By William Fisher
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring – starting with the unrest in Tunisia in early January – questions have been raised about the role of women in the uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East.
Photography of demonstrations in Egypt’s Tahrir Square reveals the presence of women of all ages. The same appears to be true in other parts of Egypt, and in Tunisia, Syria, and Bahrain.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights has catalogued the role of women in the demonstrations in that country and the often brutal actions taken by security forces to force them from the streets.
The Center says, “Bahraini women are paying dearly for expressing their views.”
The organization says that dozens of Bahraini women “are being detained in prison facing torture and humiliation for participating in peaceful protests. The government is killing, detaining, physically and verbally abusing and dismissing women from work and education.”
In a statement, the Center says it “strongly condemns the ongoing crackdown against the peaceful protesters in Bahrain, specially the repression and detention of a great number of Bahraini women such as political and social activists, doctors, teachers, housewives as well as school and university students. These women are facing torture as well as physical and verbal abuses that leads to death in some cases; in addition to the dismissal from work and education.”
The Center says it believes these actions are “a vengeance against Bahraini women for the key role they played since the beginning of the protests; a way to force them giving up that role and retreat any activity they had in the protesting movement since last February. It is also a way to add pressure on the opposition to retreat their legitimate demands.”
Since the early days of the Bahraini revolution on February 14th, 2011, Bahraini women participated as an active and influential entity in the protests, the Center says, adding, “They advanced in great numbers on the front lines of the peaceful protests and expressed their opinion by demanding their political and human rights, giving speeches and reciting poetry. Their presence in the Pearl Square -The symbol of Bahrain’s revolution- was significant in taking up management roles, rescuing those injured by the excessive force used by Bahraini security forces; as well as documenting the brutalities committed against protesters and speaking to various media outlets.”
The crackdown reached its peak with the arrest of unprecedented numbers of women in the history of Bahrain (over 100 women during less than two months), as well as the direct shooting of a woman by a sniper in Bahrain’s army, the Center declares.
“Since the beginning of the protests last February, government forces faced peaceful protesters, including women, with excessive violence.” The Center says the forces shot tear gas and rubber bullets directly towards the women leading to fainting, wounds and injuries. “Even in their homes and living areas, women are not safe from being targeted by the security forces.”
The Center compiled a catalogue of actions committed by government security forces. For example:
A woman in her sixties was admitted to the Military Hospital after being shot by riot police causing fracture of the skull and tumescence in the eye. Reports indicate that she was standing in front of her house door, when she was unexpectedly shot by riot police, who were trying to disperse a protest organized by the residents during the afternoon.
A woman was hit by a shotgun pellet in her eye and forehead. She said she was in her house on the top floor when the security forces and protesters clashed in the street, and the riot police tried dispersing the protesters and shot her.
Female doctors and nurses who treated the wounded and injured were also subjected to physical attacks. On March 14, 2011, “thugs” backed by civilian militias under the command of Bahraini security forces physically attacked the nurses in the University of Bahrain and abused them verbally.
Two female doctors were threatened to death with a knife ; one of them was Dr. Alaa Al-Safaar. On March 15, 2011, Dr. Haneen Al-Bosta was a victim of physical attack while she was treating injured protesters who were attacked by security forces in Sitra. An officer in the security forces slapped her on the face, kicked her and forced her to crawl in the street, as a punishment for treating the injured.
At least one woman was intentionally killed. On, the day the Pearl Square was forcefully cleared of protesters by the army and security forces, Bahiya Abdul Rasool Al-Aradi, 51, lost her life when a bullet hit the front of her head. Instead of investigating her death, the government tried forcing her family to sign the death certificate, which stated “car accident” as cause of death. Her family refused to sign.
Since the announcement of Martial law -state of emergency- on March 15th, national security forces have launched aggressive raids arresting women who were suspected of having participated in the protests or strikes,expressed their support, or helped protesters by offering them medical treatment.
The attacks were specially targeted against teachers, university students, doctors, paramedics and even housewives. Their homes and workplaces were raided during the early hours of dawn. Moreover, some intermediate and secondary girls’ schools were raided leading to arrests a number of pupils under the age of 18. Other women were arrested at check points, where protest pictures or forwarded messages related to the protests were found on their mobile phones.
The Center reports that at least 100 women have been arrested in less than two months since March 15th and 30 of them are still in custody. It is believed that the total number of arrests is much higher than this number given the pace at which the daily detentions take place under a media blackout and fear or embarrassment of most families to report the arrest of their daughters. It is also believed that a large number of women are being detained on a daily basis to be interrogated for hours or days before being released.
The ages of the female detainees who remain in prison are between 16 to 51 years old. These arrests often happen after midnight, in the absence of female police. Security forces break the house doors and locks and threaten family members so they hand over their daughter if the troops don't find her.
This is what happened to the family of Ayat Qurmuzi, 20, a student and poet, whose parents were threatened to witness the killing of all their children there and then if they refused to disclose the whereabouts of Ayat. To add to the emotional pressure on the family of the detainee, the authorities denied later the arrest of Ayat after taking her from her home.
In some cases, teachers were arrested from their classrooms in front of their pupils while teaching. Some of the arrested teachers, who were interrogated and then released, confirmed that they were subjected to severe beatings by male interrogators in the detention centers. Some of them said they were blindfolded from the moment of their arrest and throughout the interrogation and had to face the wall while being beaten.
A student who was arrested and released two days later said “she was severely beaten and was made to choose between insulting religious symbols and being raped”.
Also, according to information received by the center, most of the detainees were beaten during their interrogation. They were slapped on the face and beaten on the back and neck leaving marks that were visible even after their release.
The Center says it observed at least one case of a woman and mother of an infant, who was repeatedly detained in Hamad Town police station for refusing to have sex with security personnel in the detention center.
The center was also informed that the poet Ayat Qurmuzi has been subjected to severe torture in order to force her to confess, in front of cameras, of things she has not committed. This is a habitude Bahraini regime has observed since the events of the nineties and was repeated in 2008 when confessions of tortured detainees were filmed and officially aired on national television.
Many women physicians and nurses have been arrested in the hospitals where they work to prevent them from treating patients injured in the demonstrations and later testifying about the nature of their wounds.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Does Cable Television Have Anything to Do With National Security?
By William Fisher
The Memorial Day holiday in the US gave me a brief respite from my daily scribbling and an opportunity to watch a little cable television.
I don’t want to sound like one of the elite, but I didn’t actually expect to be enlightened or stimulated or challenged by the morning’s TV fare, which I usually avoid with the exception of C-Span.
But I admit that I really wasn’t prepared for the “five minutes for the police car chase and the 30-second sound bite for the uprisings in Syria” news formula. Nor was I fully aware of the extent to which cable news simply ignored a bunch of really important world developments in favor of domestic crime stories and feel-good program–enders about pandas or teddy bears.
I left an hour of cable news right up to date on Congressional sex scandals and particularly gruesome child murders, but hopelessly uninformed about movements and actions that truly have the potential to change lives in large numbers.
And, as for the rest of cable’s daily menu, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, these channels know their audiences. And, by and large, I’m told that the people who are watching non-news (entertainment) television in the morning are a pretty good cross-section of our most challenged demographics – people who can’t find jobs, the working poor, single moms struggling to care for their kids, housewives who abandoned the soaps for Oprah, et cetera.
These are not stupid people. But politically, cable news is feeding them a highly censored smorgasbord of meaningless sound-bites combined with the kinds of stories most likely to stimulate their most prurient interests.
Between newscasts, cable audiences are being enchanted by the seemingly endless supply of reality, game, courtroom, and pop-psyche guidance shows.
Now, lest I be misunderstood, there are some mighty smart and well-informed people working for cable channels. However, I find it an unfortunate turn-off that anchors like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Bill O’Reilly of FOX, and even Wolf Blitzer of CNN, have had to build their audiences by making outrageous hyperbolic (and usually untrue) statements, and booking guests who seem programmed to scream at (and over) one another on virtually any subject.
So what, you might ask, has this to do with National Security?
Let me state what should be obvious: Our form of government depends on the consent of the governed. When we find that our citizens are about as well-informed as Sarah Palen, we should be afraid – very afraid. Because to the extent our brains are A.W.O.L. on critical national and international issues, to that extent we give license to every demagogic politician to sell us whatever narrative he wants.
And they do. And because we are unaware we have options, politicians more often than not have their way. In the end, they persuade us to vote against our own interests.
And that makes us, as a nation, very, very insecure.
The Memorial Day holiday in the US gave me a brief respite from my daily scribbling and an opportunity to watch a little cable television.
I don’t want to sound like one of the elite, but I didn’t actually expect to be enlightened or stimulated or challenged by the morning’s TV fare, which I usually avoid with the exception of C-Span.
