Tunisian fishermen have prevented a
ship carrying European far-right activists from docking, dealing a blow
to their mission to disrupt the flow of migrant boats from Africa to
Europe.
The C-Star, chartered by French-based group Génération identitaire (GI), was unable to berth in Zarzis.
GI says non-governmental organisations active in the Mediterranean collude with people traffickers.
But the Zarzis fishermen said the anti-migrant activists were racists.
They vowed not to let the C-Star refuel if it landed and the vessel is now expected to try another Tunisian port on Monday.
"It is the least we can do given what is happening out in the
Mediterranean," Chamseddine Bourassine, head of the local fishermen's
organisation, told AFP news agency. "Muslims and Africans are dying."
A port official who asked to remain anonymous said: "Us let in racists here? Never."
Meanwhile humanitarian groups say any attempt to turn migrant boats
back to Libya could be very dangerous and illegal under international
law.
About 600,000 migrants have been rescued from traffickers' boats and taken to Italy since the beginning of 2014.
More than 10,000 people have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean over the same period.
Earlier this month rights group Amnesty International accused the EU of mostly leaving it up to sea rescue charities to save migrants.
At
the same time, NGOs have come under criticism from the Italian
authorities, who have threatened to stop vessels of other countries
from bringing migrants to Italian ports.
Egypt
also came second among developing countries in 2015 arms transfer
agreements — agreements that were signed but not necessarily delivered —
signing agreements worth $11.9 billion. Qatar ranked first, with
agreements worth $17.5 billion.
According to the report, which
traces arms sales to developing nations between 2008 and 2015, Egypt
signed arms transfers agreements totaling $30 billion, coming third
after Saudi Arabia and India.
Egypt ranked sixth among developing
countries in total arms transfers agreements between 2008 and 2011,
worth $8.6 billion. The US was the biggest arms exporter to Egypt in
this period, with 79 percent of total arms transfer agreements, followed
by China then Russia.
In the same period, Egypt’s actual arms
imports reached $5 billion, the fifth largest among developing
countries. Between 2012 and 2015, Egypt ranked fourth in arms imports at
a total of $9.8 billion, preceded by Saudi, India and Iraq. The report
indicates that Egypt’s arms transfer agreements for this period reached
$21.5 billion.
Western European countries and Russia were major
arms exporters to Egypt in this period, with 43 percent of agreements
respectively, then came the US with 6 percent.
The report revealed
that US and Russia were major arms exporters to developing countries in
the period between 2012 and 2015, with 81 percent of the total arms
transfer agreements.
In 2015 only, Qatar topped the developing
nations signing arms transfer agreements with $17.5 billion, followed by
Egypt with $11.9 billion, Saudi with $8.6 billion, then South Korea
with $5.4 billion.
Arms transfer agreements signed by Egypt in
2015 represented 15 percent of total agreements signed worldwide, which
reached $80 billion, according to the report.
A report published by London-based global analysis firm IHS Markit. indicated that Egypt’s military imports reached $2.268 billion in 2015, making it the world’s fourth-largest defense importer.
Egypt
receives $1.3 billion in annual military aid from the US, and under
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi it has also made major purchases from
other exporting countries, including Russia and France.
High-profile
deals include a 2015 agreement with France
to purchase 5.2 billion euro worth of military equipment, including 24
Rafale fighter jets and a naval frigate, and a contract with Russian
firm Rosoboronexport to buy 46 attack helicopters.
US citizen Ada Petiwala was refused entry to
Egypt on Tuesday, after being detained and interrogated at Cairo
International Airport, and was told she is banned from entering the
country again as she is considered a problem for national security.
In a Facebook post
published on Friday, Petiwala explained that she was detained and her
passport was confiscated after it was initially stamped by the passport
control office. Petiwala and her husband, who is an Egyptian national
and was with her on a flight from France, were subsequently
interrogated. Airport security asked Petiwala about her many previous
visits to Egypt. She explained that she was the recipient of a Center
for Arabic Study Abroad scholarship from 2013 to 2014 and later worked
at Townhouse gallery.
When Petiwala stated that she is a New York
University master’s student with a focus on media studies and Indian
culture in Egypt, airport officials laughed at her in disbelief.
"I
repeated again and again that the primary reason for my trip to Egypt
was to spend time with my husband, whom I only can now see during my
breaks from school. He does not have an American visa. I told these
truths knowing full well that there is sensitivity and surveillance
surrounding every single one of the institutions I have been affiliated
with," she explained.
At 6:00 am, after several hours of
interrogation, Petiwala said authorities decided to ban her from
entering Egypt, citing national security concerns.
“Leave her here
and go home and sleep because she’s not going to enter Egypt again,"
airport security told her husband, according to Petiwala.
Petiwala
went on to describe the "humiliating treatment" she was subjected to by
airport security officials. Despite having recently undergone a medical
procedure that induces bleeding, of which she claims security officials
were aware, she was mocked by security personnel, forced to carry her
luggage to several detention centers throughout the airport and denied
access to food, water and the bathroom as she waited to board a flight
to Berlin.
When she was finally allowed to enter a bathroom before
boarding her flight, she yelled at an officer who, in return, spat in
her face.
"I have not found out, from any source of any kind, why I
am not allowed in Egypt. I only recently read that the same day there
were also foreign journalists detained and deported from Cairo. Today I
filed a complaint ... at the Egyptian Consulate in Berlin to see if I
can find another way in. It will make no difference. My own embassy said
it is out of their hands. The police state will do its bidding.
Violence in all forms is arbitrary," she concluded.
Petiwala and her husband were not available to comment on the incident.
A
number of foreign researchers, academics and journalists have been
recently banned from entering Egypt. On Monday, airport security
detained French journalist Rémy Pigaglio
for 30 hours upon arrival at Cairo International Airport, confiscating
his passport and preventing him from contacting the French Embassy in
Cairo, before deporting him to France.
Pigaglio is a correspondent for the French newspaper La Croix and
was previously authorized to work in Egypt by the Egyptian State
Information Services, which handles permits for international
journalists in Egypt.
A study published by
the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) in February
stated that the Egyptian state’s decision to ban foreign researchers
from entering the country is largely based on their criticism of the
government.
Egypt deported a French journalist without explanation, the reporter
said Wednesday, the latest move in an ongoing crackdown by President
Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's government on freedom of expression and the
media.
Correspondent Remy Pigaglio, who worked for several publications
including Catholic daily La Croix and was based in Egypt since 2014, was
returning from vacation in France and prevented from entering the
country on Monday. Pigaglio said he has a valid residency work permit
and a press card, and was detained for 30 hours at Cairo International
Airport before being sent back to Paris.
Authorities took away his mobile phone and examined photos on it,
confiscated his passport, and barred him from speaking with embassy
officials and family until Monday evening, he said by telephone from
Paris. He was held overnight in a cell at the airport.
"I don't understand it at all, and still don't know why they decided to
ban me from entering the territory," he said, adding that he wasn't
treated badly. He said none of his photos were suspicious but that some
of them were of journalists holding a general assembly meeting at their
union headquarters amid a sit-in earlier this month.
The French ambassador to Cairo tried to intervene on his behalf but did
not manage to prevent the deportation, and is urging Egyptian
authorities to reconsider their decision, France's Foreign Ministry said
in a statement.
In Paris, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters after a
Cabinet meeting that he protested the move, calling his Egyptian
counterpart and telling him he "couldn't remain indifferent to a
situation that infringes the freedom of the press."
