CAIRO: State authorities across the Middle East and North Africa region have shown themselves “either reluctant or downright unwilling” to honor human rights obligations, Amnesty International said in its 2010 annual report. This trend has been exacerbated by the threat of terrorism, which is used “as a convenient justification for clamping down further on legitimate criticism and dissent,” the rights group said in the report issued Thursday. The report, which documents the state of human rights across 159 countries in 2009, describes few positive developments in Egypt. Powers granted to authorities under the state of emergency — which was renewed earlier this month — were used to detain not only people suspected of terrorism and offences against national security “but also peaceful critics of the government” the rights watchdog says. “Grossly unfair trials” continued before military courts, the report says, citing the cases of Ahmed Douma and Magdy Hussein, activists who were imprisoned following trials in military courts. In April, 18 MB members were handed down prison sentences by the Heikstip military court in Cairo. Torture and mistreatment is “systematic” in police stations, prisons and state security investigations detentions centers and at least four people died in custody, apparently as a result of torture or ill-treatment in 2009 Amnesty says. Incidents of torture and mistreatment are, “for the most part, committed with impunity” the report states. There were “rare” cases of alleged torturers being prosecuted, the report says, such as in November when an Alexandria court found a police officer guilty of physically assaulting a man in police custody and imprisoned him for five years. At least 269 death sentences were handed down and five people executed in 2009, according to Amnesty. Curbs on freedom of expression and the media remained in place last year and the prosecution of journalists and bloggers on defamation charges as a form of harassment continued, Amnesty says, following a regional trend of close control of the media. “Editors and journalists had to operate within both written and unwritten rules, and to steer clear of subjects considered taboo — including criticism of the ruler, his family and circle, official corruption or abuse of power by those in authority,” the report reads. Consensual sexual acts between men continued to be criminalized. A group of 10 men were arrested in Cairo and accused of the “habitual practice of debauchery” before being beaten, slapped, kicked and insulted by the Morality Police. The men were also tested for HIV/AIDS without their consent and forcibly subjected to anal examinations to “prove” that they had engaged in same-sex sexual conduct — which constitutes torture. One of the few positive developments in 2009 was the recognition, by the Interior Minister, of the right of Bahai citizens to obtain identity documents without having to identify themselves as Muslim, Christian or Jewish. This following a Supreme Administrative Court decision in March which said that Bahais could leave the religious field on identity documents blank. Forced evictions were carried out in 2009 the report says, and residents of 26 areas in Greater Cairo deemed “unsafe” in 2008 in a government master plan to develop the city by 2050 continued to face a double threat of a risk of possible rock falls and other dangers, and possible forced eviction. At least 19 people were shot dead by Egyptian security forces while trying to cross the border with Israel. In September the authorities defended the use of lethal force on the border. “Ten years on from the start of a new millennium, much — so much — remains to be done [in the Middle East and North Africa region] to give reality to the human rights set out more than 60 years earlier in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Amnesty International concluded.
