dispatch of monitors to Syria was seen as a determined and courageous initiative. And it's true the League has been short on initiatives since its founding. Mostly it has issued communiqués as full of smoke, hyperbole and hypocrisy as is each delegate and the countries they lead.
For three decades, the Arab League has used the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as its all-purpose fig-leaf. It has substituted rhetoric for serious recommendations, perhaps with the exception of a "peace plan" put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 and again in 2007. Skeptical observers believe that the League would rather have a live issue than a resolved dispute.
(This is not to deny that successive Israeli governments have not behaved in similar ways, but that's a subject for another day.)
So back to Day One in Syria. That's when the protestors learned that the head of the Arab League mission has been the intelligence chief in Darfur, working for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged with 10 charges of war crimes. It would be a huge stretch to believe that the League's man, General Mustafa Dabi, had no inkling that Darfurians were experiencing any inconveniences.
The first meeting of the General and the protesters happened in the city of Homs, which has been reported in the West as the scene of a massive bloodbath, with security services firing randomly into a crowd of citizens.On the very day that General al-Dabi visited Homs, rebel forces reported that 19 people were there were killed by Assad's security men.
As Syrian tanks pulled out of Homs, "activists charged that the government's action was a ruse to mislead observers from the Arab League." But General Mustafa Dabi said, "The situation seemed reassuring so far." He added, "Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening." He said he plans to return to Homs as well as to other cities that have been under Syrian fire.
Let us pray that the General does return and does not represent the views of the other 150 monitors now in the country. Maybe it would be fair to ascribe his somewhat confused rhetoric to first-day-settling-in issues.
But, given the lackluster performance of the Arab League over many years, what is it reasonable to expect from this group of Dinosaurs?
Look at these members of the League, minus recently expelled Syria and plus Libya, restored to membership after Gadaffi fell.
The League consists of Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq ,Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine,Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Can we point to one democracy, however defined, among these 20 countries? Can we point to those in which a Sunni Muslim King or President rules over a majority Shia population? Can we name one that allows its citizens complete freedom of religion? Can we name one not based on crony-capitalism? How many can we find who won't arrest you with a warrant, hold you without charges or a lawyer, torture or perhaps kill you in detention, and – if you're lucky – get a sham show-trial that might last, say, 10 minutes.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt have always occupied positions of great influence within the League. So it offers no comfort whatever to learn that the Saudis are planning to introduce really draconian legislation which would criminalize any unlicensed public assembly, while Egypt's "interim" military rulers are trying to figure out how they can appear to be giving up their power to civilians while in fact making it harder for anyone except a general do actually get anything done.
After a day's experience with the League monitors, the Syrian protesters are calling for their dismissal and referral of the whole matter to the United Nations.
Nice idea, but lest we forget, Russia and China appear steadfast in trying to preserve their countries' lucrative commercial ties. Don't expect any boat-rocking from these two.
At the League, the dispatch of monitors to Syria was seen as a determined and courageous initiative. And it's true the League has been short on initiatives since its founding. Mostly it has issued communiqués as full of smoke, hyperbole and hypocrisy as is each delegate and the countries they lead.
For three decades, the Arab League has used the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as its all-purpose fig-leaf. It has substituted rhetoric for serious recommendations, perhaps with the exception of a "peace plan" put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 and again in 2007. Skeptical observers believe that the League would rather have a live issue than a resolved dispute.
(This is not to deny that successive Israeli governments have not behaved in similar ways, but that's a subject for another day.)
So back to Day One in Syria. That's when the protestors learned that the head of the Arab League mission has been the intelligence chief in Darfur, working for Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged with 10 charges of war crimes. It would be a huge stretch to believe that the League's man, General Mustafa Dabi, had no inkling that Darfurians were experiencing any inconveniences.
The first meeting of the General and the protesters happened in the city of Homs, which has been reported in the West as the scene of a massive bloodbath, with security services firing randomly into a crowd of citizens.On the very day that General al-Dabi visited Homs, rebel forces reported that 19 people were there were killed by Assad's security men.
As Syrian tanks pulled out of Homs, "activists charged that the government's action was a ruse to mislead observers from the Arab League." But General Mustafa Dabi said, "The situation seemed reassuring so far." He added, "Some places looked a bit of a mess but there was nothing frightening." He said he plans to return to Homs as well as to other cities that have been under Syrian fire.