French journalists in Egypt demanded an explanation, saying in a
statement that the deportation was a sign of "authorities' growing
repression of Egyptian and foreign media: surveillance, arrest,
expulsion and detention."
Journalists have been regularly detained, jailed, and prosecuted under
the rule of el-Sissi, who led the 2013 military overthrow of the
Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected but divisive
president. Foreigners working in a variety of fields have been denied
entry to Egypt without explanation.
Egypt was ranked 158 out of 180 countries in the 2015 Press Freedom
Index, according to Reporters Without Borders, a freedom of expression
advocacy group. In December, the Committee to Protect Journalists said
Egypt was second only to China as the world's worst jailer of
journalists in 2015.
One of Pigaglio's last articles covered the sit-in at the headquarters
of Egypt's journalists' union in downtown Cairo where he took the photos
on his phone, and where demonstrators were protesting the arrest of two
journalists police seized from the building.
In an unrelated development, defense lawyers said a Cairo appeals court
quashed five-year prison terms handed down on May 14 against 47
anti-government protesters convicted of breaking a law that effectively
bans street demonstrations.
However, they said the court upheld the lower tribunal's decision to
slap a fine of 100,000 pounds (about 10,000 dollars) on each of the 47
protesters. The appeals court verdict was passed late Tuesday.
The 47 were among a total of 152 protesters convicted on May 14 of
breaking the demonstrations law during protests on April 25 against the
government's decision to hand over control of two Red Sea islands to
Saudi Arabia. The 152 were sentenced to prison terms ranging from two to
five years; many were tried in absentia.
Earlier this month, a new draft bill was submitted to Egypt's parliament on regulating the media.
Journalists say it would likely bring the demise of dozens of
low-budget, online media outlets serving as refuge for young writers and
liberal activists escaping government restrictions on freedom of
expression. Awaiting approval by a parliament dominated by el-Sissi
loyalists, lawmakers are also set to approve clauses that would ban all
live video transmissions without permits. Insiders expect such permits
will be denied to non-state media.
European Union member states broadly back el-Sissi and continue to sell
Egypt sophisticated weaponry under the rationale that the country needs
the firepower to fight a growing insurgency by Islamic militants in the
Sinai Peninsula. Egypt, they argue, remains a bulwark of stability in a
volatile Middle East.
A French parliamentary delegation was in Cairo the very day Pigaglio was
detained, with Philippe Folliot, head of the French-Egyptian friendship
group in the National Assembly telling The Associated Press that
"nothing" could impact good relations between the two countries. He
later however denounced Pigaglio's expulsion on Twitter, saying that it
"doesn't improve Egypt's image."
El-Sissi's harsh crackdown on critics has left thousands jailed and
fanned doubts over his leadership, with many nations voicing concerns.
Close partner Italy has been particularly critical after an Italian
doctoral student was found tortured to death after disappearing on Jan.
25, a day that saw a massive police presence in Cairo, prompting
accusations that Egypt's security services were involved.
Italy has withdrawn its ambassador to Cairo over the case of Giulio
Regeni and said Egypt was not being sufficiently cooperative in the
investigation. Egypt denies its security services were involved in
Regeni's killing.
Vladimir Putin orders halt to all flights to Egyptian airports as
evidence mounts that flight 9268 was brought down rather than suffering
mechanical failure
Saturday 7 November, 2015
The sound of an apparent explosion can be heard on the flight
recorder of the Russian-operated plane that came down over the Sinai
peninsula, killing all 224 people on board, adding to the evidence that a
bomb was smuggled aboard, French media sources said on Friday.
Giving further credence to the idea that the plane crash was a terrorist act rather than because of structural failure, Russia, which for a week has been resistant to speculation about a bomb, suspended flights to all Egyptian airports.
An Egyptian-led international team of aviation experts, including
some from France, successfully recovered the black box, the flight
recorder, from the crash site.
Several French media outlets, including
the television station France 2, reported that the investigators had
listened to it and concluded that a bomb had detonated, which would seem
to rule out structural failure or pilot error.
The pilots can be heard
chatting normally, including contact with airport controllers, up until
the apparent explosion.
One source close to the investigation told AFP that the black box
data “strongly favours” this theory. While another source reportedly
said: “Everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and
suddenly there was nothing,” adding that the plane had suffered “a
violent, sudden,” end.
A news conference is due to be held on Saturday afternoon by the
Egyptian aviation minister, Hossam Kamal, and the head of the Egypt-led
investigation into the disaster, although the government warned it could
be delayed.
While Russia had earlier suggested that the UK was acting prematurely
in halting flights to the Red Sea resort over terrorism fears, Vladimir Putin
ordered even wider restrictions on Friday, including halting all
flights from Cairo. The head of his federal security services said it
would be expedient to suspend flights until they had discovered why the
Airbus A321 had crashed last Saturday.
Meanwhile, the US announced new security measures – including tighter
screening – for flights from some airports in the Middle East. Jeh
Johnson, the homeland security secretary, said that the move was
motivated by “an abundance of caution.”
Russia initially dismissed
claims by Islamic State
of responsibility for downing the Metrojet flight, which came weeks
after threats of retaliation for Russian planes bombing Syria, and
Moscow reacted angrily after David Cameron said it was “more likely than
not” a bomb.
Suspicions had intensified throughout the week that the Metrojet
airliner was blown up. In addition to the French media reports about the
black box, according to reports from the US, a “flash” from the plane
was picked up by US satellites.
American officials have also told
Reuters that intercepted intelligence “chatter” involving militant
groups in Sinai supported the bomb theory. An Isis-affiliated group has
claimed three times that it was responsible for bringing down the plane.
Russia will now begin to bring home its tourists, up to 79,000 of whom are currently on holiday in Egypt, according to Russian tourist authorities.
However, there were chaotic scenes at Sharm el-Sheikh airport on
Friday as the schedule of “rescue flights” apparently agreed by airlines
disintegrated. Thousands of travellers who had gone to the airport
expecting to leave were further delayed. Eight easyJet
flights were cancelled in the morning, while empty Monarch, Thomas Cook
and Thomson airliners that had flown from Britain to bring back
holidaymakers were diverted before reaching Egypt.
EasyJet claimed that Egyptian authorities were blocking their extra
flights, as passengers were sent back to their hotels pending “top-level
government talks” to resolve the situation. In extraordinary scenes at
the airport, Britain’s ambassador to Cairo, John Casson, was heckled by
passengers, who shouted: “What is the problem and when can we go home?”
Tour operators promised that stranded customers would remain in their accommodation free of charge or be reimbursed.
Egypt’s civil aviation ministry denied that it was blocking any
flights, but said only eight of the 29 planned flights from Sharm
el-Sheikh to the UK on Friday were operating because the airport did not
have the capacity to store hold luggage. Only hand luggage is being
allowed on flights back to Britain amid fears that a bomb was placed in
the hold of the Metrojet plane.
Kamal, Egypt’s aviation minister, said: “The British airline
[easyJet] wants to schedule 18 flights at the same time and wants to
transport British passengers from Sharm el-Sheikh without their luggage,
which we would have to transport later. This constitutes a huge burden
on the airport because its capacity does not allow for that.”
