Several local human rights activists have vowed to put pressure on the Government to bring Egypt's Emergency Law, which has been in effect since 1981, to an end, saying the law had turned into a governmental tool for stifling freedoms in this country. The activists, spearheaded by Hafez Abu Saeda who is the Secretary General of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, a non��"governmental group, say the law has caused tremendous suffering to many in Egypt and has been used by the Government to suppress the opposition. “This law has even weakened Egypt's legal structure and given the Government a free hand to create its own exceptional rules with no regard to the effect of these rules on the personal freedoms of the citizens,” Abu Saeda said. “This has created a difficult situation for everybody here,” he told the Egyptian Mail in an interview over the phone. Egypt's Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Mufied Shehab was grilled during a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council a few weeks ago over the Emergency Law. Shehab said the law, which started to be applied in the aftermath of the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat in October 1981, was only applied on occasions when there were terrorist attacks. But Abu Saeda and his colleagues see the situation differently. They say the Emergency Law, which was extended in 2008 for two more years until the Government prepared a much-awaited anti-terrorism bill, has been behind almost every human rights violation in this country. They have decided to launch a new movement to fight against any attempt by the Government to extend the Emergency Law even more. While the Government has not said whether it will extend the law yet again this year, the activists say their movement, which they call “Towards an Emergency-Free Future”, will seek to put the necessary pressure on the Government to terminate the law, which was also criticised by the US State Department several times. They say they will organise seminars and talk to the media about the dangers the law poses to democracy in Egypt. “We can do nothing but talk and warn against the dangers of this law,” Abu Saeda said. “We need everybody to understand that this law undermines every attempt to improve this country's human rights record,” he added. The Government alleged that the Emergency Law is applied to criminals and drug traffickers. The law allows military courts, which are presided over by an officer, to try civilians. A forum of Egyptian Human Rights Organisations said last week that the Egyptian Government should take immediate and transparent measures to draft an anti-terror law to replace the state of emergency.