But I admit that I really wasn’t prepared for the “five minutes for the police car chase and the 30-second sound bite for the uprisings in Syria” news formula. Nor was I fully aware of the extent to which cable news simply ignored a bunch of really important world developments in favor of domestic crime stories and feel-good program–enders about pandas or teddy bears.
I left an hour of cable news right up to date on Congressional sex scandals and particularly gruesome child murders, but hopelessly uninformed about movements and actions that truly have the potential to change lives in large numbers.
And, as for the rest of cable’s daily menu, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, these channels know their audiences. And, by and large, I’m told that the people who are watching non-news (entertainment) television in the morning are a pretty good cross-section of our most challenged demographics – people who can’t find jobs, the working poor, single moms struggling to care for their kids, housewives who abandoned the soaps for Oprah, et cetera.
These are not stupid people. But politically, cable news is feeding them a highly censored smorgasbord of meaningless sound-bites combined with the kinds of stories most likely to stimulate their most prurient interests.
Between newscasts, cable audiences are being enchanted by the seemingly endless supply of reality, game, courtroom, and pop-psyche guidance shows.
Now, lest I be misunderstood, there are some mighty smart and well-informed people working for cable channels. However, I find it an unfortunate turn-off that anchors like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, Bill O’Reilly of FOX, and even Wolf Blitzer of CNN, have had to build their audiences by making outrageous hyperbolic (and usually untrue) statements, and booking guests who seem programmed to scream at (and over) one another on virtually any subject.
So what, you might ask, has this to do with National Security?
Let me state what should be obvious: Our form of government depends on the consent of the governed. When we find that our citizens are about as well-informed as Sarah Palen, we should be afraid – very afraid. Because to the extent our brains are A.W.O.L. on critical national and international issues, to that extent we give license to every demagogic politician to sell us whatever narrative he wants.
And they do. And because we are unaware we have options, politicians more often than not have their way. In the end, they persuade us to vote against our own interests.
And that makes us, as a nation, very, very insecure.
OBAMA’s SPEECH: DOES THE U.S. MATTER ANYMORE?
By William Fisher
President Obama’s recent speech on the Middle East was intended, finally, to put the U.S. on “the right side of history.” After months of fence-sitting, the president was going to throw the full moral weight of the United States behind the Arab Spring.
How he did depends a lot on where you’re sitting. In the U.S., reception to his remarks appears to have been largely positive – even among some of the human rights groups that have been consistently critical of what they see as the double-standard applied to different nations based on U.S. strategic interests.
“I thought the speech did a good job of clearly aligning U.S. policy in support of democratic change in the region,” said Neil Hicks of Human Rights Watch.
But the view from the Middle East and North Africa was less enthusiastic – a lot less.
Pro-reform activists in a number of Arab Spring countries were quick to point out that Saudi Arabia was not mentioned a single time in the more than 5,000 words Obama spoke.
The Sacred Cow is still Sacred!
Anger over that particular omission was dramatically evident in Bahrain, where Saudi troops are supporting the royal family in one of the most viscous crackdowns ever seen in this tiny Gulf country. King Abdullah’s forces are in Bahrain, along with others from the UAE, at the instigation of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is unclear whether these foreign soldiers are participating directly in the beatings and murders and faux trials of protesters, but their presence casts a huge dark shadow over the country.
As The Guardian reported, “Arab analysts said Obama's words were impressive but came largely too late and reflected US fears of the consequences of uprisings without guidance from the West.”
Those Arab analysts haven’t forgotten that in 2009 Obama came to Cairo University to address the Muslim world promising support for democracy. Nothing happened.
Nor have they forgotten that in 2005 George W. Bush attempted to embarrass Mubarak into holding multi-party elections that would be free and fair. Condi Rice even cancelled a trip to the region in protest. But nothing happened and everything went back to the status quo ante.
Most recently, Egyptians are remembering that the U.S. stood at the side of the Mubarak Regime until they were sure which side was going to win before they put their full-throated endorsement behind the headless horsemen of Tahrir Square.
Hussein Ibish, a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, summed up Obama’s latest speech well. He said, “Perhaps the most important change in tone in this regard was on Bahrain, where Obama condemned the crackdown in much stronger terms than the United States has to date. He called for dialogue but noted ‘you can't have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail’.”
Bahrainis appeared to be heartened that their tiny country was mentioned at all, but disappointed that listeners were spared the awful impact of what’s taking place there today.
The bloodbath in Bahrain has been almost universally neglected by major elements of the mainstream press, even though the spokesman for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has been a consistent supplier of frequent and accurate news and updates. The Bahraini situation is not simple, though it would be easy to simplify it. At its root, it is a story of a Sunni Muslim king ruling over a Shia Muslim majority population. The tactics employed by the royal family are unspeakably barbaric. In many respects, they make Egypt’s security services look like the Keystone Cops.
Chip Pitts, a long-time human rights defender and former CEO of Amnesty USA, summed up Obama’s speech this way:
“The president's speech mainly gave the minimum acknowledgment of new Middle Eastern realities without really constituting anything new or that would represent true leadership that could transcend the classic status quo interests operating there. The last thing those in the region needed was more tired rhetoric; the first thing they need from the US is more genuine, principled, consistent, and results-oriented leadership aimed at producing transformative change.”
But then, the sixty-four thousand dollar question: Does it really matter anymore what the United States thinks or says?
There is a substantial segment of well educated, well informed Arabs that sees the influence of the United States in sad and steady decline. After all, the U.S. was for many years the country that supported and helped finance the enemies of self-government, anti-corruption, a fair legal system, extraordinary rendition, police torture chambers, free elections, and repeal of so-called emergency laws.
Maybe Chip Pitts had it about right: “The last thing those in the region needed was more tired rhetoric; the first thing they need from the US is more genuine, principled, consistent, and results-oriented leadership aimed at producing transformative change.”
Meantime, U.S. pronouncements are triggering a growing ho-hum. As
Jon Alterman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put it, "There's not a huge amount of curiosity about what the president thinks. President Obama's speech…did nothing to change that social media site Twitter: ‘Obama gave a speech? Really? As if I care’.”
President Obama’s recent speech on the Middle East was intended, finally, to put the U.S. on “the right side of history.” After months of fence-sitting, the president was going to throw the full moral weight of the United States behind the Arab Spring.
How he did depends a lot on where you’re sitting. In the U.S., reception to his remarks appears to have been largely positive – even among some of the human rights groups that have been consistently critical of what they see as the double-standard applied to different nations based on U.S. strategic interests.
“I thought the speech did a good job of clearly aligning U.S. policy in support of democratic change in the region,” said Neil Hicks of Human Rights Watch.
But the view from the Middle East and North Africa was less enthusiastic – a lot less.
Pro-reform activists in a number of Arab Spring countries were quick to point out that Saudi Arabia was not mentioned a single time in the more than 5,000 words Obama spoke.
The Sacred Cow is still Sacred!
Anger over that particular omission was dramatically evident in Bahrain, where Saudi troops are supporting the royal family in one of the most viscous crackdowns ever seen in this tiny Gulf country. King Abdullah’s forces are in Bahrain, along with others from the UAE, at the instigation of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is unclear whether these foreign soldiers are participating directly in the beatings and murders and faux trials of protesters, but their presence casts a huge dark shadow over the country.
As The Guardian reported, “Arab analysts said Obama's words were impressive but came largely too late and reflected US fears of the consequences of uprisings without guidance from the West.”
Those Arab analysts haven’t forgotten that in 2009 Obama came to Cairo University to address the Muslim world promising support for democracy. Nothing happened.
Nor have they forgotten that in 2005 George W. Bush attempted to embarrass Mubarak into holding multi-party elections that would be free and fair. Condi Rice even cancelled a trip to the region in protest. But nothing happened and everything went back to the status quo ante.
Most recently, Egyptians are remembering that the U.S. stood at the side of the Mubarak Regime until they were sure which side was going to win before they put their full-throated endorsement behind the headless horsemen of Tahrir Square.
Hussein Ibish, a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, summed up Obama’s latest speech well. He said, “Perhaps the most important change in tone in this regard was on Bahrain, where Obama condemned the crackdown in much stronger terms than the United States has to date. He called for dialogue but noted ‘you can't have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail’.”
Bahrainis appeared to be heartened that their tiny country was mentioned at all, but disappointed that listeners were spared the awful impact of what’s taking place there today.
The bloodbath in Bahrain has been almost universally neglected by major elements of the mainstream press, even though the spokesman for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights has been a consistent supplier of frequent and accurate news and updates. The Bahraini situation is not simple, though it would be easy to simplify it. At its root, it is a story of a Sunni Muslim king ruling over a Shia Muslim majority population. The tactics employed by the royal family are unspeakably barbaric. In many respects, they make Egypt’s security services look like the Keystone Cops.