Britain had expected that all passengers who were due to fly home
this week before flights were cancelled over security fears – about
3,500 people – would have returned by Friday night. Patrick McLoughlin,
the transport secretary, had told the BBC: “We feel that should be
possible.” But as the day unfolded, a Downing Street spokesman said the
situation was “very fluid … complicated and difficult.”
He said a
broken-down aircraft at the airport had contributed to delays on the
ground.
The first 180 tourists to return to the UK arrived at Gatwick airport
on an easyJet flight at 4.25pm, describing chaotic scenes before
departure. They said the pilot had assured them that intelligence
officials from MI5 and the Egyptian army had guarded their plane before
takeoff to ensure its safety.
Some were in tears outside the arrivals area of Gatwick. Emma Turner,
from Kent, said her husband had been hit by other tourists, whom she
believed to be Russian, amid scuffles to get through the departure area
in Egypt. “It was absolutely horrendous. We got hit twice in arrivals at
Sharm going through security. They had one door open and we had
children with us.”
Nicky Bull, from Bath, described the airport as “dreadful”, saying:
“I appreciate all the extra security, but they just could not cope with
it … everybody was getting crushed. Everybody was shouting and
screaming.”
Another passenger, Nathan Hazelwood, said security at Sharm was
shocking. “I think it’s a joke. We need a bit of a presence out there. I
don’t think we should be flying out there at all. Security needs to be
tightened.”
A further 179 passengers were on board a second easyJet plane that
landed at 5.30pm at Luton. A number of the cancelled UK –bound flights
were expected to operate on Saturday, while the hold luggage of
returning British passengers would be transported on separate flights
over the next 10 days.
While Egypt said the decision to cancel the majority of UK-bound
flights on Friday was purely logistical, an easyJet spokesman suggested
it was a political decision after Britain took a lead in restricting
travel. Egypt has rejected claims that Isis carried out the attack and
maintains there is nothing wrong with security at Sharm el-Sheikh
airport.
The country stands to lose a large, critical source of income in the
region if the tourist industry is in effect shut down because of
terrorism fears.
Isis, which has not generally pursued major attacks outside its base
in Syria, has claimed responsibility for bringing down the plane. The
suspension of flights to and from Egypt is the first sign that Moscow is
attaching credibility to the theory, but the Kremlin continued to
insist there is no presumption of a bomb.
A spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said: “The decision of the president to
suspend flights to Egypt does not mean that a terrorist attack is the
main suspected cause of the catastrophe with [the airline] Kogalymavia.”
He said Putin was not suspending flights to Egypt until the cause of
the crash was identified, but only “until it is possible to establish
the necessary safety level for air travel.”
Russian state television channels have largely shied away from
discussing the possibility that a terrorist bomb or missile could have
caused the crash, and politicians described the UK’s decision to cancel
Egypt flights as “psychological pressure” on Russia over its airstrikes
against Syrian rebels.
On Friday, a Downing Street spokesman said Britain’s curbs on flights
to the Red Sea resort were not dependent on the possible causes of the
Metrojet disaster. “The evidence we received suggested there was a
credible threat with regard to Sharm el-Sheikh airport, which is why we
have taken the actions we have.”
In 2014, about 1.9 million Russians visited Egypt, making it the
second most popular holiday destination for Russians after Turkey.
Although the number of Russians holidaying abroad has been falling since
the Ruble lost half its value in 2014, Egypt has remained popular, as
operators have lowered prices for package tours there.
Vladimir Kaganer, the general director of the tourist agency Tez
Tour, which said it had 10,000 clients in Egypt, claimed that an
evacuation order would be needed to bring Russian holidaymakers home.
“If people are at a resort and they come to them to say a plane was sent
to take you back, they would say: ‘No, we want to be on holiday for two
more weeks, we’re not going anywhere.’”
A third Russian government plane carrying victims’ remains and their
personal belongings from Egypt returned to St Petersburg on Friday. ___________
*Reporting by:Ewen MacAskill, Gwyn Topham, Peter Beaumont in Sharm el-Sheikh
Ben Quinn, Andrew Sparrow and Alec Luhn in Moscow
**Photo courtesy of European Pressphoto Agency (EPA)
French journalist and Chief Editor of Le Monde Diplomatique Alain Gresh
was held for two hours on Tuesday, along with two Egyptian journalists,
in a downtown café after they were overheard discussing politics.
“I was sitting with an Egyptian journalist and an Egyptian student
speaking in English and Arabic when a woman listening to our
conversation screamed at us, saying ‘you will destroy the country’,”
Gresh told Mada Masr.
The woman then stepped outside the café and proceeded to talk with
security forces, who came and interrogated Gresh on his reasons for
being in Egypt.
“They took my passport and IDs from the journalists, before returning
30 minutes later with my passport, saying they would hold on to the
IDs,” he said. “Then they asked if I have a work permit that allows me
to work in Egypt.”
The security forces told Gresh he was free to go, but he refused to
leave until his colleagues were allowed to go with him. All three were
released two hours later.
Gresh expressed surprise at how easily one can be arrested and turned
over to the police, adding that he knows full well how difficult it is
for journalists to practice, but that today he learnt so first hand.
According to Mostafa Bassiouny, a journalist and friend of Gresh’s who
was following the issue, members of the Journalists Syndicate and the
National Council for Human Rights spoke with the head of the Qasr al-Nil
Police Station, who told them that the woman at the café had overheard
Gresh and the two women discussing politics, so she reported them to the
police.
Gresh, 66 years old, was born in Cairo and left at the age of 14 in
1962. He is considered one of the most prominent journalists specialized
in the Middle East, and has visited Egypt frequently since 1972.
In a move that has sparked concern among Egyptian secularists, the
country’s censorship committee this week banned 20 music videos
allegedly containing “heavy sexual connotations” and featuring
“scantily-dressed female singers and models.”
The decision to ban the video clips deemed “inappropriate” and
“indecent” by members of the state censorship committee, comes two
months after a new constitution guaranteeing freedom of expression and
opinion was approved by 98 per cent of voters in a national referendum.
The new charter replaced the 2012 constitution, widely criticized by
rights organizations and revolutionary activists as an “Islamist-tinged”
document.
The majority of Egypt’s secularists who celebrated the ouster of
Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in Tahrir Square in July had feared
that the Muslim Brotherhood –the Islamist group from which he hails –was
seeking to alter Egypt’s ‘moderate’ identity. The Islamist group has
since been outlawed and designated a terrorist organization by the
military-backed authorities that replaced the toppled president.
The banning of the video clips comes amid heated debate on “raunchy”
music videos broadcast on some of the Arab satellite channels. In
recent years, an increasing number of popular Arab female singing-stars
have challenged social norms and broken cultural taboos by revealing
more flesh in their video clips. The trend has stirred controversy in
Egypt’s deeply conservative Muslim society with many Egyptians rejecting
what they describe as “the pornification of pop music”. They insist
that the “graphic, semi-porn sexual scenes featured in some of the music
videos are not in line with Islamic tradition and culture”.
“Some of these video clips are more porn than music. We can hardly
understand the lyrics; They are an insult to Arabic music and culture,”
said Amina Mansour , a Western educated 30 year- old Egyptian freelance
photographer.
It is no surprise that some liberal, westernised Egyptians agree
with ultra-conservative Muslims in their society that the videos should
be banned. Egyptian society–once a melting pot of different cultures has
grown more conservative in the last 30 years.
