A three year renewal of the Emergency Law was rammed through parliament this week despite vociferous objections from opposition MPs. Gamal Essam El-Din reports The parliamentary debate that took place last Sunday evening over whether or not to extend the Emergency Law -- in place since the October 1981 assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat -- was short, but certainly not sweet. Opposition and independent MPs, led by deputies from the banned Muslim Brotherhood, described the presidential decree prolonging the state of emergency for another three years as a serious blow to civil liberties and political reform. Keeping the country in a state of emergency gives security forces sweeping powers to detain suspects without trial for long periods of time. MPs were outraged at the bitter irony that parliament was, nevertheless, allowed only a few hours to debate the extension. Until 1994 the law had traditionally been extended annually; but beginning in April of that year the government requested that renewals take place in three-year chunks -- despite strong objections from opposition parties and human rights groups. According to Prime Minister Atef Ebeid, who addressed the assembly on Sunday morning, this time the law was being extended to protect Egypt from international networks of terrorism and organised crime. "The terror threats from these criminal networks have drastically increased since 11 September 2001," Ebeid said, also citing the stalled Israeli- Palestinian peace process, worsening political instability in Sudan, and the US's campaign against Iraq as valid reasons for the extension. "Aren't these enough reasons to ask for an extension of the state of emergency for three more years?" Ebeid asked. Ebeid also claimed that the dangers stemming from international terrorism were the gravest they had been since 1945, and included "acts of subversion and sabotage, the hijacking of airplanes to kill innocent people, and the smuggling of huge quantities of narcotics across borders". He used the example of Western states establishing draconian new measures to "protect" their citizens as further proof of the necessity of the extension. "The strict anti-terrorism legislation in America, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy and Spain are similar in one way or another to Egypt's Emergency Law. They all aim to provide security forces with enough power to confront terrorism and nip it in the bud," Ebeid said. At the same time, the prime minister vowed that the Emergency Law would not be a barrier to democratisation, political participation, and freedom of expression. A heated two-hour debate followed Ebeid's remarks. While the fact that National Democratic Party (NDP) deputies immediately pledged their support for the extension came as no surprise to anyone, when Heidar Boghdadi, the sole representative of the Arab Nasserist Party, also expressed his approval of the decree, many an eyebrow was raised. Boghdadi even took the opportunity to "express gratitude to Interior Minister Habib El-Adli for both his spectacular fight against terrorism, and his efforts in ensuring that citizens enjoy total freedom when it comes to voting in parliamentary elections". The fact that El-Adli was not in attendance at the debate rankled with many a deputy. According to Mohamed Qiwita, an independent MP with Nasserist tendencies, El-Adli should have been there to "respond to our questions about the arbitrary powers given to security forces by the Emergency Law -- things like arresting citizens by night and detaining them indefinitely without trial". The next day, however, El-Adli addressed parliament's defence and national security committee, telling the gathering that the assembly's approval of the extension stemmed from a strong conviction of the necessity of protecting national security from both internal and external threats. With nearly two dozen MPs asking him questions, El-Adli said his ministry had already drawn up plans to deal with domestic ramifications of a war on Iraq. "Everybody must know that the emergency law bans demonstrations," El-Adli said. "In some circumstances, however, we cannot prevent citizens -- during times of crisis -- from showing their solidarity with other Arabs. These demonstrations should be staged in an organised way with the approval of the Interior Ministry." In fact, emergency law has been blamed for the overall weakness of political participation in the country, a point which opposition MPs strongly emphasized during Sunday night's session. Although the attack against the extension was spearheaded by three Brotherhood MPs (who distributed leaflets titled "No to prolonging the state of emergency"), Wafd and Tagammu Party delegates also expressed their strong opposition. Wafdist Fouad Badrawi said "repealing the Emergency Law is a major prerequisite for introducing political reform in Egypt... Not only does this law go against democratisation, but it has been in force for 22 years on the grounds that it protects the country from terrorism, which has been proven wrong." The Brotherhood MPs' leaflet said much the same: "Egypt desperately needs legislative and constitutional stability more than exceptional laws and measures that go against democratisation and political participation." According to Brotherhood MP Hamdi Hassan, the decree clearly meant to prevent citizens from freely demonstrating against America's threats of war against Iraq. In a similar vein, Mohamed Mursi, the Brotherhood's most prominent MP, said that "95 per cent of security forces' work must be devoted to combating criminal offences. Actually, however, 95 per cent of their efforts are devoted to fighting political activities." On Sunday, Justice Minister Farouq Seif El-Nasr was amongst the government officials on hand to defend the decree. Like Ebeid, one of Seif El-Nasr's arguments centred around the claim that anti-terrorism laws recently adopted in the West contain even harsher measures than those stipulated by Egypt's Emergency Law. Seif El-Nasr also boasted that the law had "enabled security forces to detain 668 militants belonging to such terrorist organisations as Jihad, El-Waad, the Islamic Liberation Party, and the Soldiers of God, not to mention the 532 militants arrested over the past three years for belonging to Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiya and Al- Takfir." Independent MP Adel Eid, a veteran civil rights lawyer, was unimpressed. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that a parliamentary committee on human rights should be created to investigate the impact of the Emergency Law on Egypt's civil and political life. Eid said the ruling NDP vehemently opposes the establishment of such a committee, even though "it is necessary to investigate torture and ill-treatment of citizens in prisons." According to Eid, "the Egyptian Human Rights Organisation has emphasised that the Emergency Law is directly responsible for human rights violations in Egypt." US calls for democratisation, interestingly enough, also played a significant role in the debate. While Mursi said extending the law "gives America the right to intervene in our domestic affairs because it tells them we are an undemocratic state," Kamal El-Shazli said Egypt had no need for projects like the US-Middle East Partnership Initiative. "We don't need others to advise us on reform," the NDP whip said. Ultimately, the decree passed by an overwhelming majority, with only 30 opposition deputies objecting and one abstaining.