Chip Pitts, a long-time human rights defender and former CEO of Amnesty USA, summed up Obama’s speech this way:
“The president's speech mainly gave the minimum acknowledgment of new Middle Eastern realities without really constituting anything new or that would represent true leadership that could transcend the classic status quo interests operating there. The last thing those in the region needed was more tired rhetoric; the first thing they need from the US is more genuine, principled, consistent, and results-oriented leadership aimed at producing transformative change.”
But then, the sixty-four thousand dollar question: Does it really matter anymore what the United States thinks or says?
There is a substantial segment of well educated, well informed Arabs that sees the influence of the United States in sad and steady decline. After all, the U.S. was for many years the country that supported and helped finance the enemies of self-government, anti-corruption, a fair legal system, extraordinary rendition, police torture chambers, free elections, and repeal of so-called emergency laws.
Maybe Chip Pitts had it about right: “The last thing those in the region needed was more tired rhetoric; the first thing they need from the US is more genuine, principled, consistent, and results-oriented leadership aimed at producing transformative change.”
Meantime, U.S. pronouncements are triggering a growing ho-hum. As
Jon Alterman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, put it, "There's not a huge amount of curiosity about what the president thinks. President Obama's speech…did nothing to change that social media site Twitter: ‘Obama gave a speech? Really? As if I care’.”
“We’ve Never Seen Such Horror” –HRW’s Chilling New Report on Syria
By William Fisher
Amid the anger that has erupted in Syria following the publication of images of the battered face of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a chilling new report detailing the brutality of Syrian security forces in the Syrian city of Daraa.
“For more than two months now, Syrian security forces have been killing and torturing their own people with complete impunity. They need to stop – and if they don’t, it is the (UN) Security Council’s responsibility to make sure that the people responsible face justice.”
These are the words of Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, introducing a chilling new 54-page report, "We've Never Seen Such Horror: Crimes against Humanity in Daraa."
The “systematic killings and torture” by Syrian security forces in the city of Daraa since protests began there on March 18, 2011, “strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity,” the Human Rights Watch report said.
Hamza -- a pudgy-cheeked 13-year-old -- was reportedly arrested, tortured and killed in custody and has become a symbol of the violent suppression of protesters by the Assad regime and a potential tipping point after 12 weeks of bloodshed, HRW said.
HRW‘s report is based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses. It focuses on violations in Daraa governorate, where some of the worst violence took place after protests seeking greater freedoms began in various parts of the country. The specifics went largely unreported due to the information blockade imposed by the Syrian authorities. Victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care.
HRW said the Syrian government “should take immediate steps to halt the excessive use of lethal force by security forces. The United Nations Security Council should impose sanctions and press Syria for accountability and, if it doesn't respond adequately, refer Syria to the International Criminal
Court (ICC).”
But getting the Security Council to act is not going to be easy. Russia and China have made it clear they are not inclined to participate in any overall condemnation of the Assad regime nor any call for referral to the ICC.
The US has already adopted unilateral sanctions against Assad and his top lieutenants, but they are not likely to have a major negative impact on the country.
China and Russia are likely to oppose UN-backed sanctions and are strongly opposed to a Libya-type action, even if such an operation were militarily possible in Syria.
The HRW reports says “the protests first broke out in Daraa in response to the detention and torture of 15 children accused of painting graffiti slogans calling for the government's downfall. In response and since then, security forces have repeatedly and systematically opened fire on overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators. The security forces have killed at least 418 people in the Daraa governorate alone, and more than 887 across Syria, according to local activists who have been maintaining a list of those killed. Exact numbers are impossible to verify.”
Witnesses from Daraa interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided consistent accounts of security forces using lethal force against protesters and bystanders, in most cases without advance warning or any effort to disperse the protesters by nonviolent means. Members of various branches of the mukhabarat (security services) and numerous snipers positioned on rooftops deliberately targeted the protesters, and many of the victims had lethal head, neck, and chest wounds. Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases in which security forces participating in the operations against protesters in Daraa and other cities had received "shoot-to-kill" orders from their commanders.
Human Rights Watch called on the Syrian government to halt immediately the use of excessive and lethal force by security forces against demonstrators and activists, release all arbitrarily arrested detainees, and provide human rights groups and journalists with immediate and unhindered access to Daraa.
It also called on the Security Council to adopt targeted financial and travel sanctions on officials responsible for continuing human rights violations, as well as to push for and support efforts to investigate and prosecute the grave, widespread and systemic human rights violations committed in Syria.
"Syrian authorities did everything they could to conceal their bloody repression in Daraa," Whitson said. "But horrendous crimes like these are impossible to hide, and sooner or later those responsible will have to answer for their actions."
Michelle Shephard, National Security reporter for the Toronto Star, wrote that young Hamza went missing after a protest in the southern Syrian village of Jiza on April 29, and “until his body was returned to his family Friday, his whereabouts were unknown. Activists said he was tortured and killed by Syria’s security services during a month in custody.”
Syrian state TV reported that Hamza was hit by three bullets outside the military complex where he was protesting. There was a delay in returning the body because his identity was unknown, the government-sponsored station stated.
But a video posted on YouTube showing his beaten corpse has sparked international condemnation and become a rallying cry for Syria’s protesters, who shouted this week: “We are all Hamza al-Khateeb.”
Hamza’s father, obviously under duress, appeared on Syrian State TV and praised Assad for his leadership. It was widely reported that the government has threatened his family.
HRW said. “It is difficult to look at his injuries and not think about what he endured — the boy’s face is purple and swollen; there are bullet and burn marks on his chest. A narrator states that his kneecaps were also shattered and his penis severed.”
“I have a child who is exactly that age and I just cannot comprehend the cruelty. It is so hitting home,” said Abdalla Rifai, of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. The Washington-based non-profit group was established to support the “democratic aspirations of Syrians” and is suing Assad’s regime in U.S. courts for human rights abuses.
Despite the courage of the protesters and the ferocity of their clashes with government forces, Syria experts remain doubtful that there are enough demonstrators to outnumber the security services. As long as they situation remains, Assad may be able to control the uprising.
Assad inherited power in July 2000, a month after his father Hafez al-Assad died. The senior Assad had ruled for three decades and his son inherited a government led by the Arab Socialist Baath party and dominated by Alawites - a minority Shia sect that makes up between five and 10 per cent of the population in a predominantly Sunni country (74 per cent). The Alawites are regarded as extraordinarily clever in holding on to their minority power.
Amid the anger that has erupted in Syria following the publication of images of the battered face of 13-year-old Hamza al-Khateeb, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a chilling new report detailing the brutality of Syrian security forces in the Syrian city of Daraa.
“For more than two months now, Syrian security forces have been killing and torturing their own people with complete impunity. They need to stop – and if they don’t, it is the (UN) Security Council’s responsibility to make sure that the people responsible face justice.”
These are the words of Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, introducing a chilling new 54-page report, "We've Never Seen Such Horror: Crimes against Humanity in Daraa."
The “systematic killings and torture” by Syrian security forces in the city of Daraa since protests began there on March 18, 2011, “strongly suggest that these qualify as crimes against humanity,” the Human Rights Watch report said.
Hamza -- a pudgy-cheeked 13-year-old -- was reportedly arrested, tortured and killed in custody and has become a symbol of the violent suppression of protesters by the Assad regime and a potential tipping point after 12 weeks of bloodshed, HRW said.
HRW‘s report is based on more than 50 interviews with victims and witnesses to abuses. It focuses on violations in Daraa governorate, where some of the worst violence took place after protests seeking greater freedoms began in various parts of the country. The specifics went largely unreported due to the information blockade imposed by the Syrian authorities. Victims and witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described systematic killings, beatings, torture using electroshock devices, and detention of people seeking medical care.
HRW said the Syrian government “should take immediate steps to halt the excessive use of lethal force by security forces. The United Nations Security Council should impose sanctions and press Syria for accountability and, if it doesn't respond adequately, refer Syria to the International Criminal
Court (ICC).”
But getting the Security Council to act is not going to be easy. Russia and China have made it clear they are not inclined to participate in any overall condemnation of the Assad regime nor any call for referral to the ICC.
The US has already adopted unilateral sanctions against Assad and his top lieutenants, but they are not likely to have a major negative impact on the country.
China and Russia are likely to oppose UN-backed sanctions and are strongly opposed to a Libya-type action, even if such an operation were militarily possible in Syria.