In his book Whatever
Happened to the Egyptians, Economist Galal Amin blames the growing
conservatism in the country on the introduction of Wahhabism –a more
rigid form of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia and adopted by the
millions of Egyptian migrants who travelled to Gulf countries after the
oil boom in the seventies, seeking higher-paid jobs.
The gradual
transformation from a diverse, open and tolerant society into today’s
conservative and far less tolerant Egypt is evident in the style of
dress, behaviour and speech of many Egyptians. An estimated 90 per cent
of women wear the hijab-the head covering worn by Muslim women -while
the niqab, a veil covering the face , has become more prevalent in
recent years.
Some analysts believe the trend of conservatism, which had steadily
grown in Egypt recent decades, now appears to be regressing. A growing
number of women and girls are removing their Islamic headscarf —once
adopted as a political statement against the authoritarian regime of
Hosni Mubarak and against Western-style values imposed on the society.
Leila el Shentenawy, a 31 year old lawyer told Index she removed her
veil after Morsi’s ouster to express her disappointment with Islamist
rule.
“Morsi failed to deliver on promised reforms,” she said, adding that
she and other liberal Egyptians were alarmed by the calls made by some
hardline Islamists to bring back female genital mutilation and lower the
age of marriage for girls.
“We were becoming a backward society instead of moving forward,” she said.
Shentenawi however, supports the ban on the video clips, arguing
that such videos are “commercialization of women’s bodies and a
downright insult to women.”
Other Egyptians have meanwhile expressed disappointment over the
banning of the video clips, perceiving the move as “a reversal of the
democratic gains of the January 25, 2011 Revolution” that toppled
autocratic president Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent uprising against
Islamist rule in June 2013.
“We had two uprisings for freedom and a modern, democratic society,”
lamented 26 year-old graphic designer Amr El Sherif. “The video clips
are popular with young Egyptians and the latest ban can only be
considered as a means of stifling free artistic expression.”
In January, Egyptian TV imposed a ban on several video clips
reportedly containing “seductive scenes”, deciding they
were”inappropriate for viewers”. The ban on the music videos featuring
Middle Eastern pop idols Haifa Wahby, Alissa, Nancy Agram and Ruby among
others, came in response to complaints by some viewers that the “hot
scenes” depicted in the videos were “provocative” and “went against the
morals of Muslim society.”
While modest by Western standards, “the gyrations and revealing
costumes featured in the videos were too sexy for Arab audiences”, the
censors decided. The ban is a continuation of the ultra-conservative
trend started by Islamists during their one year rule when some of their
lawmakers had complained to Parliament (then dominated by Islamists)
that “Egyptian performer Ruby’s pelvic thrust dance moves and bare
midriff were too much,” warning that the “obscene scenes” depicted in
the music videos would “trash the taste of Egyptians.”
The ban of the videos meanwhile, coincided with the sexual assault
of a female student by a mob on Cairo University’s main campus on
Monday–the first violence of its kind on an Egyptian university campus.
While condemning the assault incident in a telephone interview broadcast
on the private ONTV channel later that evening, University President
Gaber Nassar implied the victim was to blame, saying her “immodest
attire” had invited the assault. He urged students to dress modestly,
adding that those who do not follow the university’s regulation would be
barred from entering the university campus by security guards.
Some Egyptians believe that the “suggestive” and “explicit” music
videos are partly to blame for a surge in incidents of sexual harassment
and violence against women in the country since the January 2011
uprising.
“Sexual frustrations of youth –many of whom are unemployed and
unable to afford the cost of marriage– are being fuelled in part by sexy
music videos and other pornograhic material on the internet, causing
unruly behaviour by some youth,” Said Sadek, a Cairo-based Political
Sociologist and activist, told Index.
The recent ban on the video clips also comes hot on the heels of an
International Women’s Day protest-rally staged by nude Arab and Iranian
women in the Louvre Art Museum’s Square in Paris, calling for “equal
rights” and “secularism” in their respective countries.
Egyptian
internet activist Alia Al Mahdi was among the participants in the Paris
nudist rally which organizers said, was held to “highlight the many
legal and cultural restrictions imposed on women in the Arab World”. El
Mahdi had also protested naked outside the Egyptian Embassy in the
Swedish capital Stockholm in December 2012 to express her opposition to
what she called Morsi’s “Sharia Constitution.” Raising the Egyptian
flag, she had the words ” No to Sharia” written in bold print on her
naked body.
Many of the revolutionary youth-activists who led the uprisings in
Tahrir Square in January 2011 and June 2013 had hoped the downfall of
two authoritarian regimes would usher in a new era of greater freedoms
including freedom of expression and opinion.But their hopes are fading
fast amid increased restrictions and a climate of growing
repression.
Despite the challenges, they vow to continue to push for
“reforms” and “a more liberal Egypt”. While many of the revolutionaries
say they oppose Alia Al Mahdi’s method of protest, perceiving it as ”
extreme”, they insist ” there is no going back to repression and
censorship by the authorities.”
“We’ve had our first taste of freedom with the revolution three
years ago and once you’ve had that, you can only move forward and never
look back, ” said Mohamed Fawaz, an activist and member of the April 6
Movement, one of the two main groups that mobilized protesters for the
January 11 mass uprising. Meanwhile, the battle between secularists and
conservatives for the soul of the “new Egypt” continues.
PARIS (AP) The Louvre has always showcased nudes. Never quite like this.
Paris
police say they arrested six women Saturday for baring their breasts
and more outside the pointy-pyramid entrance to the museum in front of
dumbstruck, applauding tourists. They were released after identity
checks.
Protest organizer Safia Lebdi says the demonstration was
connected to International Women's Day. She says the women waved flags
of Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and Iran to highlight the many legal and
cultural restrictions imposed on women in the Muslim world.
One
of the naked protesters, Amina Sboui, is a former member of a
Paris-based exhibitionist group called Femen renowned for its topless
protests. Last year Sboui spent more than two months imprisoned in
Tunisia for allegedly desecrating a cemetery by writing "Femen" on a
wall.
A French citizen died after being attacked by cellmates
in a Cairo police station, where he had been detained for breaking a
night-time curfew, security officials said on Tuesday.
Police
arrested the man in the upmarket Zamalek neighbourhood of the capital
for violating the nightly curfew in force since the launch of a deadly
crackdown on Islamist supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi on
August 14.
The man, described as a teacher, was put in a cell at
the central Qasr al-Nil police station, where he was attacked by his
cellmates and later died of his injuries, the officials added.
Six
cellmates are being kept in custody as part of an investigation into
"bodily harm resulting in death," a judicial source said.
A post-mortem found that the Frenchman died from "internal haemorrhaging" and a "skull fracture," the security officials said.
The
victim did not have a valid visa at the time of his arrest, the
security officials said. The French embassy said he was a long-term
resident of Egypt.
The embassy added that it had asked for
clarification from judicial authorities of the circumstances of the
man's death and was still waiting for a reply.
An Egyptian wildlife organization claimed on its
Facebook page that the unfortunate bird was 'killed and eaten by local
villagers'
September 8, 2013
Rob Williams
An innocent stork detained by police in Egypt on suspicion
of spying has been found dead following its release amid reports it was
killed and eaten by villagers.
Authorities in Egypt
detained the bird after a man in Egypt’s Qena governorate, some 450
kilometers (280 miles) southeast of Cairo, spotted the animal -
described by officials as a swan - among a group of four others.
