CAIRO: One month after the government closed the Helwan headquarters of the Center for Trade Union and Worker Services, Egypt's largest independent labor rights group, a parliamentarian from the Muslim Brotherhood filed a formal request for its reopening. Over the weekend Abdel Halim Hilal, an MP from the Muslim Brotherhood bloc, filed the request before the Minister of Social Solidarity, Ahmed Darwish, and the Minister of Manpower, Aisha Abdel Hady. Hilal's request addresses the closure of the CTUWS headquarters in the Cairo neighborhood of Helwan on April 23, as well as the earlier shutdowns of its branch offices in Mahalla, closed on April 10, and in the Qena city of Naga Hammadi, closed on March 29. According to a statement, the Brotherhood considers the closure of the CTUWS to be "an attack on freedoms and civil society institutions which should receive support and cooperation from the Egyptian government, not attacks, fights and closure. They want the group reopened, they say, "to help Egyptian workers restore their violated rights. The CTUWS is an independent worker's rights organization formed in 1990 by industrial workers. The group says it is committed to encouraging the development of unions independent of state control and spreading democratic practices in Egypt, as well as improving working conditions. The government tells a different story. It says the group threatens the welfare of the country by encouraging instability and labor unrest. For that reason, it began to close CTUWS facilities in a crackdown that began in Upper Egypt and eventually led to the closure of the group's main office in the capital. The shutdown has been widely condemned by local human rights groups, and has also attracted attention from abroad. In April, the International Trade Union Confederation, based in Geneva, condemned the shutdown in a letter sent to President Hosni Mubarak and Minister of the Interior Habib El-Adly. "On behalf of the ITUC, I urge you to issue instructions to the relevant governmental bodies to rescind the restrictions and other measures imposed on the CTUWS, as a positive sign of your government's commitment to international labor and human rights, wrote ITUC Secretary General Guy Ryder. New York-based Human Rights Watch has also expressed support for the work of the CTUWS and condemned its closure. "Egypt should end its crackdown on the CTUWS and allow its branches to reopen, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. "The campaign violates Egypt's obligations under international law to uphold the rights to freedom of association, free assembly and expression. These rights need defenders like the CTUWS if they're to be upheld in Egypt. In December, the delta town of Mahalla was rocked by a high-profile strike of 27,000 workers at the Ghazl El-Mahalla textile factory. Workers went on strike to demand their annual bonuses, equivalent to two months pay, even though their local union representatives opposed the strike and supported the position of the state-run factory's management. The Mahalla strike ended with a compromise, and workers received a 45-day bonus. Still energized from the strike and angry at the position taken by the local union, the Mahalla workers collected 13,000 names on a petition demanding the impeachment of their local representatives. The petition was delivered to the General Federation of Trade Unions in January. If the Federation would not agree to impeach their representatives and hold new elections, the Mahalla workers threatened to secede from the body and form an independent union, which would be Egypt's first. The impeachment issue has not yet been resolved, but the government accused the CTUWS of organizing both the strike and the petition in an attempt to undermine the state. Kamal Abbas, director of the center, denies these accusations. "The government has tried to lay all the blame on CTUWS and say that we instigated it all, he told The Daily Star Egypt. "It's an honor we can't claim although we would have loved if this had been the case. "Just because some of the strike leaders were either members of the Tagammu or the CTUWS or any other organization does not mean that these groups were the ones that mobilized the whole strike, he added. The crackdown on the CTUWS comes amid a season of labor and political unrest in Egypt, which has also seen the government come down hard on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is officially banned but has long been tolerated as a political force, and its members fill one fifth of the seats in the People's Assembly. Despite this, over 400 members of the Brotherhood are currently imprisoned, and many have never been charged with a crime.