The HRW reports says “the protests first broke out in Daraa in response to the detention and torture of 15 children accused of painting graffiti slogans calling for the government's downfall. In response and since then, security forces have repeatedly and systematically opened fire on overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators. The security forces have killed at least 418 people in the Daraa governorate alone, and more than 887 across Syria, according to local activists who have been maintaining a list of those killed. Exact numbers are impossible to verify.”
Witnesses from Daraa interviewed by Human Rights Watch provided consistent accounts of security forces using lethal force against protesters and bystanders, in most cases without advance warning or any effort to disperse the protesters by nonviolent means. Members of various branches of the mukhabarat (security services) and numerous snipers positioned on rooftops deliberately targeted the protesters, and many of the victims had lethal head, neck, and chest wounds. Human Rights Watch documented a number of cases in which security forces participating in the operations against protesters in Daraa and other cities had received "shoot-to-kill" orders from their commanders.
Human Rights Watch called on the Syrian government to halt immediately the use of excessive and lethal force by security forces against demonstrators and activists, release all arbitrarily arrested detainees, and provide human rights groups and journalists with immediate and unhindered access to Daraa.
It also called on the Security Council to adopt targeted financial and travel sanctions on officials responsible for continuing human rights violations, as well as to push for and support efforts to investigate and prosecute the grave, widespread and systemic human rights violations committed in Syria.
"Syrian authorities did everything they could to conceal their bloody repression in Daraa," Whitson said. "But horrendous crimes like these are impossible to hide, and sooner or later those responsible will have to answer for their actions."
Michelle Shephard, National Security reporter for the Toronto Star, wrote that young Hamza went missing after a protest in the southern Syrian village of Jiza on April 29, and “until his body was returned to his family Friday, his whereabouts were unknown. Activists said he was tortured and killed by Syria’s security services during a month in custody.”
Syrian state TV reported that Hamza was hit by three bullets outside the military complex where he was protesting. There was a delay in returning the body because his identity was unknown, the government-sponsored station stated.
But a video posted on YouTube showing his beaten corpse has sparked international condemnation and become a rallying cry for Syria’s protesters, who shouted this week: “We are all Hamza al-Khateeb.”
Hamza’s father, obviously under duress, appeared on Syrian State TV and praised Assad for his leadership. It was widely reported that the government has threatened his family.
HRW said. “It is difficult to look at his injuries and not think about what he endured — the boy’s face is purple and swollen; there are bullet and burn marks on his chest. A narrator states that his kneecaps were also shattered and his penis severed.”
“I have a child who is exactly that age and I just cannot comprehend the cruelty. It is so hitting home,” said Abdalla Rifai, of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. The Washington-based non-profit group was established to support the “democratic aspirations of Syrians” and is suing Assad’s regime in U.S. courts for human rights abuses.
Despite the courage of the protesters and the ferocity of their clashes with government forces, Syria experts remain doubtful that there are enough demonstrators to outnumber the security services. As long as they situation remains, Assad may be able to control the uprising.
Assad inherited power in July 2000, a month after his father Hafez al-Assad died. The senior Assad had ruled for three decades and his son inherited a government led by the Arab Socialist Baath party and dominated by Alawites - a minority Shia sect that makes up between five and 10 per cent of the population in a predominantly Sunni country (74 per cent). The Alawites are regarded as extraordinarily clever in holding on to their minority power.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Suleiman: Mubarak Knew of Killings
By William Fisher
The man who was Hosni Mubarak’s Vice President and Egypt’s top spy is telling prosecutors that the aging dictator was aware that his security services were firing at peaceful protestors during the January 25 uprisings in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.
Testimony by Omar Suleiman could constitute key evidence against Mubarak, who will be tried for murder in the deaths of anti-government activists. Suleiman, a longtime Mubarak confidante, was appointed vice president in the waning days of the Mubarak regime and helped orchestrate the president’s resignation.
Before being named vice president, Suleiman, an army general, served as Egypt’s intelligence chief, and was reported to have been his country’s “point man” in the program of extraordinary rendition carried out during the Bush-Cheney administration. Torture victims and human rights groups charged that Suleiman oversaw the systematic use of torture on detainees and that in at least one instance he personally tortured a detainee during his career in intelligence.
Suleiman testified that Mubarak received hourly updates about the tactics used by the officers of the Ministry of Interior to disperse protesters and approved their brutal actions.
More than 864 people were killed and 6,467 wounded in the Egyptian revolution. Mubarak, who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for more than 30 years, faces a potential death sentence if found guilty. Habib El-Adly, Mubarak’s interior minister, and dozens of police, are also being tried for murder.
The Egyptian press is reporting that the prosecution’s investigation revealed that Mubarak cooperated with El-Adly and senior police officials to deliberately kill protesters, by ordering officers to shoot them and run them over with their vehicles.
Mubarak is also accused of a number of other serious crimes, including facilitating businessman Hussein Salem’s acquisition of 40 billion Egyptian pounds by facilitating a natural gas deal with Israel at low prices. The Military Prosecution will also be questioning him in connection with arms deals and issues related to "the interests and secrets of the armed forces."
“Mubarak should be prosecuted for high treason since he violated the presidential oath of office … committing several crimes against his people … for 30 years,” law professor Salah Sadek argued, expressing doubts over the seriousness of the trial.
“Had there been a serious intention to take Mubarak to court, he should have faced trial right after he stepped down on Feb. 11 … as all his crimes were exposed after the revolution erupted,” he added.
According to the Daily News Egypt, Sadek accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has been running the country since Mubarak stepped down, of procrastination in enforcing the law against him.
“It should not take all this time to investigate the charges against him. For long he remained under house arrest inside a palace in Sharm El-Sheikh resort,” Sadek said.
On April 10, the prosecutor general summoned Mubarak and his two sons Alaa and Gamal for interrogation over the above charges, previously denied by the former president.
Alaa and Gamal were taken to Cairo’s Tora prison, while Mubarak remained in custody at Sharm El-Sheikh hospital until his medical state stabilizes.
Since then, Mubarak’s detention was renewed three times, 15 days each, which stirred the angry reactions of activists and political forces who accused the SCAF of being lenient with Mubarak.
“If anybody else faced similar accusations, there would be no place for him other than jail,” Sadek said.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) welcomed what it described as a “conclusive step towards penalizing the members of the former regime for their crimes against the people and the revolutionists.”
In a statement, ANHRI called on the prosecutor general and the justice minister to allow human rights groups to follow up on the trial and allow people to witness the hearings.
Amnesty International called on authorities on Tuesday to prosecute all of those responsible for the killings and torture of protesters, including the military.
"That Mr. Mubarak and his sons are to stand trial is a very welcome step … [but] the families of those killed during protest violence have a right to justice as do all those who were seriously injured or subjected to arbitrary detention or torture, including at the hands of the military," the statement read.
But the Arab Center for the Independence of Judiciary and the Legal Profession (ACIJLP) demanded that Mubarak and others charged with violations committed at the time of the overthrown regime would be granted fair trials. The center called for serving justice and ignoring any other considerations or revenge motives.
“Despite its utmost importance, this [legal] step was taken relatively late, which raised doubts over the possibility of referring the ex-president to court,” ACIJLP said, also expressing relief over the prosecutor’s decision.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) has arrested four activists for handing out flyers advertising Friday’s (May 27) demonstrations. A graffiti artist, a film director, a musician, and a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, have been held for questioning regarding hanging posters advertising the protests and passing out pamphlets promoting the “Second Rage of Revolution.”
The Project for Middle East Democracy (POMED) reports that large numbers of Egyptians protested across the country today (May 27) to demand that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) accelerate the political reform process, as well as that Mubarak regime figures be tried. Some demonstrators have called the protests a “second revolution.”
The not-for-profit research group reported, "As a sign of unity and tolerance, Muslims and Christians reportedly took turns praying in Tahrir Square. Thousands of protestors have also emerged in Alexandria, Sharm el-Sheikh, Suez, Port Said, Luxor, and Aswan demanding the elimination of municipal councils controlled by members of the former National Democratic Party and the transfer of Mubarak to Tora prison in Cairo. Stages have been constructed in Tahrir Square, where prominent individuals such as Amr Hamzawy, Osama Ghazali Harb, Ehab El Khazarat, Ziad El Elimy, and Esraa Abdel Fatah were expected to speak. So far, the military has not had a strong presence at the demonstrations, perhaps fearing that its presence would incite violence."
The Muslim Brotherhood had actively campaigned against Friday’s demonstrations, are to urge the Egyptian authorities to enforce justice and put the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on trial on charges of conspiring to kill protesters and corruption.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which is relatively well organized and has a substantial political following, is charging that these demonstrations are “either a demonstration against the people and the will of the majority, or a conspiracy to incite friction between the people and the High Council of the Armed Forces.”