Suspicions
were raised after the man noticed an electronic device attached to the
suspected winged infiltrator. The bird was captured and delivered to
local police where experts investigated the electronic device and
identified it as tracking equipment.
The stork, which was
incorrectly referred to as a swan throughout its detention, had been
tagged by zoologists to track its migration.
Officials
said the device, which had been attached to the bird by French
scientists, had stopped working when the bird crossed the French border.
The
exonerated bird was released into a conservation area in southern
Egypt. According to reports it flew onto an island in the Nile where it
was subsequently killed and allegedly eaten by villagers.
Nature
Conservation Egypt, who had worked to secure the release of the bird,
claimed on it Facebook page that the bird was "eaten by local
villagers."
Mahmoud Hassib, the head of Egypt's southern
protected areas, denied that the bird had been eaten, though said he
didn't know an exact cause of death.
This most recent
unwarranted avian arrest follows an incident earlier this year in which
an Egyptian security guard filed a police report after capturing a
pigeon he said carried microfilm.
Amid continued unrest
in Egypt conspiracy theories abound. In 2010 an Egyptian official said
Israel-controlled sharks could be involved in a number of tourist
attacks in the Red Sea.
Elsewhere, in December last year
an eagle carrying an Israeli tag was touted as a Mossad spy in Sudan and
just last month a Kestrel was held in Turkey on suspicion of working
for the Israeli security services.
CAIRO — Egypt remains in turmoil after about 50 people were killed in protests in Cairo, on Friday, security officials said.
The
Egyptian military deployed around vital installations in Cairo earlier
Friday, state media reported, before "Friday of Anger" protests called
by backers of deposed president Mohamed Mursi.
Hundreds of people
died and thousands were wounded on Wednesday when police cleared out two
protest camps in Cairo set up to denounce the military’s overthrow of
Egypt’s first freely elected president on July 3 and to demand his
reinstatement.
The health ministry puts the death toll at 578,
excluding those who were killed in Friday's protests. The Brotherhood,
however, says the government is hiding a much bigger number.
Dozens
of armoured vehicles will close off streets around part of northeastern
Cairo where Islamists had staged protests demanding Mr Mursi’s
reinstatement, the state news agency said.
Military vehicles manned by soldiers could be seen in central Cairo, where checkpoints with barbed wire were set up.
Deeply
polarised Egypt has been bracing for further confrontation expected
after Friday prayers between members of Mr Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood
and the army-backed government.
The Brotherhood called for a nationwide march of millions to show anger at the ferocious security crackdown on Islamists.
After
protesters torched a government building in Cairo on Thursday, the
authorities said security forces would turn their guns on anyone who
attacked the police or public institutions.
Wednesday’s bloodshed
was the third mass killing of Mr Mursi’s supporters since his ouster.
The assault left his Muslim Brotherhood in disarray, but it said it
would not retreat in its showdown with army commander Gen Abdel Fattah
al-Sisi.
"After the blows and arrests and killings that we are
facing, emotions are too high to be guided by anyone," said Brotherhood
spokesman Gehad El-Haddad.
‘PAIN AND SORROW’
A Brotherhood statement called for a nationwide "march of anger" by millions of supporters on Friday after noon prayers.
"Despite
the pain and sorrow over the loss of our martyrs, the latest coup
makers’ crime has increased our determination to end them," it said.
The
Brotherhood accuses the military of staging a coup when it ousted Mr
Mursi. Liberal and youth activists who backed the military saw the move
as a positive response to public demands.
But some fear Egypt is
turning back into the kind of police state that kept former president
Hosni Mubarak in power for 30 years, as security institutions recover
their confidence and reassert control.
Friday prayers have proved a fertile time for protests during more than two years of unrest across the Arab world.
In
calling for a "Friday of anger," the Brotherhood used the same name as
that given to the most violent day of the uprising against Mr Mubarak.
That day, January 28 2011, marked the protesters’ victory over the
police, who were forced to retreat while the army was asked to
intervene.
In a counter-move, a loose liberal and leftist
coalition, the National Salvation Front, called on Egyptians to protest
on Friday against the Brotherhood’s "obvious terrorism actions."
Signalling
his displeasure at the worst bloodshed in Egypt for generations, US
President Barack Obama said on Thursday normal co-operation with Cairo
could not continue and announced the cancellation of military exercises
with Egypt in September.
"We deplore violence against civilians.
We support universal rights essential to human dignity, including the
right to peaceful protest," he said, but stopped short of cutting off
the $1.55bn a year of mostly military US aid to Egypt.
The US on Thursday told its citizens to leave Egypt due to the unrest. It issued the same advice in July.
The
Egyptian presidency issued a statement saying Mr Obama’s remarks were
not based on "facts" and would strengthen and encourage violent groups
that were committing "terrorist acts".
‘REFRAIN FROM VIOLENCE’
Washington’s
influence over Cairo has been called into question since Mr Mursi’s
overthrow. Since then Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates
have pledged $12bn in assistance, making them more prominent partners.
Mr
Obama’s refusal so far to cut off US aid to Egypt suggests he does not
wish to alienate the generals, despite the scale of the bloodshed in the
army’s suppression of Mursi supporters.
US defence secretary
Chuck Hagel said he had called Mr Sisi on Thursday to say Washington
would maintain its military relationship with Egypt, but he also told
him the recent violence was putting defence co-operation at risk.
"Since
the recent crisis began, the US has made it clear that the Egyptian
government must refrain from violence, respect freedom of assembly, and
move toward an inclusive political transition," Mr Hagel said in a
statement.
The White House has voiced support for democracy in
Egypt, while seeking to protect US strategic interest in Egypt’s
stability, its peace treaty with Israel and co-operation with the US
military, including privileged access to the Suez Canal.
France’s foreign minister said on Friday the tension in Egypt risked playing into the hands of radical groups.
"Maximum
restraint must be shown otherwise the risk is that extremist groups
take advantage of the situation and that would be extremely serious,"
Laurent Fabius told RTL radio.
The Egyptian press was full of praise for security forces, illustrating the rift between Cairo and its Western allies.
Some Gulf Arab states applauded the army action. The UAE praised Egypt’s government for using "maximum self-control".
The
Arab nations’ cash, which started arriving in July, is aimed at
stabilising Egypt’s wobbling economy, which is suffering from a
ballooning budget deficit and high inflation.
This week’s carnage
will further damage state coffers. The government has imposed a
night-time curfew set to last at least a month, a move that will hit the
crucial tourism industry.
On Thursday, the United Nations (UN)
Security Council urged all parties in Egypt to exercise restraint, but
did not assign blame.
"The view of council members is that it is
important to end violence in Egypt," Argentine UN Ambassador Maria
Cristina Perceval said after the 15-member council met on the situation.
Turkish
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had earlier also urged the council to
convene quickly after what he called a massacre in Egypt and criticised
Western nations for failing to stop it.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay has called for an independent investigation into Wednesday’s events in Egypt.
Ramadan Romih, the heavyset manager of the White House Net, an Internet
café up the street from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, sat on a chair on the
sidewalk outside his shop, smoking
a large tobacco water pipe. He hasn’t had many customers recently, he
says, because of the high concrete wall blocking the street next to his
shop. The wall was built by the Egyptian government this past November
to ward off demonstrators from nearby Tahrir Square away from the
embassy.
