Archive for the ‘Egypt’ Category

RIGHTS-EGYPT: Invoking Religion Against Liberals

October 20, 2009

By Cam McGrath, Inter Press Service News

CAIRO, Oct 19 (IPS) – Self-appointed guardians of public morality are invoking an ancient instrument of Islamic jurisprudence against those whose ideas they deem immoral or heretical – or simply to gain fame.

“We are concerned about the huge rise in the number of hisba cases in recent years,” says Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI).

Hisba is a lawsuit filed by an individual who volunteers to defend society from anyone whose words or deeds he considers harmful to Islam. Introduced to Egypt in the eighth century, this obscure legal instrument empowers Muslims to hold their fellow citizens, and even the state, accountable for upholding religious virtue.

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Egypt: Stop Killing Migrants in Sinai

September 11, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 10, 2009
2:59 PM
CONTACT: Human Rights Watch (HRW)

Tel: +1-212-216-1832
Email: hrwpress@hrw.org

Israel Should Stop Returning Migrants to Egypt Without Allowing Asylum Claims

NEW YORK – September 10 – Egyptian authorities should bring an immediate end to the unlawful killings of migrants and asylum seekers near Egypt’s Sinai border with Israel, Human Rights Watch said today. According to news reports, Egyptian border guards shot and killed four migrants on September 9, 2009, bringing to at least 12 the number killed since May as they tried to cross into Israel.General Muhammad Shousha, the governor of North Sinai, was quoted after the recent killings justifying the policy of shooting at the migrants as “necessary.” The latest killings come just days before President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel are scheduled to hold high-level talks in Cairo on September 13.

“Egypt has every right to manage its borders, but using routine lethal force against unarmed migrants – and potential asylum seekers – would be a serious violation of the right to life,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “These individuals appeared to post no threat to the lives of the border guards or anyone else. Attempted border crossings are not a capital offense.”

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EGYPT: Israel Gas Deal Inflames Opposition

August 13, 2009

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa Al-Omrani, Inter Press Service

CAIRO, Aug 12 (IPS) – Opposition figures and political activists have slammed a new deal to sell Egyptian liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Israel at what they say are vastly reduced prices.

“Egyptian gas is being sold to Israel at prices far below the international average,” Ibrahim Yosri, former head of legal affairs and treaties at the Egyptian Foreign Ministry told IPS. “This agreement is proof that the ruling regime is unconcerned with public opinion and is insistent on depriving the Egyptian public of its rightful national assets.”

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International Movements Breaking the Siege on Gaza

July 29, 2009
by Suzanne Morrison | CommonDreams.org, July 28, 2009

Since June 2007 the Israeli government has imposed almost complete closure over the Gaza Strip. The siege prevents nearly all movement of people or goods to and from the coastal region with only minimal amounts of humanitarian provisions inconsistently allowed in. With the exception of a small amount of carnations allowed out earlier this year, there has been a virtual ban on all exports from Gaza since 2007. [1] A quick socio-economic glimpse of Gaza includes agricultural losses totaling US $30 million and more than 40,000 jobs for the 2007/2008 season, the suspension of 98% of industrial operations, and more than 80% of Gaza’s population is now dependent on humanitarian aid from international aid providing agencies. [2]

Closure of Gaza and the West Bank has intermittently been imposed since 1991. While Israel prevents movement and access in the name of temporary security measures, the regularity and extent of these mechanisms, particularly since the Oslo process, represents an institutionalized policy of closure. Israel’s current siege on Gaza reflects an unprecedented and severe application of the closure policy. In the past year internationals have tried to break the siege on Gaza by bringing critical medical supplies and other humanitarian goods into Gaza.

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Galloway: Delivering a message to Obama

July 19, 2009
Morning Star Online, Friday 17 July 2009

George Galloway

I have just returned from Gaza with the Viva Palestina US Lifeline 2 convoy. Our aim was partly about delivering aid, but it was also partly about delivering a message. Having raised the funds for the convoy and gathered the volunteers, we set off on US Independence Day, July 4, from John F Kennedy airport in New York to Cairo, where we purchased desperately needed vehicles and medical supplies to drive down to the Egypt-Palestine border.

We then ran into a series of bureaucratic obstacles from the Egyptian authorities, but the convoy members showed incredible resilience and patience. After a considerable amount of delicate negotiation, we finally received the go-ahead.

The convoy was supported by Vietnam war veteran Ron Kovic, whose life story formed the basis for Oliver Stone’s Born On The Fourth Of July, along with many others.

And accompanying me through the Rafah crossing on Wednesday were presidential candidate and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and New York council member Charles Barron, alongside over 200 other US citizens.

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Poem about dictator Mubarak lands clerk in jail

July 17, 2009

Middle East Online, First Published 2009-07-14


Entertaining?

Marzuq jailed for three years after his colleague turns satirical poem about Mubarak over to authorities.

CAIRO – An Egyptian civil servant who wrote a satirical poem about veteran President Hosni Mubarak has been jailed for three years after a colleague turned the villainous verses over to the authorities.

Mounir Said Hanna Marzuq was given the maximum sentence for insulting the head of state, a judicial source said on Tuesday, in one of the poems he wrote for friends in the hope that one day they would be turned into song.

Marzuq was jailed in Maghagha, southern Egypt, in May after a colleague lodged a formal complaint about the poem deemed insulting to Mubarak, in power since 1981.

The case came to light after the penalised poet’s brother appealed to the 81-year-old Mubarak for clemency, the independent Al-Masri Al-Youm reported.