The protests were also to call on the ruling High Council of the Armed Forces to lift the emergency law, which it promised to do in September 2011.
Gamal Eid, president of ANHRI stated “The Muslim Brotherhood response to the calls for peaceful demonstrations are not surprising. We have seen during the previous months some leading figures in this group inciting hatred, and yesterday the group released an official statement strongly inciting in it against these demonstrations and those who call for them as if the former notorious National Democratic Party is still active fighting freedom and democracy but under a new name “Muslim Brotherhood”.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) challenged leaders in Bahrain and Yemen to release journalists who have been arbitrarily arrested, tried in Kangaroo courts, and given long jail sentences. It said there were at least a dozen reporters and photographers being held by Bahraini authorities.
RWB reported that, in the past few days, the authorities have arrested more photographers and photo-journalists who had been covering the pro-democracy demonstrations that have taken place in Bahrain since mid-February. The group said the aim of these targeted arrests is to limit the dissemination of news reports, photos and video of the protests and the government crackdown.
“Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of these photographers and of all the other people who have been arrested for circulating information about the protests and repression,” the organization said.
The organization also said that the Yemeni authorities continue to violate media freedom. “In the one of the latest cases, three government thugs known as baltagiyas attacked the Sanaa headquarters of the independent daily Al-Oula at dawn on 21 May, stabbing Hassan Sayeed, an employee. He was reported to be in a serious condition after being hospitalized.”
Deliveries of thousands of copies of local newspapers were also interrupted and the newspapers confiscated.
A journalist working for the independent NewsYemen site, was attacked by security forces while covering a sit-in by employees of the Yemeni oil company in the southern province of Taiz on 16 May. Deputy provincial security chief Mohamed Al-Shami hurled Adib’s camera to the ground and stamped on it. After being held with detained demonstrators for an hour, Adib managed to escape.
Another journalist working for the newspaper Al-Thawra, was threatened on 16 May with being killed or having his tongue cut out.
Yet a third journalist, based in the governorate of Hadramaout, who helps edit the Syon Press website (www.syonpress.com) and reports for the newspaper Al-Nada and the news website NewsYemen, was detained for several hours on 15 May as a result of a complaint by the head of a reconstruction fund that was created after heavy flooding in 2008 in Hadramaout and Al-Mahrah. An article by this journalist headlined “The true disaster” claimed that reconstruction money had been embezzled.
The man who was Hosni Mubarak’s Vice President and Egypt’s top spy is telling prosecutors that the aging dictator was aware that his security services were firing at peaceful protestors during the January 25 uprisings in Tahrir Square and elsewhere.
Testimony by Omar Suleiman could constitute key evidence against Mubarak, who will be tried for murder in the deaths of anti-government activists. Suleiman, a longtime Mubarak confidante, was appointed vice president in the waning days of the Mubarak regime and helped orchestrate the president’s resignation.
Before being named vice president, Suleiman, an army general, served as Egypt’s intelligence chief, and was reported to have been his country’s “point man” in the program of extraordinary rendition carried out during the Bush-Cheney administration. Torture victims and human rights groups charged that Suleiman oversaw the systematic use of torture on detainees and that in at least one instance he personally tortured a detainee during his career in intelligence.
Suleiman testified that Mubarak received hourly updates about the tactics used by the officers of the Ministry of Interior to disperse protesters and approved their brutal actions.
More than 864 people were killed and 6,467 wounded in the Egyptian revolution. Mubarak, who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for more than 30 years, faces a potential death sentence if found guilty. Habib El-Adly, Mubarak’s interior minister, and dozens of police, are also being tried for murder.
The Egyptian press is reporting that the prosecution’s investigation revealed that Mubarak cooperated with El-Adly and senior police officials to deliberately kill protesters, by ordering officers to shoot them and run them over with their vehicles.
Mubarak is also accused of a number of other serious crimes, including facilitating businessman Hussein Salem’s acquisition of 40 billion Egyptian pounds by facilitating a natural gas deal with Israel at low prices. The Military Prosecution will also be questioning him in connection with arms deals and issues related to "the interests and secrets of the armed forces."
“Mubarak should be prosecuted for high treason since he violated the presidential oath of office … committing several crimes against his people … for 30 years,” law professor Salah Sadek argued, expressing doubts over the seriousness of the trial.
“Had there been a serious intention to take Mubarak to court, he should have faced trial right after he stepped down on Feb. 11 … as all his crimes were exposed after the revolution erupted,” he added.
According to the Daily News Egypt, Sadek accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which has been running the country since Mubarak stepped down, of procrastination in enforcing the law against him.
“It should not take all this time to investigate the charges against him. For long he remained under house arrest inside a palace in Sharm El-Sheikh resort,” Sadek said.
On April 10, the prosecutor general summoned Mubarak and his two sons Alaa and Gamal for interrogation over the above charges, previously denied by the former president.
Alaa and Gamal were taken to Cairo’s Tora prison, while Mubarak remained in custody at Sharm El-Sheikh hospital until his medical state stabilizes.
Since then, Mubarak’s detention was renewed three times, 15 days each, which stirred the angry reactions of activists and political forces who accused the SCAF of being lenient with Mubarak.
“If anybody else faced similar accusations, there would be no place for him other than jail,” Sadek said.
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) welcomed what it described as a “conclusive step towards penalizing the members of the former regime for their crimes against the people and the revolutionists.”
In a statement, ANHRI called on the prosecutor general and the justice minister to allow human rights groups to follow up on the trial and allow people to witness the hearings.
Amnesty International called on authorities on Tuesday to prosecute all of those responsible for the killings and torture of protesters, including the military.
"That Mr. Mubarak and his sons are to stand trial is a very welcome step … [but] the families of those killed during protest violence have a right to justice as do all those who were seriously injured or subjected to arbitrary detention or torture, including at the hands of the military," the statement read.
But the Arab Center for the Independence of Judiciary and the Legal Profession (ACIJLP) demanded that Mubarak and others charged with violations committed at the time of the overthrown regime would be granted fair trials. The center called for serving justice and ignoring any other considerations or revenge motives.
“Despite its utmost importance, this [legal] step was taken relatively late, which raised doubts over the possibility of referring the ex-president to court,” ACIJLP said, also expressing relief over the prosecutor’s decision.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) has arrested four activists for handing out flyers advertising Friday’s (May 27) demonstrations. A graffiti artist, a film director, a musician, and a member of the April 6 Youth Movement, have been held for questioning regarding hanging posters advertising the protests and passing out pamphlets promoting the “Second Rage of Revolution.”
The Project for Middle East Democracy (POMED) reports that large numbers of Egyptians protested across the country today (May 27) to demand that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) accelerate the political reform process, as well as that Mubarak regime figures be tried. Some demonstrators have called the protests a “second revolution.”
The not-for-profit research group reported, "As a sign of unity and tolerance, Muslims and Christians reportedly took turns praying in Tahrir Square. Thousands of protestors have also emerged in Alexandria, Sharm el-Sheikh, Suez, Port Said, Luxor, and Aswan demanding the elimination of municipal councils controlled by members of the former National Democratic Party and the transfer of Mubarak to Tora prison in Cairo. Stages have been constructed in Tahrir Square, where prominent individuals such as Amr Hamzawy, Osama Ghazali Harb, Ehab El Khazarat, Ziad El Elimy, and Esraa Abdel Fatah were expected to speak. So far, the military has not had a strong presence at the demonstrations, perhaps fearing that its presence would incite violence."
The Muslim Brotherhood had actively campaigned against Friday’s demonstrations, are to urge the Egyptian authorities to enforce justice and put the former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak on trial on charges of conspiring to kill protesters and corruption.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which is relatively well organized and has a substantial political following, is charging that these demonstrations are “either a demonstration against the people and the will of the majority, or a conspiracy to incite friction between the people and the High Council of the Armed Forces.”
The protests were also to call on the ruling High Council of the Armed Forces to lift the emergency law, which it promised to do in September 2011.
Gamal Eid, president of ANHRI stated “The Muslim Brotherhood response to the calls for peaceful demonstrations are not surprising. We have seen during the previous months some leading figures in this group inciting hatred, and yesterday the group released an official statement strongly inciting in it against these demonstrations and those who call for them as if the former notorious National Democratic Party is still active fighting freedom and democracy but under a new name “Muslim Brotherhood”.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) challenged leaders in Bahrain and Yemen to release journalists who have been arbitrarily arrested, tried in Kangaroo courts, and given long jail sentences. It said there were at least a dozen reporters and photographers being held by Bahraini authorities.