Romih, 41, commutes downtown from a working-class neighborhood near
the pyramids. His shop ordinarily depends on foot traffic from the
bustling business districts surrounding Tahrir Square, but now because
of an elaborate system of walls and barbed-wire roadblocks built by the
authorities, the area near the embassy has been cut off from the core of
the downtown.
As a result, he said, his business is “at zero.” By late afternoon
that day his revenue was only 20 Egyptian pounds, or a little over $3.
“People should dig tunnels like they do in Gaza,” he said, waving his
water-pipe hose at the unsightly wall.
Two of the storefronts adjacent to White House Net were gutted, Romih
said, during recent clashes between demonstrators and police. The
burned-out shell of a car still lies upside down in the road in front of
the shop. Across the street, men in business suits were hoisting
themselves over a tall iron fence in order to get home from work,
handing briefcases to one another over the top of the barrier. Armed
security men stationed at a checkpoint leading to the embassy looked on.
Because of the government’s walls, scenes like this one are the new
normal in the upscale neighborhood of Garden City and other areas south
of Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the winter 2011 uprising that ended
the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.
On one recent afternoon, at
the same intersection near the embassy I saw a young woman hand a pink
plastic carrier containing a fluffy white cat to a man, her husband or
fiancé, before hopping over the fence. The two then strolled, arm in
arm, cat in tow, in the direction of Tahrir.
With the second anniversary of the uprising now approaching and unrest simmering in the wake of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s
November 2012 power grab, the walls have become a symbol of the
political crisis in Egypt. According to architect and urban planner Omar
Nagati, the walls are indicative of the postrevolutionary renegotiation
of the “rules of the game between the people and the authorities. The
people are setting the terms and the authorities are just responding by
building walls."
The massive policing apparatus set up by Mubarak was temporarily
paralyzed by fierce protests during the revolution, but it did not
disappear completely. Nor did the grievances that preceded the
revolution: poverty, police brutality and a lack of democracy in civic
institutions.
What has changed is Egyptians’ attitude toward authority.
The government can no longer prevent protests, even violent ones,
resorting instead to physically separating the protesters now
perpetually encamped in Tahrir Square from the government installations
and embassies to the south.
“The walls are a total evasion of dealing with the issues,” says
Mohamed Elshahed, a doctoral candidate at New York University who
studies urban planning in Cairo. “There was a stronger security
apparatus [under Mubarak] that quieted things before they turned into a
protest. Now since protests are just a matter of life — they just happen
— the walls seem to be the solution for the moment.”
There is nothing new about the use of such obstructive tactics by
governments to contain insurrection. As Elshahed points out, the French
authorities built walls in Algiers to stifle the anticolonial movement
there in the 1950s.
Israel’s separation barrier runs through the length
of the West Bank, carving through East Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other
cities. The U.S. military
divided Baghdad with concrete blast walls. Egypt’s own government,
Elshahed observes, began using perimeter walls and metal barricades to
protect government buildings from outbursts of public anger in the late
1970s, caused in part by then President Anwar Sadat’s unpopular economic
reforms.
The 2011 uprising brought a new intensity to the struggle over public
space in Egypt. The military and security forces began building walls,
consisting of large concrete cubes reinforced with metal straps, across
streets leading to the widely hated Interior Ministry and the
headquarters of the security forces, after five days of street battles
in November 2011. A few of those walls came down over the subsequent
months, some unilaterally dismantled by the government, some torn down
by demonstrators using ropes.
But before long, new rounds of protest prompted the authorities to
build new walls, including one of the walls near the U.S. embassy, built
during the demonstrations over an anti-Islamic YouTube clip on Sept. 11
last year.
In November 2012, Muslim Brotherhood–affiliated President
Morsi issued a set of decrees giving himself sweeping powers, triggering
some of the largest demonstrations since the uprising against Mubarak.
Amid ongoing fighting between riot police and stone-throwing
demonstrators, the antigovernment forces re-established a protest camp
in Tahrir Square and the security forces rebuilt the wall across Qasr
al-Aini Street, the main boulevard leading south from the city center.
The physical separation between the revolutionary camp in Tahrir and a
sort of Green Zone around government buildings was now complete.
As a part of an ever evolving geography of protest, anti–Muslim
Brotherhood demonstrators then shifted their focus from Tahrir Square to
the presidential palace, inherited by Morsi from Mubarak, in the
suburban neighborhood of Heliopolis. The government responded by
building yet another wall outside the palace, this one cutting across a
four-lane road and a set of railroad tracks, with one narrow gap for
cars to trickle through.
The cumulative result of all this construction has been the mangling
of a portion of Cairo’s urban landscape. Cairo’s notoriously snarled
traffic has been rerouted to avoid the whole vicinity of Tahrir Square,
causing even more gridlock.
In quieter times, the walk from the elite
Garden City neighborhood (home to the U.S., British and other embassies)
to Tahrir was a five-minute stroll along Qasr al-Aini Street. Now that
same journey is as much as a mile-long trek, winding around walls,
barbed-wire roadblocks, armored security trucks and burned-out cars.
In stark contrast to the rest of Cairo’s downtown, which remains
vibrant long into the night, the streets near the Interior Ministry and
the parliament building are deserted by dusk, except for the
bored-looking, black-clad troops of the Central Security Forces, their
riot shields, helmets, and batons stacked in the middle of a street. As
Elshahed of New York University puts it, “It feels completely like a
military garrison town.”
Still, a number of pedestrians puzzling over the strangled routes in
and out of Garden City approached the obstacles with a bit of Zen. For
all their appearance of permanence, the walls and the political crisis
they represent simply cannot remain indefinitely.
Waiting in line to hop
the fence near the U.S. embassy on his way home from work last
Thursday, mechanical engineer Ahmad Baghat, 24, shrugged. “Sure, the
walls are better than the problems,” he said, referring euphemistically
to the rioting at the embassy, “but they can’t stay forever.”
Lawyer Khaled Zenhom, who stopped at the Qasr al-Aini wall on his way
home from the Saudi consulate, where he was applying for a visa, was
even more expansive. “The barriers don’t bother us,” he said. “All of
Egypt is full of doors.”
*Photo courtesy of GIANLUIGI GUERCIA / AFP / Getty Images
Workers across southern Europe yesterday launched an unprecedented
string of strikes to battle austerity cuts, paralyzing factories and
grounding more than 700 flights.
Unions called general strikes in
Spain and Portugal, the first such action across the Iberian Peninsula,
along with temporary walkouts in Greece, the epicenter of the debt
crisis, and Italy.
It was the first time workers had agreed on
simultaneous strikes in four European countries, said the European Trade
Union Confederation, which organized the “Day of Action and
Solidarity.”
“In some countries, people’s exasperation is reaching a peak,” confederation general secretary Bernadette Segol said.
“We
need urgent solutions to get the economy back on track, not stifle it
with austerity. Europe’s leaders are wrong not to listen to the anger of
the people who are taking to the streets,” she said.
Spain, the
eurozone’s fourth-largest economy where one in four workers is
unemployed, was holding its second general strike in eight months to
protest draconian budget cuts.
In the main squares of Madrid, the
main unions strung up banners declaring: “They are taking away our
future.” They deployed pickets overnight at airports, markets and bus
and railway stations.
“We are launching a day that will be a
milestone in the history of European unionism,” said Ignacio Fernandez
Toxo, head of the country’s largest CCOO union.
“It is a strike against the government’s policy of unemployment, misery and to stop this path toward the precipice,” he said.
Police set up metal barriers at an access road to parliament in Madrid, where activists called an evening rally.
