The Star

http://www.iol.co.za/

15 April 2016

 

Egypt’s dirty war exposed

By Shannon Ebrahim

foreign editor of Independent Newspapers

 

Enforced disappearances grow in step with the state's intolerance of dissent, yet the AU says nothing, writes Shannon Ebrahim.

Egypt’s dirty war of the past three years is finally being exposed in a big way in the international media, and was condemned last month by the EU.

It is unfortunate that it is the African Union that has been silent on the matter.

The hashtag #forceddisappearance is being spread across social media – referring to Egypt’s enforced disappearance of young people from across the political spectrum.

According to Egypt’s Commission for Rights and Freedoms, 1 840 people were forcibly disappeared last year, and more than 204 in the first three months of this year.

There is a general consensus that the level of repression in Egypt is higher now than under the Mubarak regime, and according to older Egyptians, even worse than in the 1950s and 1960s.

When people are forcibly disappeared, they literally disappear from their community. This is when state officials (or someone acting with state consent) grab them from the street or their homes, and then deny it, or refuse to say where they are.

Often people are never released, and their fate remains unknown. Victims are frequently tortured and in constant fear of being killed. Enforced disappearance is a crime under international law.

Last month, the European parliament unanimously passed a resolution to act against Egypt for its large-scale campaign of arbitrary detention.

The Egyptian Revolutionary Council – an opposition coalition – claims that over 40 000 people are political detainees.

The coalition alleges that torture has become routine, and the security forces have begun summarily executing suspects they arrest.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented endless testimonies of detainees having endured electrocutions, beatings and hours in stress positions.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Egyptian security forces have enjoyed near-absolute impunity under the regime of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Rights groups claim that since Magdy Abdel Ghaffar was appointed interior minister in March 2015, enforced disappearances have become the unofficial security policy of the Sisi government.

Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein also expressed grave concern for the closure of hundreds of civil society organisations.

This period in Egypt’s history has been likened to the dirty wars of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina in the 1970s, when thousands were hunted down, forcibly disappeared, tortured and killed.

Rights groups claim that Egypt is now the largest jailer of peaceful opponents in the world, other than North Korea, and according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, has jailed the second highest number of journalists in the world.

Egypt is considered one of the big players in the African Union, given its significant assessments to the AU budget, and despite its worsening human rights record secured a three-year membership on the AU Peace and Security Council in January.

In mid-2013, Egypt was suspended from the AU two days after the democratically elected Mohamed Mursi was ousted from power in what the AU deemed “an unconstitutional change in government”.

At the time, South Africa issued a statement condemning Mursi’s ousting, with President Zuma saying “SADC leaders do not accept the ouster of the constitutionally elected President Mursi by the military authorities”.

South Africa also called for an investigation into the massacre against demonstrators, saying “The South African Government calls on the interim authority to end the bloody actions against its own people”.

But in February 2014, in a foreign policy about-turn, Zuma wrote to Sisi stating South Africa’s support for Egypt, and in a meeting with Sisi in April the same year referred to a “new chapter in relations between the two countries”.

Two months later in June 2014, following Egypt’s presidential elections, the AU lifted Egypt’s suspension from the regional body. In a working visit to Cairo last year, Zuma spoke of the “imperative for the two countries to revitalise and elevate bilateral relations to a new level”.

This has transpired in spite of an Egyptian criminal court affirming the death sentence against Mursi in June 2015, along with hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had been democratically elected prior to the coup.

There has also been no condemnation of the use of military courts to try civilians – which is in violation of international law, and in violation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which Egypt ratified in 1984.

According to Human Rights Watch, 7 420 civilians have been tried in military courts since October 2014, with 21 death sentences being handed down.

The military trials often involved hundreds of civilians at one time.

Whatever the strategic reasons may have been to re-engage with Egypt even prior to its presidential elections, the repression which the Egyptian security forces are exacting on the civilian population is worthy of condemnation.

For the AU to remain silent on the issue of Egypt’s enforced disappearances, executions and trials by military courts will be recorded in history as complicity.