RWB reported that, in the past few days, the authorities have arrested more photographers and photo-journalists who had been covering the pro-democracy demonstrations that have taken place in Bahrain since mid-February. The group said the aim of these targeted arrests is to limit the dissemination of news reports, photos and video of the protests and the government crackdown.
“Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of these photographers and of all the other people who have been arrested for circulating information about the protests and repression,” the organization said.
The organization also said that the Yemeni authorities continue to violate media freedom. “In the one of the latest cases, three government thugs known as baltagiyas attacked the Sanaa headquarters of the independent daily Al-Oula at dawn on 21 May, stabbing Hassan Sayeed, an employee. He was reported to be in a serious condition after being hospitalized.”
Deliveries of thousands of copies of local newspapers were also interrupted and the newspapers confiscated.
A journalist working for the independent NewsYemen site, was attacked by security forces while covering a sit-in by employees of the Yemeni oil company in the southern province of Taiz on 16 May. Deputy provincial security chief Mohamed Al-Shami hurled Adib’s camera to the ground and stamped on it. After being held with detained demonstrators for an hour, Adib managed to escape.
Another journalist working for the newspaper Al-Thawra, was threatened on 16 May with being killed or having his tongue cut out.
Yet a third journalist, based in the governorate of Hadramaout, who helps edit the Syon Press website (www.syonpress.com) and reports for the newspaper Al-Nada and the news website NewsYemen, was detained for several hours on 15 May as a result of a complaint by the head of a reconstruction fund that was created after heavy flooding in 2008 in Hadramaout and Al-Mahrah. An article by this journalist headlined “The true disaster” claimed that reconstruction money had been embezzled.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Will Obama Deal with America’s Double Standard?
By William Fisher
American voters, according to Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, are hoping that President Obama’s speech Thursday will set out what Kurtzer calls “a developed U.S. position.”
"This is a moment to have a presidential articulation of how the U.S. looks at the respective political changes in Egypt and at the terrible situation that's developing in Syria and that is ongoing in Libya," Kurtzer says.
I hope they get what they’re looking for.
But to achieve that President Obama will have to confront not only Tunisia and Egypt, whose revolutions are already past-tense; and not only Syria, which is large enough and powerful enough to merit Presidential opprobrium for the unspeakable cruelty with which President Basher Assad has sought to destroy Syria’s anti-government protestors; but smaller and apparently less important countries employing equally barbaric practices against the most basic reforms, and about which the president has had little or nothing to say in the past months.
Bahrain and Yemen are the two that jump off the page. In respect to both these countries, the U.S. has remained largely silent in the face of outrageous crimes being perpetrated by governments against their own citizens.
In Bahrain, dozens of doctors and nurses have been arrested, and charged with a laundry list of crimes including, embezzlement of public funds, physical assault on civilians, assault leading to death, possession of unlicensed weapons and ammunition, failure to carry out their employment duties, and so forth. All bogus. The reason physicians and nurses are being arrested and imprisoned is to keep them from treating Bahraini citizens who show up at the main hospital; to instill such fear into the wounded that they won’t use the hospital; and to keep doctors and nurses them from testifying about what they saw. The consequence is that the security services have dragged sick patients out of their hospital beds and taken them away, presumably to detention or worse.
The Bahraini monarchy has also rounded up more than two dozen protesters and put them on “show trials” before military courts. These people have been held for days and weeks without access to their lawyers or to their families. Most of them don’t know what charges have been brought against them.
All this could well have happened in Assad’s Syria or Mubarak’s Egypt. But they occurred in a tiny island nation in the Persian Gulf where a majority of Shia Muslims is ruled by a Sunni Muslim king. And now a king whose position has been reinforced by the presence of Saudi and UAE troops.
And let us make no mistake: it is largely out of deference to the Saudis – suppliers of 12 per cent of our oil – that the US has not spoken out more forcefully against the brutal repression of Bahrain’s Shi’ite majority by the Sunni minority headed by the king and the royal family. The US is making nice on the Saudis because the oil sheiks were miffed by Obama’s actions in Egypt: They think he threw Mubarak under the bus too quickly. The US had no overarching national interest in Tunisia; ergo, the message welcoming the overthrow of that country’s ruler of 30 years came relatively quickly. Egypt was seen as a loyal and effective ally for many years; it had its own peace treaty with Israel and had been helpful in brokering agreements between Hamas and Fatah. So it appeared to some to be taking forever for the president to, as they say, throw Mr. Mubarak under the bus – albeit that the Saudis are miffed because they think Obama did this much too soon.
But the Syrian situation is every bit as complex as any of the other Arab Spring sites. Mostly Sunni Syria has reached out to mostly Shi’ite Iran to arm Hamas and Hizbollah. Syria sits dangerously close to Israel and the two countries have been mortal enemies for years. And Syria exerts enormous influence in Lebanon, sitting on Israel’s northern border.
So one might have expected Obama to walk as gingerly among the Syrians as among, say, the Egyptians or the Bahrainis. Better the devil you know, would have been the reasoning.
That he didn’t – that he couldn’t – so reason is a work of self-destruction by Mr. Assad. Even in this time when the US is learning again how to balance the national interest with realpolitik, the unspeakable brutality, the total blindness, of some nations – no matter how influential – reaches a point where silence is no longer an option.
And the Administration is quick to remind us of Bahrain’s strategic
importance, as the home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
In Yemen, where the US has a vital national interest in the form of hunting down AlQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the US has helped broker a deal for the current president to step down. But the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has offered to step down numerous times before and has always reneged, is still in office. It has been reliably reported that President Saleh is attempting to win criminal immunity from prosecuton for himself and his family.
Obama’s audience should expect to hear a strong statement condemning President Saleh’s serial dissembling.
As The Arab Spring has progressed, the position of the US Government has caused consternation among pro-democracy activists throughout region,. especially among the young – who were, after all, the drivers of the uprisings.
To these young men and women, it seems that the US remains silent until it knows who is going to win, and then it lets the world know who it’s supporting.
The US had no overarching national interest in Tunisia; ergo, the message welcoming the overthrow of that country’s ruler of 30 years came relatively quickly. Likewise, Libya, whose barbaric treatment of his own people draw a quick and unequivocal response from the US and NATO.
Egypt was looked upon differently. It had been a loyal and effective ally for many years; it had its own peace treaty with Israel and had been helpful in brokering agreements between Hamas and Fatah. So it appeared to some to be taking forever for the president to, as they say, throw Mr. Mubarak under the bus. Which he finally did.
The Syrian situation is every bit as complex as any of the other Arab Spring sites. Mostly Sunni Syria has helped mostly Shi’ite Iran to arm Hamas and Hizbollah, Israel’s archenemies. Syria sits dangerously close to Israel, with which is it still technically at war. And Syria exerts enormous influence in Lebanon, sitting on Israel’s northern border.
So one might have expected Obama to walk as gingerly among the Syrians as among, say, the Bahrainis.
That he didn’t – that he couldn’t –is not so much an act of courage on Obama’s part as an act of self-destruction by Mr. Assad. Confronted with the unspeakable brutality, the total blindness, of some nations – no matter how influential – one reaches a point where silence is no longer an option.
As a concerned American citizen, I’m hoping I will hear President Obama tell us that he has drawn a line in the sand – that rulers that kill and torture their own peaceful people are unequivocally unacceptable to the United States.
One day The Arab Spring will be over. The United States will need the trust and goodwill of those who risked everything and went into the street – and eventually became democratic governments replacing aging authoritarian autocrats.
Obama can take some positive steps to bond with those brave men and women in his speech this week.
American voters, according to Daniel Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt, are hoping that President Obama’s speech Thursday will set out what Kurtzer calls “a developed U.S. position.”
"This is a moment to have a presidential articulation of how the U.S. looks at the respective political changes in Egypt and at the terrible situation that's developing in Syria and that is ongoing in Libya," Kurtzer says.
I hope they get what they’re looking for.
But to achieve that President Obama will have to confront not only Tunisia and Egypt, whose revolutions are already past-tense; and not only Syria, which is large enough and powerful enough to merit Presidential opprobrium for the unspeakable cruelty with which President Basher Assad has sought to destroy Syria’s anti-government protestors; but smaller and apparently less important countries employing equally barbaric practices against the most basic reforms, and about which the president has had little or nothing to say in the past months.
Bahrain and Yemen are the two that jump off the page. In respect to both these countries, the U.S. has remained largely silent in the face of outrageous crimes being perpetrated by governments against their own citizens.
In Bahrain, dozens of doctors and nurses have been arrested, and charged with a laundry list of crimes including, embezzlement of public funds, physical assault on civilians, assault leading to death, possession of unlicensed weapons and ammunition, failure to carry out their employment duties, and so forth. All bogus. The reason physicians and nurses are being arrested and imprisoned is to keep them from treating Bahraini citizens who show up at the main hospital; to instill such fear into the wounded that they won’t use the hospital; and to keep doctors and nurses them from testifying about what they saw. The consequence is that the security services have dragged sick patients out of their hospital beds and taken them away, presumably to detention or worse.