Strikers
froze factories, including Volkswagen’s car plant in northern Navarra
and a Ford plant in the eastern Valencia region, Spanish media said.
Buses and trains ran with sharply reduced schedules.
In neighboring Portugal, Lisbon’s metro service was out of service,
while ferries across the River Tagus and trains across the country ran
skeleton services.
Hospital staff joined the action, with up to 90 percent of staff reportedly abiding by the strike call.
Portugual’s unions have called marches and rallies in about 40 towns and cities against the government’s austerity policies.
Legislation
in both Spain and Portugal require workers to provide a minimum service
in essential industries, but airlines canceled many domestic and
international flights.
Greece is the epicenter of the eurozone’s
debt crisis, but its unions are focused on the national crisis and its
protest is limited to a three-hour work stoppage and a rally in Athens.
Italian unions have also called a four-hour walkout.
Union-led
rallies were also being held in support of the day of action in France,
Belgium and in Poland, where workers decry “social and wage-dumping” in
their country.
In Germany, viewed by many in southern Europe as
the paymaster behind the austerity drive, the union federation DGB has
called protests across the country, including in Berlin and Frankfurt.
“For
now it is mostly people in southern Europe suffering from a crisis they
are not responsible for, but the consequences will surely be felt in
the rest of Europe,” it said.
PARIS — A correspondent for France 24 TV was "savagely attacked" near
Cairo's Tahrir Square after being seized by a crowd, the network said
Saturday. It was the latest case of violence against women at the
epicenter of Egypt's restive protests.
The news channel said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked
around 10:30 p.m. Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the
square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses.
France
24 did not give further details about the attack, but it said its
employees were safe and sound, though "extremely shocked," and that it
will file suit against unspecified assailants.
The network, which receives state funds but has editorial
independence, said it and the French Embassy were working to bring Dridi
back to France.
"More frightened than hurt," wrote Dridi in French on her Twitter
page Saturday. Referring in English to a colleague, she tweeted: "Thanks
to (at)ashrafkhalil for protecting me in (hash)Tahrir last nite. Mob
was pretty intense. thanks to him I escaped from the unleashed hands."
Ashraf Khalil, who works with France 24's English language service,
said the crowd was closing in on him and Dridi while they were doing
live reports on a side street off Tahrir. He said the attack and rescue
took about half an hour, but it felt like a lot longer.
"The crowd surged in and then it went crazy. It was basically me
keeping her in a bear hug, both arms around her and face-to-face," he
told The Associated Press, estimating that at least 30 men were
involved. "It was hard to tell who was helping and who was groping her."
Khalil said they retreated into a fast food restaurant with a metal
door, to keep her out of the reach of the attackers. He said they
hustled into a car, and some men banged on it as it sped away. Some of
their belongings had been stolen, he said.
"It didn't feel organized or targeted. It felt disorganized," he
said. "I felt angry. I love Tahrir. I have a lot of nostalgia for
Tahrir. I am still angry. I know this is not the first time this
happened; it happened to other people I know. Still, it was a shock."
Tahrir Square was the main hub of a popular uprising that toppled
longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak last year. Since then, it has
seen numerous other protests staged by a range of groups.
At
the height of the uprising against Mubarak, Lara Logan, a correspondent
for U.S. network CBS, was sexually assaulted and beaten in Tahrir
Square. She said later that she believed she was going to die. After
being rescued, Logan returned to the United States and was treated in a
hospital for four days.
The square has seen a rise in attacks against women since protesters
returned this summer for new rallies, including incidents of attackers
stripping women – both fellow demonstrators and journalists – of their
clothes.
No official numbers exist for attacks on women in the square because
police do not go near the area and women rarely file official reports on
such incidents, but activists and protesters have reported an increase
in assaults against women. And although sexual harassment is not new to
Egypt, suspicions abound that many of the recent attacks are organized
by opponents of various protests in a bid to drive people away.
Amnesty International said in a report in June that such attacks
appeared designed to intimidate women and prevent them from fully
participating in public life. The London-based human rights group has
called on Egyptian authorities to investigate reports of sexual assault
against women to counter the impression that no one will be punished.
*Sarah El-Deeb contributed to this report from Cairo
Anarchists have always been a small minority on the Left. Their
history is littered with failures but their basic libertarian ideals are
enjoying a resurgence in social movements like Occupy Wall Street.
Anarchism has “largely taken the place of Marxism in the social
movements of the 1960s”, according to the American anthropologist David
Graeber, one of the intellectuals most quoted by the Occupy movement.
“Even those who do not consider themselves anarchists feel they have to define themselves in relation to it,” he wrote.
That
may be wishful thinking on the part of a militant anarchist, but
classic libertarian thought is increasingly being picked up by today’s
social movements. For example, the principle of “self-management” where
decisions are based on consensus and hierarchies are rejected.
Anarchism today appears to be feeling the belated after-effects of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“In the last 15 years anarchism has been on the up,” says Gabriel Kuhn, an anarchist philosopher originally from Austria.
Kuhn
attended a recent global anarchists gathering in one of the “cradles”
of anarchy, St Imier in northwestern Switzerland. The event marked the
140th anniversary of the founding of the anti-authoritarian
International Workingmen’s Association.
Kuhn
believes that the fall of the communist regimes proved anarchists right
to some extent. For the anti-capitalist Left, he says, traditional
Marxist thinking has lost its attraction.
“In the 1990s, many
people were prepared to criticise dictatorial forms of socialism, but
still had their reservations about anarchism” he told swissinfo.ch.
“It
was considered utopic, romantic and chaotic. But those same people have
since ended up taking over many of anarchism’s principles: a democracy
where everyone has his or her say, a horizontal structure, a skeptical
attitude towards hierarchies and politicians, as well as the principle
of direct action.”
St Imier was a milestone in the initial phase
of the anarchist movement, which saw significant numbers of anarchists
taking part in the workers’ struggle in different countries, getting
revolutionary experience during the Paris Commune, in the Ukrainian
Soviets and finally Republican Spain.
But this phase of anarchism is considered to have ended with the Second World War.
From class struggle to social change
Anarchist thought re-emerged among the movements of the 1960s, where libertarian inspiration was strong.
“As
part of the New Left of 1968, anarchism changed its character. Cultural
aspects took on a more important role. Rebelling against the
bourgeoisie replaced traditional class struggle,” Kuhn said.
Anarchism influenced the New Left and was influenced by it in turn, and the movement opened up to other perspectives.
“Economic
issues were considered more critically, while attention also shifted to
other forms of domination: patriarchy, racism, sexual discrimination
and the destruction of the environment,” Kuhn added.
After 1968, anarchism branched out. Generational cycles followed.
“Nineteen
sixty-eight was a first turning point, then perhaps the 1980s, with the
punk movement, and the 1990s, with the insurrection of the Zapatistas
in Mexico, the beginning of the anti-globalisation movement and the
arrival of the Internet,” said Marianne Enckell, archivist at the
International Centre for Research on Anarchism in Lausanne.
The
19th century vision of a great revolutionary reawakening, although not
entirely gone, has now given way to the idea of living life as
autonomously as possible.
“It is less and less about change, and
more and more an attempt to apply anarchist ideals in daily life,” said
Edy Zarro, one of the organisers of the Ticino anarchist publishing
house La Baronata, who was also at the Saint-Imier meeting.
The concept of self-management is key.