Let us pray that the General does return and does not represent the views of the other 150 monitors now in the country. Maybe it would be fair to ascribe his somewhat confused rhetoric to first-day-settling-in issues.
But, given the lackluster performance of the Arab League over many years, what is it reasonable to expect from this group of Dinosaurs?
Look at these members of the League, minus recently expelled Syria and plus Libya, restored to membership after Gadaffi fell.
The League consists of Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq ,Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine,Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Can we point to one democracy, however defined, among these 20 countries? Can we point to those in which a Sunni Muslim King or President rules over a majority Shia population? Can we name one that allows its citizens complete freedom of religion? Can we name one not based on crony-capitalism? How many can we find who won't arrest you with a warrant, hold you without charges or a lawyer, torture or perhaps kill you in detention, and – if you're lucky – get a sham show-trial that might last, say, 10 minutes.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt have always occupied positions of great influence within the League. So it offers no comfort whatever to learn that the Saudis are planning to introduce really draconian legislation which would criminalize any unlicensed public assembly, while Egypt's "interim" military rulers are trying to figure out how they can appear to be giving up their power to civilians while in fact making it harder for anyone except a general do actually get anything done.
After a day's experience with the League monitors, the Syrian protesters are calling for their dismissal and referral of the whole matter to the United Nations.
Nice idea, but lest we forget, Russia and China appear steadfast in trying to preserve their countries' lucrative commercial ties. Don't expect any boat-rocking from these two.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Egypt Security Raids US, German and Egyptian NGOs
By William Fisher
Seeming to borrow a page from the Hosni Mubarak playbook, Egyptian security forces yesterday raided the offices of two Egyptian, two American and one German non-governmental organization and held their staffs inside these offices while police and prosecutors search their papers and computers.
The reason for the raids is still unclear, but it is known that these are among the not-for-profit groups who have registered strong objections to the so-called NGO law drafted by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) IN November 2011.
According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), officers – in uniform and civilian clothes – raided the Arab Center for Independence of Justice and Legal Professions (ACIJP) and The Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory, both Egyptian NGOs; The National Democratic Institute (NDI), an American NGO with offices in Cairo and Assuit); the International Republican Institute (IRI), an American organization with an office in Cairo; Freedom House, an American organization with an office in Egypt, and Konrad Adenauer, a German NGO.
The staff members of these organizations were reportedly held in their offices while. Police searched their papers, laptops and computers.
Staff members of the six organizations were warned from using their cell phones, laptops and computers; and were isolated from contact with the outside world. Additionally, with regards to the ACIJP office at least, authorities restricted access to the entire building, preventing people from entering or exiting the building.
ANHRI said that “storming these offices is related to the campaign led by the Supreme Council for Armed Forces (SCAF) and the Egyptian government starting from June 2011 against civil society organizations and more specifically human rights groups in Egypt.”
The NDI, IRI, and Freedom House have been previously investigated by the ministry of justice on charges of receiving foreign funding, while the Arab Center for the Independence of Justice and Legal Professions has not been yet investigated. An Investigation of the Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory was due to start next Sunday, January 1, 2012.
ANHRI said the storming of NGO offices is “an unprecedented move in the recent history of Egyptian NGOs,” adding that in February 2011, during the 18 days Egyptian revolution, “Military Police stormed the office of Hisham Mubarak Law Center, an Egyptian NGO based in Cairo, and arrested several of its members as well as staff members of other international organizations who were present at the scene.”
The Egyptian newspaper, Al Ahram, reported, “In Mubarak's time the government never dared to do such a thing," said prominent human rights activists Negad El-Bourai on his Twitter account.”
"We are still not sure of anything," said Emad Mubarak from the Freedom of Expression Center, "however their excuse could be that they are auditing the files after accusations that many NGOs are receiving foreign funds."
In August, a group of Egyptian NGOs sent an urgent appeal to the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association, the Rights to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, and on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders. It is unclear what action the UN body took.
Thirty-nine Egyptian NGOs participated in the appeal, submitting a complaint condemning the campaign against civil society associations and the incitement to hatred, as well as government attempts to further restrict the activities of these organizations and the investigations launched by the Supreme State Security Prosecution.
In November, 2011, these 39 human rights and development organizations drafted a new law to regulate NGOs and sent a copy to then Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.
The proposed law provided for the autonomy of Egyptian civil society organizations from the state and its administrative apparatus. At the same time, it guaranteed the transparent operation of these organizations in terms of their activities and sources of funding. Under the proposed law, civil society groups and NGOs could be established by notification at a primary court, and the Ministry of Justice would be the competent administrative body. The law also provided for the freedom to join and form international and local networks and alliances. No action has been taken on this draft law.