The Bahraini monarchy has also rounded up more than two dozen protesters and put them on “show trials” before military courts. These people have been held for days and weeks without access to their lawyers or to their families. Most of them don’t know what charges have been brought against them.
All this could well have happened in Assad’s Syria or Mubarak’s Egypt. But they occurred in a tiny island nation in the Persian Gulf where a majority of Shia Muslims is ruled by a Sunni Muslim king. And now a king whose position has been reinforced by the presence of Saudi and UAE troops.
And let us make no mistake: it is largely out of deference to the Saudis – suppliers of 12 per cent of our oil – that the US has not spoken out more forcefully against the brutal repression of Bahrain’s Shi’ite majority by the Sunni minority headed by the king and the royal family. The US is making nice on the Saudis because the oil sheiks were miffed by Obama’s actions in Egypt: They think he threw Mubarak under the bus too quickly. The US had no overarching national interest in Tunisia; ergo, the message welcoming the overthrow of that country’s ruler of 30 years came relatively quickly. Egypt was seen as a loyal and effective ally for many years; it had its own peace treaty with Israel and had been helpful in brokering agreements between Hamas and Fatah. So it appeared to some to be taking forever for the president to, as they say, throw Mr. Mubarak under the bus – albeit that the Saudis are miffed because they think Obama did this much too soon.
But the Syrian situation is every bit as complex as any of the other Arab Spring sites. Mostly Sunni Syria has reached out to mostly Shi’ite Iran to arm Hamas and Hizbollah. Syria sits dangerously close to Israel and the two countries have been mortal enemies for years. And Syria exerts enormous influence in Lebanon, sitting on Israel’s northern border.
So one might have expected Obama to walk as gingerly among the Syrians as among, say, the Egyptians or the Bahrainis. Better the devil you know, would have been the reasoning.
That he didn’t – that he couldn’t – so reason is a work of self-destruction by Mr. Assad. Even in this time when the US is learning again how to balance the national interest with realpolitik, the unspeakable brutality, the total blindness, of some nations – no matter how influential – reaches a point where silence is no longer an option.
And the Administration is quick to remind us of Bahrain’s strategic
importance, as the home of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
In Yemen, where the US has a vital national interest in the form of hunting down AlQaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the US has helped broker a deal for the current president to step down. But the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has offered to step down numerous times before and has always reneged, is still in office. It has been reliably reported that President Saleh is attempting to win criminal immunity from prosecuton for himself and his family.
Obama’s audience should expect to hear a strong statement condemning President Saleh’s serial dissembling.
As The Arab Spring has progressed, the position of the US Government has caused consternation among pro-democracy activists throughout region,. especially among the young – who were, after all, the drivers of the uprisings.
To these young men and women, it seems that the US remains silent until it knows who is going to win, and then it lets the world know who it’s supporting.
The US had no overarching national interest in Tunisia; ergo, the message welcoming the overthrow of that country’s ruler of 30 years came relatively quickly. Likewise, Libya, whose barbaric treatment of his own people draw a quick and unequivocal response from the US and NATO.
Egypt was looked upon differently. It had been a loyal and effective ally for many years; it had its own peace treaty with Israel and had been helpful in brokering agreements between Hamas and Fatah. So it appeared to some to be taking forever for the president to, as they say, throw Mr. Mubarak under the bus. Which he finally did.
The Syrian situation is every bit as complex as any of the other Arab Spring sites. Mostly Sunni Syria has helped mostly Shi’ite Iran to arm Hamas and Hizbollah, Israel’s archenemies. Syria sits dangerously close to Israel, with which is it still technically at war. And Syria exerts enormous influence in Lebanon, sitting on Israel’s northern border.
So one might have expected Obama to walk as gingerly among the Syrians as among, say, the Bahrainis.
That he didn’t – that he couldn’t –is not so much an act of courage on Obama’s part as an act of self-destruction by Mr. Assad. Confronted with the unspeakable brutality, the total blindness, of some nations – no matter how influential – one reaches a point where silence is no longer an option.
As a concerned American citizen, I’m hoping I will hear President Obama tell us that he has drawn a line in the sand – that rulers that kill and torture their own peaceful people are unequivocally unacceptable to the United States.
One day The Arab Spring will be over. The United States will need the trust and goodwill of those who risked everything and went into the street – and eventually became democratic governments replacing aging authoritarian autocrats.
Obama can take some positive steps to bond with those brave men and women in his speech this week.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Egypt: “Not Like Us,” say Muslims to Copts
By William Fisher
On May 7, 15 people were killed or mortally wounded, more than 200 injured, and two Coptic churches were burned down in the Imbaba section of
Cairo.
The Guardian newspaper reports that Egyptian media describe the Imbaba attackers as Salafis – fundamentalist Muslims who want the imposition of sharia law. The Salafis, often with links to Saudi Arabia, are seen as having become more visible because internal security is less repressive now than before the revolution. It is also widely believed that elements of the Mubarak regime are encouraging them, the Guardian reports.
"It's the previous regime that is responsible for this," one distraught resident
tells reporters. "We demand that the higher military council punish all those
responsible for this crime," says George Ishaq, a pro-democracy activist. "This is a crime – not sectarian strife."
Egypt’s interim government conducts an investigation and finds that the basis for the attacks on the churches – that Copts were holding as a prisoner a woman who wanted to convert to Islam -- was without factual foundation.
The National Council for Human Rights (whose chairman, ironically, is Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a former UN Secretary General and a Coptic Christian) released the results of a fact-finding commission, pointing to the proliferation of illegal firearms, emerging religious extremism, the presence of a security vacuum, and the interference of former regime members as the main causes of the Imbaba violence.
The government says the attacks were carried out by extremist Islamist factions, aided by the armed goons that Mubarak so often employed. The government says it will pursue the culprits “with an iron hand” and will try the accused in military courts.
Fifteen of Egypt’s most prominent Egyptian human rights organizations say Muslim-Christian civil strife, and the interim government’s pledge to quell it using the iron fist left behind by Mr. Murarak as he exited, could plunge the newly-freed country into serious civil conflict.
But the shock and awe expressed by the military, Egypt’s interim rulers, has a familiar ring. There is little difference between their response now and their responses over more than a generation of discrimination against Egypt’s Coptic Christians. The long-standing drill is that the government is appalled by the treatment of a faithful minority of its people. They vow to fix the problem. But they have no intention of doing so. They will try to simply paper over it. And one wonders whether today’s rulers are any more sincere.
Who are the Copts anyway? And why all the fuss? Well, 15 people were killed, hundreds wounded, and churches burned to the ground. That’s reason enough for the fuss, no?
Yes, except that these kinds of fusses have been going on for a very long time.
Coptic Christians are Egypt's largest religious minority -- at least 10 percent of the population, or about six million out of 64 million. There are Copts in all strata of Egyptian society. Many are in the middle and upper classes. Many have converted to Islam to avoid persecution.
The vast majority of those who are left follow the teachings of the Coptic Orthodox Church. According to generally accepted folklore, that church was established by Saint Mark the evangelist, who introduced Christianity to Egypt in the first century. So Copts were in Egypt before Muslims. They simply were those who chose not to convert to Islam when it appeared in 641 A.D.
And this endangered minority has been paying for it ever since. Millions have left Egypt, but those who have remained have found themselves discriminated against in a thousand ways that are subtle and not-so-subtle.
So why are they being discriminated against? Who is marginalizing them?
After the Arab invasion of 641, Copts were relegated to “dhimmi” status. That means they were a protected minority but without full rights. Thus, they were subjected to poiltical persecution and social ostracism.
Over the next many decades, the Copts’ fortunes were up and down. Eventually there was a kind of Coptic civil and religious renaissance, but despite this reawakening, there were periods of extreme hostility between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.
It was during one such hostile period (1907-11) that the British high commissioner, in an effort to placate the Muslims, introduced a system that effectively barred Copts from senior government positions.
Not until the 1919 Revolution did Copts and Muslims unite against the British occupation and worked together to build a new political order. That was their high point, and their road has been downhill ever since, largely because of the rise of Islamist movements in the 1930s, the appearance of Arab Nationalism during the Nasser regime, and President Sadat’s use of religion for his personal political purposes.
But the unkindest cut of all was the constitution of 1971, which proclaimed, "Islam is the religion of the state, Arabic its official language, and the principles of the Islamic Shari‘a a principal source of legislation." The 1980 constitution made things worse by designating Shari‘a a principal source of legislation.
