Has US disregard for human rights made the work of Egyptian human rights activists even more difficult, asks Jailan Halawi Egyptian human rights activists interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly agreed with the recently released Human Rights Watch (HRW) annual report's warning that human rights are becoming the principle victim of the war on terror. They stressed the importance of strengthening and asserting civil society's role in defending collective rights where governments might have failed. HRW said the US, in its war on terror, had justified the use of torture, thus reflecting a pattern of disregard for human rights laws and standards. "When so basic a rule as the ban on torture can be flouted, other rights are inevitably undermined as well," the group's report said. It also said governments that were being pressured by the US about human rights now find it increasingly easy to turn the tables, by challenging Washington's own commitment to upholding those same principles. "Whether it is Egypt defending renewal of its emergency law by reference to US anti-terror legislation, Malaysia justifying administrative detention by invoking Guantanamo, Russia citing Abu Ghraib to blame abuses in Chechnya solely on low-level soldiers, or Cuba claiming the Bush administration had 'no moral authority to accuse' it of human rights violations, repressive governments find it easier to deflect US pressure because of Washington's own sorry post-11 September record on human rights," the report said. Local human rights activists do in fact feel undermined by the US -- traditionally the most vocal advocate of democracy worldwide. Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) Secretary-General Hafez Abu Saeda told the Weekly, however, that despite that setback, "it should be crystal clear that there will be no compromise on, or justification for, any human rights violation. It is the role of civil society to assert its advocacy of freedoms," said Abu Saeda, who is also a board member at the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR). "We should fight back and never give up on our noble cause." Egyptian human rights NGOs have often been the target of relentless campaigns accusing them of being agents of the West. They were generally portrayed as recipients of foreign funding, keen to tarnish their government's reputation, and subject to the dictates of the West in general, and the US in particular. This image, Abu Saeda said, needed to change. "We are coordinating with our international counterparts about global human rights issues, condemning violations of human rights regardless of the source. That is when international civil society will be at the forefront in fighting states that violate the rule of law." In Egypt, the HRW report noted that while there had been "little improvement" in the human rights record over the past year, serious issues -- like routine torture of persons in detention and suppression of non-violent political dissent -- remain un- addressed. Security forces and police, the report said, routinely torture and mistreat detainees, particularly during interrogations. To make matters worse, while in the past torture was used primarily against political dissidents, particularly Islamists, it has, in recent years, become common in ordinary police stations as well, thus harming citizens who find themselves in custody as suspects in criminal investigations, noted the report. Meanwhile, the HRW reported further noted, emergency rule is ongoing, providing the basis for arbitrary detention and trials before military and state security courts. In February 2003, Egypt extended 22 years of continuous emergency rule for another three years. The emergency law, which allows arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention without trial, has been used by the government to criminalise political dissent, and to refer civilian defendants to military courts, or to exceptional state security courts in which proceedings do not meet international standards for fair trials, said the report. The report also expressed concerns that women and girls in Egypt face systematic discrimination under personal status and other laws, and that violence directed at women and girls frequently goes unpunished. Assessing all these points, Abu Saeda ranked torture as Egypt's number one human rights problem. The problem, he said, was primarily in Egyptian law's definition of torture, which is permitted as a means of obtaining confessions. The lack of awareness among the general population on the issue also meant that most people have no idea that they can take officers who use aggressive means during interrogations to court. Usually, he said, families of suspects who die during interrogations are the only ones who file torture- related lawsuits, while other cases of torture go unreported. In the meantime, the EOHR has submitted a draft law to the People's Assembly, in coordination with the Egyptian Association Against Torture, stipulating that anyone involved in torture -- regardless of whether they actually carried out the act, allowed it, or assisted in the process -- be held to account. If passed, Abu Saeda expects the law to result in drastic changes on the ground. At the same time, Abu Saeda was critical of HRW's stand on what it termed Egypt's "discriminatory" personal status laws governing marriage and divorce, charging that they undermined the status of women in the legal system. The allegations, he said, were based on "inaccurate" information. "Women's status has improved a lot over the past few years," Abu Saeda said, citing amendments in the personal status law concerning divorce, the right of women to issue passports and travel without the consent or permission of their husbands, and recent legislation granting women married to non-Egyptians the right to pass their nationality on to their children."