Everyday anarchism
The self-managing organisations that have sprung up in Italy, Spain
and elsewhere in recent decades have been able to experiment libertarian
theories. Thanks to their horizontal structure and flexibility, it was
possible to integrate ideas from other social movements.
Il
Molino, a self-managing social centre that started in Ticino in 1996,
was strongly influenced by the Zapatista movement in Mexico.
“Comrades
went to the Chiapas region, bringing back new ideas from which we
extrapolated theories and practices that are now helping us,” said Paolo
Casellini, one of the centre’s activists.
“It is interesting
for anarchists and libertarians to adopt methods of horizontal,
self-managed consensus,” added Michele Bricòla, one of the editors of
the Ticino anarchist magazine Voce Libertaria.
“You don’t have
to go far – not as far as Mexico – it’s enough to look at what’s going
on in Val di Susa, with the NoTav movement,” he added, which is opposing
a high-speed rail link under the Alps between France and Italy.
However,
among anarchists themselves, not everyone is comfortable with cosying
up with other movements or ignoring authority rather than fighting it
out in the open.
Revolutionary practice
Most anarchists seem to have given up the claim to political power
that was developed by the movement’s theoreticians during the 20th
century, preferring to network with other social movements.
“Before,
we would spout our theories, but now we are here to learn,” said Peter
Schrembs, an anarchist in Ticino for the past 40 years.
“In any
case, anarchists are such a minority that if they aren’t willing to work
with others, they won’t achieve much,” said Michel Némitz of the
self-managing cultural centre Espace Noir in St Imier, one of the
international meeting’s organisers.
“And it won’t just be
anarchists who will kick off the revolution, but also ordinary people.
We don’t want to do anything in the name of the people. We are not some
kind of revolutionary vanguard.”
Anarchism today seems to focus
not so much on theory but on practical aspects, concrete action inspired
by libertarian methodology.
As Graeber has written, “anarchism
has tried to be an ethical discourse about revolutionary practices.”
This discourse is based on the assumption that freedom cannot be
achieved with authoritarian methods, and that social change begins with
change in everyday relationships.
A government censorship agency banned a book. Two days later, it
revoked the ban. Should we be thankful that the ban was temporary? No,
we should be concerned that a censorship agency exists in the first
place, whatever its mandate and however infrequently it uses its
authority.
Last week, the Egyptian Print Censorship Authority held a shipment of
history textbooks that was headed to the American University in Cairo
(AUC). Everyone involved must have been puzzled.
Khaled Fahmy, the
history professor who ordered the book, is by no means the first to
assign it. The American University in Cairo bookstore has probably been
selling the book since it first appeared in 1994.
True, the AUC has been
in the middle of censorship controversies in the past, most famously in
1998 and 1999 when it faced (and unfortunately, succumbed to)
government and media campaigns to ban the teaching of Maxime Rodinson’s
“Muhammad” and Mohamed Choukri’s “For Bread Alone.”
But in these
instances, the accusations revolved around denigrating Islam and
offending the students’ cultural sensibilities. Even those clichéd
phrases are irrelevant to the book in question.
“A History of the Modern Middle East” is a popular introductory
textbook that covers the history of the region since the 19th century.
William L. Cleveland, a historian of Arab nationalism, originally
authored the book. Due to its success as a textbook, second and third
editions were issued in 1999 and 2004. Both times, as is the norm with
academic works, Cleveland revised parts of the original text, added new
sections (covering, for example, the American occupation of Iraq) and
summarized his revisions in a preface.
Cleveland passed away in 2006 but
the textbook continued to be widely taught in English-speaking
universities around the world, including Egypt. A few years later,
another historian, Martin Bunton, took on the task of issuing a fourth
edition of the book, which came out in 2009. This latest edition, now
co-authored by Cleveland and Bunton, expectedly became one of the main
English language introductions to the history of the Modern Middle East.
Like any effective textbook, the popularity of “A History of the
Modern Middle East” comes from its comprehensiveness and organization.
The book covers a very wide range of topics from Muhammad Ali’s attempt
to build a modern state in Egypt 200 years ago, to Islamic activism in
the contemporary Middle East. Because it is impossible to tackle each of
these issues in depth within the span of a single book, even a 600-page
book like this one, and since this is an introductory textbook in the
first place, the authors have also included a concise list of
specialized history books as an appendix.
The bottom line is, not only is it an extremely useful book for
students who are seeking an introduction to the history of the region,
it is not a controversial book. Even if an instructor wanted to
indoctrinate his or her students in a certain idea they would not be
able to use the book, which is specifically designed to encourage its
readers to seek more specialized knowledge outside it.
Why then was the book (temporarily) banned? The censorship agency
explained that the maps in the book were inaccurate. No wonder, of
course, that their justification had to do with an image rather than
with the written word. Who has the time to read 600 pages of history
anyway?
The book contains 18 maps, none of which is of contemporary
Egypt. Following the process of elimination, one is left with a possibly
controversial map on page 168 that is entitled “The Middle East in the
interwar period.” The map is centered on the Arabian Peninsula and is
meant to show the countries occupied by Britain and France in the period
1918-1939. Only the eastern part of Egypt appears in it. Probably, what
the censor found most unnerving about the map was that the Halayeb
triangle (unlabeled on this map) fell outside the border of
British-occupied Egypt and inside Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
Needless to say,
both are political entities that have ceased to exist for almost 60
years. Convinced that he arrived at a reasonable resolution to this
minor crisis, the censor finally decided to lift the ban on the book
after “correcting” the maps in each copy manually.
What is most concerning about the episode we are looking at here is
that it does not contain the necessary elements of a censorship cause
célèbre. In recent decades, cases of censorship that gained a high level
of public attention usually revolved either around religious
sensibilities and morality, or were championed by journalists. In the
near past, intellectuals protested when a group of lawyers tried to ban
the monumental “One Thousand and One Nights” on the grounds that it
contained obscene content.
A wider outcry occurred when journalist
Ibrahim Issa was sentenced to a year in prison for defaming the former
president. A couple of days ago, Islam Afify, the editor of Al-Dostour,
was detained briefly by a criminal court, where he is being tried for
insulting the current president. All of these cases rallied support
because they were easily identified as assaults on freedom of
expression.
In the case of the banned/altered history textbook, we are facing a
different kind of challenge. First, the case received very little media
attention because history occupies a rather paradoxical place in our
public conversations. On the one hand, history is perceived as a
compilation of verifiable objective facts. On the other, it is
considered an entirely subjective enterprise that follows no standard.
Hence, censoring a history book could take place on the grounds that it
got its facts wrong, or alternatively, because it produced a politically
motivated account. In either case, seeing a historical study as an
exercise in freedom of expression is not a straightforward conclusion
for most. Second, even though politically motivated, those who imposed
the ban are nameless bureaucrats who did not claim to heroically protect
society from false knowledge.
The ban was a silent, routine act of
censorship undertaken by a clerk who was probably protecting himself
against the offhand chance that his superior might accuse him of not
doing his job properly.
This routine episode is a reminder that we should reject all forms of
state censorship. We cannot blame the censor for doing his job, nor
should we praise him for being permissive. Both of these positions are
self-defeating and will lead us time and again to the question of where
to draw the line and who is to draw it.
The burden of authenticating any
form of knowledge should not fall on a state appointee, however
knowledgeable. In a democratic society, this burden is undisputedly
reserved for the citizen.