ANHRI said that, “Since their formation human rights organizations have been at the forefront of proposing laws to liberate civic action. This law is one of many proposed since 1985. In 2009, during the Mubarak era, an alternative law was proposed by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights; however, it was disregarded by the regime.”
The group added,” In light of the continuation of the Mubarak regimes policy towards civil society organizations, including interference in civil society operations by the administrative and security sectors, the undersigned organizations now proffer the same law in a new initiative joined by several more groups. In addition, a media campaign has been launched to smear civil society, particularly human rights groups, in order to damage the credibility of their reports and their criticisms of the human rights record of the SCAF and its government.
ANHRI went further. It said this campaign has recently “taken more deplorable measures even than what was attempted by Mubarak himself. The undersigned organizations propose this law as a democratic alternative to the current law, passed in 2002, which gives arbitrary powers to the Ministry of Social Solidarity and Justice and permits daily intervention by the security apparatus in the operation of civil society associations and NGOs.
The group said its alternative law was “drafted with due consideration for international standards, aiming to rectify the current law’s incompatibility with such standards, as this incompatibility was a constant source of criticism of the Egyptian government, especially during the UN Universal Periodic Review of the human rights record in Egypt conducted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2010.”
It noted that one of the recommendations to the Egyptian government was to “pass legislation that allows NGOs to accept foreign funding without prior government approval, legislation that allows for increased freedom of association and assembly, and legislation allowing labor unions to operate without joining the Egyptian Trade Union Federation”.
The 39 signatories to the letter of objection said that, after the January 25 Revolution, they “hoped that civil society would be freed from the bureaucratic grasp of the state and its security apparatus and that it would be given the opportunity to perform its patriotic role by entrenching democratic norms, respect for human rights, and social justice in post-revolution Egypt.”
However, they added, “this hope soon faded in light of the unchanged mindset of the regime and its failure in administering the transitional phase. In fact, the investigating authorities currently looking into the activities of human rights groups are relying on reports prepared by the dissolved State Security Investigations of the Mubarak era – the very apparatus whose practices were one of the main reasons Egyptians revolted to bring down the regime.”
The signatories concluded, “It is a bitter irony that the interim government and the SCAF are using the same justifications espoused by the extreme right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu to force through legal amendments to limit the freedom of human rights organizations in Israel on the pretext of protecting Israeli national security. This is the justification cited by the Egyptian regime in its current assault on human rights groups—“protecting Egyptian national security”—to use legal, administrative, and security means to harass human rights groups with the goal of covering up crimes committed by the regime.”
“While Israel hopes to silence those defending the rights of the Arab minority and Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Egyptian regime seeks to silence those who decry its practices, such as the use of excessive force against unarmed demonstrators, the referral of civilians to military trials, torture by the military police, the Maspero massacre of Copts, and other crimes,” they said.
NDI and IRI were created in 1983 as two of the four core institutes of the US National Endowment for Democracy, which was established by Congress in that year to act as a grant-making foundation, distributing funds to private organizations for the purpose of promoting democracy abroad. The two organizations correspond to the political parties bearing their respective names.
Freedom House was established in 1941 with the quiet encouragement of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its initial mission was to encourage popular support for American involvement in World War II at a time when isolationist sentiments were running high in the United States. Today it is best known for the publication “Freedom in the World”, the Freedom House annual survey of global policies and civil liberties, which it began in 1973.
The 39 signatories to today ANHRI statement included such groups as the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights the Association for Human Rights Legal Aid, the Human Rights Association for the Assistance of the Prisoners, the Center for Trade Union and Workers’ Services, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the Group for Human Rights Legal Aid, the Land Center for Human Rights, the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, and the Hisham Mubarak Law Center.
What does all this mean in terms of the January revolution? The Public Record asked an American aid consultant who has lived in Cairo for 25 years. He told us it’s not absolutely safe to use his name, but this is what he told us:
“The smear campaign conducted by the SCAF against civil society groups is appalling. No one has a clue about what they’re thinking, but they’ve apparently swallowed Mubarak’s whole story about non-profit groups being responsible for Egypt’s unrest. The fact is that these organizations are the last line of defense against authoritarian, capricious and senseless limitation of these groups’ abilities. With SCAF in charge, we really didn’t need a revolution!”
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