http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-police-state-is-the-wrong-venue-for-obamas-speech-1695487.html
June 3, 2009
Robert Fisk: Police state is the wrong venue for Obama's speech
Maybe Barack Obama chose Egypt for his "great message" to Muslims tomorrow
because it contains a quarter of the world's Arab population, but he is also
coming to one of the region's most repressed, undemocratic and ruthless police
states. Egyptian human rights groups – when they are not themselves being
harassed or closed down by the authorities – have recorded a breathtaking list
of police torture, extra-judicial killings, political imprisonments and
state-sanctioned assaults on opposition figures that continues to this day.
The sad truth is that so far did the US descend in moral power under George W
Bush that Obama would probably have to deliver his lecture in the occupied West
Bank, even Gaza, to change the deep resentment and fury that has built up among
Muslims over the past eight years. This, of course, Obama will not do. So
Egypt, sadly, it has to be, though he will see nothing of the squalor and fear
in which Egyptians live.
Only a week ago, for example, the leader of the opposition Ghad party, Ayman
Nour – only released from prison by President Hosni Mubarak's regime in
February – complained that he was assaulted in a Cairo street by a man with a
make-shift flamethrower, suffering first degree burns to his face. Mr Nour
spent three years in jail and is outraged by Obama's visit. "It seems to have
been intended to bolster the power of the regimes, not of the people," he said.
"We are absolutely astonished that our Egyptian political and civil society are
ignored. It gives the impression that American interests are more important
than American principles." The investigations of human rights groups show Mr
Nour has every reason to be angry.
The latest Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHR) report on government abuses
in the Arab world is packed with examples of state brutality, including 29
cases of torture and ill-treatment in Egyptian police stations in just six
months. The Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights, a separate group, discovered
that 10 of the 29 died after torture. In one case, rights groups acquired a
videotape of a prisoner being anally raped with a stick by a police officer.
Other videos show one of Mubarak's political opponents – a woman – being
sexually molested by a plain-clothes police officer in a Cairo street. In 2007
alone, the Egyptian syndicate of journalists reported that 1,000 journalists
were summoned to appear before government investigative officials.
A prominent case, the CIHR said, was that of Ibrahim Eissa, editor of
Al-Dastour newspaper, who received two months in prison for allegedly
publishing "false news" about Mubarak's health, thus "undermining public
security". Interestingly, Egyptian state television no longer shows news film
of Mubarak climbing aircraft steps or conference podiums; Egyptians, of course,
wonder why. When Sa'ad eddin Ibrahim, of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development
Studies, called upon the US to make its billions of dollars of aid to Egypt
provisional upon the country's progress in democratic reform, he was condemned
in absentia to two years' hard labour. Several bloggers were detained for
calling for a public strike on Mubarak's 80th birthday last year. Al-Jazeera's
Howeida Taha was fined 16 months ago for "damaging Egypt's reputation" by
shooting a film on torture in police stations.
Human rights workers have been physically assaulted as well as arrested. When
Dr Magda Adly, of the Al-Nadeem Centre for the rehabilitation of torture
victims, left a police station in Kafr el-Dawa after interviewing four
detainees who said they had been tortured, she was knocked unconscious and her
arm was broken.
Why does Mubarak allow these obscenities to continue? Does he truly believe the
extraordinary presidential election figures – he won the 1999 poll with 93.79
per cent, and an earlier 1993 election with 96.3 per cent – or, in his 81st
year, is he afraid of his political opponents, however powerless they may be?
Will he discuss all this with Obama? It is unlikely.
In fairness, the CIHR also records a series of shameful attacks on journalists
by so-called Islamic courts leading, inevitably, to fines. It also recounts a
vast litany of torture and executions by other Arab regimes from Tunisia to
Syria, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza. So perhaps Obama should stay
clear of the lot.
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