The Press Syndicate and the Bar Association have decided to launch a campaign in solidarity with beleaguered British MP . Gamal Essam El-Din reports Addressing a symposium organised by the Press Syndicate's Cultural Committee on 11 May, British Socialist Workers Party leader John Reese, the symposium's guest of honour, said he was pleased by the fact that British MP is as popular as he is in Egypt and the Arab world. "You must have followed the campaign of mendacity which has been launched against Galloway," Reese said, referring to the hostile campaign launched by the British press on 23 April against the long-time British Labour Party MP renowned for his unrelenting support for Arab causes in Palestine and Iraq. Reese assured the audience that "the pillars of democracy in England are strong enough to expose the falseness of this malicious campaign." The campaign began when the right-wing Daily Telegraph published documents it claimed to have found in the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad allegedly showing that Galloway had received secret payments of at least �375,000 from Saddam Hussein's now defunct regime. The paper also claimed that in December 1999, Galloway had met an Iraqi Intelligence officer and demanded more money. Galloway, whose wife is Palestinian, denied the charges, calling the Daily Telegraph "the sewer of choice" for documents forged by Western intelligence agencies. Galloway also decided to launch a libel case against the paper, describing the claim as "a lie of fantastic proportions". It was not Galloway's first media firestorm by far. Previous libel suits have earned him an estimated �250,000, including �150,000 from the Daily Mirror. On 6 May, however, Galloway suffered another major setback -- the Labour Party suspended him, and launched an enquiry into his conduct during the Iraq war. The 35-year veteran Labour MP said the decision to suspend him was completely unjust. At the Press Syndicate there were plenty of people who agreed. The syndicate's symposium was designed as the launching-pad of a campaign of solidarity with Galloway. The symposium ended with a statement of solidarity, issued in the name of the Egyptian intelligentsia, and signed by such prominent writers, thinkers, artists and political activists as Abdel-Wahab El- Messiri, Galal Amin, Abdel- Mohsen Hammouda, Wafaa Hegazi, Soheir Mursi, Amin Iskander, Ashraf El-Bayoumi, Sameh El-Siriti, Kamal Khalil and Kamal Abu Eita. According to Hamdeen Sabahi, a leftist MP and chairman of the syndicate's cultural committee, the solidarity campaign would include the organising of a protest march in front of the British Embassy in Cairo. "I know all the roads leading to the British and American embassies are blocked by security forces, but we will do our best to organise just such a protest," Sabahi told Al-Ahram Weekly. The Press and Lawyers' Syndicates are also coordinating with the objective of sending a joint delegation, consisting of Egyptian and Arab lawyers, to Britain to support Galloway's libel suit against the Daily Telegraph, Sabahi said. "I think this is the least we need to do to show our solidarity with a man who has devoted a large part of his political life to defending Arab causes in a country plagued by a strong Zionist bias. It is Britain, after all, that both played the largest part in creating the Israeli state, and caused historical suffering for Arab peoples." According to Sabahi, the importance of the pro- Galloway campaign also lies in its attempt to expose the dangers of America's hegemony and pro-Israeli policies in the Middle East. "It is also important to underline Galloway's case in order to expose America and its lackey, Tony Blair," Sabahi said. Sabahi admitted that the pro-Galloway campaign is not exclusively motivated by the latter's advocacy of Arab causes, but by the pressing need to stand up to "a campaign of deception launched by US-supported factions against all those who strongly objected to the Anglo- American invasion of Iraq." "Evidence of this campaign can now be seen quite clearly, not only on the pages of such pro-Zionist newspapers as The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times, but also in some Arabic newspapers in Gulf emirates, and even here in Egypt as well," Sabahi said. According to Sabahi, Galloway has consistently defended humanitarian causes. "He launched the Mariam Appeal campaign to address the plight of children with cancer in Iraq, and led the famous 1999 London Red Bus tour from Big Ben to Baghdad, across 11 nations." Galloway's image, Sabahi said, was being tarnished because he had organised a campaign that helped expose the cruelty of American policies, as a way of "intimidating and silencing any voice critical of the forgeries, deceptions and war crimes of two of the world's most powerful states".