The newspaper did not publish the offending verses.

Egyptian law says that anyone insulting the president can be jailed for between 24 hours and three years.

What is wrong with Egypt?

June 22, 2008

By Khalid Amayreh | The Arab American News
Friday, 04.18.2008

Not since the downfall of the British puppet King Faruq in 1952 has the Egyptian national will been so shamefully subservient to a foreign power, namely the United States, whose politics and policies are tightly controlled by Zionist Jews.

Today, Egypt, which could have become an African or Middle Eastern economic tiger, is facing a hard time feeding its nearly 80 million citizens. Last month, several people were killed while standing in long queues waiting their turn to buy bread, the main staple for most Egyptians.

Economically, inflation has reached an all time high, with Egyptian civil servants barely able to make ends meet. Some, probably many, Egyptians are forced to “eke out” some extra pounds to remain afloat, mainly through bribery and other forms of corruption.

This bleak reality has forced thousands of skilled and highly-educated Egyptians to leave the country in order to seek a dignified life abroad, mainly in oil-rich Arab countries or in the West.

Fifty years ago, Egypt and South Korea were more or less at the same socio-economic level. However, while the latter succeeded in becoming an industrial and economic giant, the former is still languishing in poverty, perennially awaiting grain shipments from abroad, especially from the US.

One doesn’t have to be a great authority in economics to understand the reasons for Egypt’s failure and enduring backwardness.

Egypt, since the Camp David Accords in the late 1970s, effectively lost its free will to the United States and therefore to Israel. Indeed, instead of aspiring to make Egypt the “China” or “India” or even “Malaysia” of the Arab world, the Egyptian regime opted to surrender Egypt’s national will to the U.S., all in order to maintain its own power!

Egypt is not a country without resources, or indeed, without brains. However, for brains to function properly, they need a free environment. Brains simply can’t function in an environment dominated by despotism, tyranny and authoritarianism. Dictatorship can only produce human robots that obey orders, but don’t think.

Unfortunately, Egypt is still among the most authoritarian states in the contemporary world. People are arrested and tortured for their conscience and thought. Political opponents spend more time in the regime’s dungeons than they do with their families, and voters deemed “non-conformists” are beaten savagely for daring to exercise their democratic rights.

Unfortunately, this is done while America, which doesn’t stop boasting about their own First Amendment and civil liberties, keeps babbling about “making progress” toward democracy in the Arab world.

Militarily, Egypt’s will to create a deterrent force in the face of Israel’s huge nuclear arsenal has long been strangled by brazen American intervention.

This is really scandalous especially given the unending statements from Israeli leaders that Egypt, not Iran, is Israel’s strategic enemy.

How many times have Israeli cabinet ministers threatened to bomb the Aswan High Dam? How many times have Israeli leaders threatened to destroy the Pyramids? How many times has Israel, implicitly or explicitly, threatened to create trouble for Egypt by conspiring with Ethiopia to divert the waters of the Nile or limit the amount of water destined to Egypt and Sudan?

I really don’t understand the mindsets of Egyptian strategists who spend their time devising plots against opposition parties, such as the Ikhwan and Kifaya, while ignoring the real and haunting threat coming from Israel, a state which will soon be under the control of the genocidal fundamentalist millenarian Zionists who believe that dropping nuclear bombs on major Arab towns such Cairo, Damascus and even Mecca would expedite the appearance of the Messiah, or Redeemer.

So, what have the people, who are entrusted with the paramount task of protecting Egypt and its 80 million inhabitants from external threats, done to forestall such scenarios? The answer is nothing, absolutely nothing, apart from trusting the US to restrain Israel.

To compensate its multi-faceted impotence and incompetence, the Egyptian regime is now trying to display its potency by helping Israel perfect and maximize its Nazi-like blockade of Gaza.

A few months ago, the Foreign minister of Egypt threatened to break the bones of Gazans who dared cross the borders into Egypt.

And then the Egyptian authorities adopted a number of manifestly hostile measures against Gazans, like keeping them stranded for weeks and months in sub-human conditions on the Egyptian side of the border.

Egypt has also sided with the American-backed Palestinian Authority in Ramallah in refusing to reopen the Rafah border crossing, the Gaza Strip’s only remaining conduit to the outside world, unless Israel is allowed to have the final say as to who will and won’t be allowed to pass through!! Isn’t that more shameful than shame itself?
Yes, Egypt has every right to protect its security against terrorists and saboteurs. And the Palestinian people are the last people on earth who would want to see Egypt’s vital security interests undermined.

And there may well be a few rogue elements who have sold their souls to the devil by joining some international terrorist groups. But fighting these criminals should never be done by conspiring with Israel to starve Gazans by turning Gaza into an updated version of the Warsaw Ghetto, which Egypt is now doing.

Israel is murdering innocent Gazans on a daily basis. Last week, the Israeli army, knowingly and deliberately, murdered several Palestinian children and minors, to be added to the thousands of other Palestinians murdered mercilessly by the army of a state that commits genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy just as the Wehrmacht did the same thing in the name of Aryan supremacy.

Unfortunately, instead of stepping in to help and comfort the starved and tormented Palestinians, the Egyptian government is doing quite the opposite by hermitically shutting off the borders with Gaza, all in order to obtain a certificate of good conduct from Tel Aviv and Washington.

It is with a heavy heart that I am writing these sad words because I have always loved and continue to love Egypt, a country that deserves a better fate and a different destiny.

But God doesn’t change the lot of a people, unless they themselves have the will to change their conditions.