The Coptic community rightly saw this as a move that would transform Egypt from a secular-style state into an Islamic theocracy, a la Iran.
And all of these pro-Islamic provisions are contained in the constitutional articles that were supposedly re-written following the overthrow of the Mubarak regime and voted on favorably by the people in the ‘new Egypt’s” first plebiscite.
This history of Muslim-Coptic relations in Egypt doesn’t justify the institutionalized discrimination I saw when I lived in Egypt; it merely explains it.
What one needs to understand is that the outrageous treatment of the Copts was and is essentially based on Muslim attitudes toward people who are "not like us." This attitude is reinforced by the extremist fundamentalist views of the Salafists, the tacit support of The Muslim Brotherhood, and further complicated by the fact that, in Islam, only Muslims are viewed as innocent. Non-Muslims have not accepted Islam; therefore they are seen as guilty of a crime against Allah.
But this biblical sophistry, cited mostly by uneducated Muslims, merely serves to obscure the simple one-dimensional nature of Islam’s problem with the Copts.
The heart of the problem is ‘not like us.’
This is little different from the self-appointed vigilantes like the Minutemen patrolling our Southwest border hunting illegal immigrants. Or the police in Arizona pulling someone over for a broken tail light and then asking for the driver’s “papers.” Or the golf course at Augusta, Georgia, refusing membership to females. Or the fearful morons who still doubt President Obama’s citizenship.
What is so incredibly disappointing about this particular exhibition of Muslim bigotry toward Coptic Christians is its timing. It comes less than three months after the Revolution of Tahrir Square, which proclaimed freedom and self-determination, not just for Muslims, but for everyone. Those who cling to their bigotries betray the meaning of that revolution.
But there is an unintended consequence of this bigotry that is equally serious.
It is the capacity of inter-religious strife to wreck the principles of Tahrir Square and, in so doing, to trigger violent confrontations that could destabilize the whole country. Democracy cannot grow amidst chaos. Chaos creates a security vacuum that provides an irresistible target for the next brutal demagogue.
That would be tragic enough. But Egypt, to Arabs, is not just a country. It is the motherland, the most influential of all the Arab states. What is does – or doesn’t do – will resonate and be mimicked throughout Arab societies.
That’s why Egypt has become the crucible for the hopes and dreams of would-be democrats everywhere. That’s why the world holds Egypt to a higher standard.
On May 7, 15 people were killed or mortally wounded, more than 200 injured, and two Coptic churches were burned down in the Imbaba section of
Cairo.
The Guardian newspaper reports that Egyptian media describe the Imbaba attackers as Salafis – fundamentalist Muslims who want the imposition of sharia law. The Salafis, often with links to Saudi Arabia, are seen as having become more visible because internal security is less repressive now than before the revolution. It is also widely believed that elements of the Mubarak regime are encouraging them, the Guardian reports.
"It's the previous regime that is responsible for this," one distraught resident
tells reporters. "We demand that the higher military council punish all those
responsible for this crime," says George Ishaq, a pro-democracy activist. "This is a crime – not sectarian strife."
Egypt’s interim government conducts an investigation and finds that the basis for the attacks on the churches – that Copts were holding as a prisoner a woman who wanted to convert to Islam -- was without factual foundation.
The National Council for Human Rights (whose chairman, ironically, is Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a former UN Secretary General and a Coptic Christian) released the results of a fact-finding commission, pointing to the proliferation of illegal firearms, emerging religious extremism, the presence of a security vacuum, and the interference of former regime members as the main causes of the Imbaba violence.
The government says the attacks were carried out by extremist Islamist factions, aided by the armed goons that Mubarak so often employed. The government says it will pursue the culprits “with an iron hand” and will try the accused in military courts.
Fifteen of Egypt’s most prominent Egyptian human rights organizations say Muslim-Christian civil strife, and the interim government’s pledge to quell it using the iron fist left behind by Mr. Murarak as he exited, could plunge the newly-freed country into serious civil conflict.
But the shock and awe expressed by the military, Egypt’s interim rulers, has a familiar ring. There is little difference between their response now and their responses over more than a generation of discrimination against Egypt’s Coptic Christians. The long-standing drill is that the government is appalled by the treatment of a faithful minority of its people. They vow to fix the problem. But they have no intention of doing so. They will try to simply paper over it. And one wonders whether today’s rulers are any more sincere.
Who are the Copts anyway? And why all the fuss? Well, 15 people were killed, hundreds wounded, and churches burned to the ground. That’s reason enough for the fuss, no?
Yes, except that these kinds of fusses have been going on for a very long time.
Coptic Christians are Egypt's largest religious minority -- at least 10 percent of the population, or about six million out of 64 million. There are Copts in all strata of Egyptian society. Many are in the middle and upper classes. Many have converted to Islam to avoid persecution.
The vast majority of those who are left follow the teachings of the Coptic Orthodox Church. According to generally accepted folklore, that church was established by Saint Mark the evangelist, who introduced Christianity to Egypt in the first century. So Copts were in Egypt before Muslims. They simply were those who chose not to convert to Islam when it appeared in 641 A.D.
And this endangered minority has been paying for it ever since. Millions have left Egypt, but those who have remained have found themselves discriminated against in a thousand ways that are subtle and not-so-subtle.
So why are they being discriminated against? Who is marginalizing them?
After the Arab invasion of 641, Copts were relegated to “dhimmi” status. That means they were a protected minority but without full rights. Thus, they were subjected to poiltical persecution and social ostracism.
Over the next many decades, the Copts’ fortunes were up and down. Eventually there was a kind of Coptic civil and religious renaissance, but despite this reawakening, there were periods of extreme hostility between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.
It was during one such hostile period (1907-11) that the British high commissioner, in an effort to placate the Muslims, introduced a system that effectively barred Copts from senior government positions.
Not until the 1919 Revolution did Copts and Muslims unite against the British occupation and worked together to build a new political order. That was their high point, and their road has been downhill ever since, largely because of the rise of Islamist movements in the 1930s, the appearance of Arab Nationalism during the Nasser regime, and President Sadat’s use of religion for his personal political purposes.
But the unkindest cut of all was the constitution of 1971, which proclaimed, "Islam is the religion of the state, Arabic its official language, and the principles of the Islamic Shari‘a a principal source of legislation." The 1980 constitution made things worse by designating Shari‘a a principal source of legislation.
The Coptic community rightly saw this as a move that would transform Egypt from a secular-style state into an Islamic theocracy, a la Iran.
And all of these pro-Islamic provisions are contained in the constitutional articles that were supposedly re-written following the overthrow of the Mubarak regime and voted on favorably by the people in the ‘new Egypt’s” first plebiscite.
This history of Muslim-Coptic relations in Egypt doesn’t justify the institutionalized discrimination I saw when I lived in Egypt; it merely explains it.
What one needs to understand is that the outrageous treatment of the Copts was and is essentially based on Muslim attitudes toward people who are "not like us." This attitude is reinforced by the extremist fundamentalist views of the Salafists, the tacit support of The Muslim Brotherhood, and further complicated by the fact that, in Islam, only Muslims are viewed as innocent. Non-Muslims have not accepted Islam; therefore they are seen as guilty of a crime against Allah.
But this biblical sophistry, cited mostly by uneducated Muslims, merely serves to obscure the simple one-dimensional nature of Islam’s problem with the Copts.
The heart of the problem is ‘not like us.’
This is little different from the self-appointed vigilantes like the Minutemen patrolling our Southwest border hunting illegal immigrants. Or the police in Arizona pulling someone over for a broken tail light and then asking for the driver’s “papers.” Or the golf course at Augusta, Georgia, refusing membership to females. Or the fearful morons who still doubt President Obama’s citizenship.
What is so incredibly disappointing about this particular exhibition of Muslim bigotry toward Coptic Christians is its timing. It comes less than three months after the Revolution of Tahrir Square, which proclaimed freedom and self-determination, not just for Muslims, but for everyone. Those who cling to their bigotries betray the meaning of that revolution.
But there is an unintended consequence of this bigotry that is equally serious.
It is the capacity of inter-religious strife to wreck the principles of Tahrir Square and, in so doing, to trigger violent confrontations that could destabilize the whole country. Democracy cannot grow amidst chaos. Chaos creates a security vacuum that provides an irresistible target for the next brutal demagogue.
That would be tragic enough. But Egypt, to Arabs, is not just a country. It is the motherland, the most influential of all the Arab states. What is does – or doesn’t do – will resonate and be mimicked throughout Arab societies.
That’s why Egypt has become the crucible for the hopes and dreams of would-be democrats everywhere. That’s why the world holds Egypt to a higher standard.
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