Porn in Egypt: Legal & ethical issues pertaining to local production of sex videos

Mada Masr
Egypt’s shady world of sex videos

In the absence of a professional porn industry, sex videos pose legal, ethical problems

Friday, March 11, 2016

Jano Charbel 

Egypt ranks second worldwide in terms of the volume of pornography shared online, coming only after Iraq, according to the global statistical study “Who are the largest consumers of online porn?” published by SimilarWeb (an online tool that measures website traffic and analytics).

The world average for shares of online porn amounts to 4.41 percent, but in Egypt the number shoots up to 8 percent, with sexual repression usually cited as the reason.

But this massive viewership stands in stark contrast to Egyptian legislation banning pornography.

Article 178 of the Penal Code criminalizes the making and distribution of any materials — including images, illustrations and publications — that could be considered indecent or disruptive to public morality.

A few months ago, a criminal suit was filed against Egyptian actress Entisar after an episode of her televised talk show “Nafsana” (Rancor), in which she praised a young man who said he exercises patience and self-control by watching pornography, and confessed to watching erotica herself. The Nasr City Criminal Court has acquitted Entisar of “promoting immorality and depravity,” but prosecutors are looking into pursuing an appeal.

“The state is attempting to tighten its grip on society by claiming that society is constantly under moral threat,” argues Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights researcher Dalia Abdel Hameed.

“A moral panic is created, with threats of social and moral degeneration. This had led to several arrests and lawsuits against homosexuals, against Entisar, against dancers or singers appearing in music video clips — on the grounds of protecting and safeguarding Egypt's morals."

The confluence of this sky-high demand for porn and a state-sponsored moral panic sets the tenor for the porn industry in Egypt, an industry that’s as secretive as it is ubiquitous, and fraught with questions of legality and consent.

A homemade industry raises questions of consent

Millions of Egyptians visit porn sites every day, with the international sites XNXX and XVideos among the top 50 viewed nationwide, according to the Alexa internet traffic and analytics server. But while Egypt ranks high in global porn viewership, it does not have a professional erotica industry of its own. But that doesn’t mean viewers only watch international high-end productions — locally made sex videos frequently end up being posted on porn sites.

Most of these domestically produced video clips are amateur, homemade productions, typically captured on low-quality cellphone or laptop cameras that are often hidden from view of the women being filmed.

Very rarely is there a third party filming the action, and there is never a camera crew involved. The videos are usually pixelated, grainy and shaky, typically shot from the male actor’s point of view as he engages in sexual acts while filming at the same time. The video titles frequently claim that the filmed women are prostitutes.

Sayed (not his real name) is an amateur producer of sex films and self-diagnosed porn addict who works in the financial sector. He explains that “numerous honeymoon sex tapes and private, homemade sex videos” end up being leaked by third parties, such as computer repair shops that accidentally find this content in their customers’ devices, “and whoever uploads them can give them any title of their choosing.”

Sayed says he has recorded over 30 of his own sex videos (which he says are higher resolution than average) with his female partner over the past five years, but has no intention of posting these private files.

These videos are based on consent with his partners, according to him, although none of them could be reached for verification. Sayed stores his films in a secure location on an external hard drive, as he fears the recordings could be leaked and shared locally via cellphones using Bluetooth technology, as well as CDs and flash drives or posted on the internet for an international audience. His biggest worry is when he sends his laptop to a computer repair shop.

“I don’t want to end up like ‘Anteel al-Gharbiya’,” says Sayed, referring to Mamdouh Hegazy, a middle-aged man from the Gharbiya Governorate who became a local porn star of sorts after his sex videos were stolen from his computer. Some media reports claim that his private porn collection was leaked by an employee of the shop where he had dropped off his computer to update his copy of Microsoft Windows.

When a dozen of his sex videos — filmed with several different women, via hidden cameras in his home — were uploaded onto the net in November 2014, the man quickly earned the honorary nickname “Anteel Hezb al-Nour” (the stud of the Nour Party). The ultra-conservative Salafi Nour Party quickly distanced itself from the amateur filmmaker and denied he was ever a party member.

“Some other sex videos are posted online as acts of revenge by a former lover,” Sayed continues, “claiming that the woman involved is a prostitute, when she actually isn’t, in order to publicly shame and stigmatize her.”

A few months earlier, in 2014 Abdel Fattah al-Saeedi, a karate instructor from Mahalla al-Kubra, earned the similar nickname, “Anteel al-Mahalla,” (the stud of Mahalla) when videos of him having sex with several different women, all filmed with a hidden camera in a gym, were posted to the internet. There are conflicting media reports as to how the videos wound up online, but the fact that the cameras were hidden, as this video shows, suggests that the partners were not informed of the filming process.

On February 24, 2015, the Mahalla Appeals Court sentenced Saeedi to two years in prison, then on May 31, also sentenced one of the women in the videos to two years, as she was married to another man at the time the video was filmed. Both defendants were convicted of adultery. The woman’s husband filed the criminal suit against his wife and Saeedi, allegedly after he found the video in question. He also commenced divorced proceedings.

A senior employee of a youth center near Damanhour City gained notoriety as “Anteel al-Beheira” (the stud of Beheira) when he was identified as the producer of a string of leaked sex videos. He was arrested in July 2014 and later sentenced to three years in prison.

A news video shows security forces interrogating the defendant, who confesses to filming sex videos with five different women. He claimed the women were paid LE100 per session and consented to being filmed — but several media reports alleged he used his stock of sex videos to blackmail the women into continuing to have sex with him for free.

“Anteel al-Beheira” pleads with his interrogators in the news video, arguing that he was “sick,” and claiming that his son accidentally contributed to leaking the videos.

Media reports alleged the son took his dad's cellphone to a service shop to purchase some new ringtones. A shop employee then reportedly copied and circulated the sex videos, which were widely shared across Beheira Governorate.

Farah (not her real name), a woman in her early 30s, says she dislikes the violations of privacy and the non-consensual aspects of local sex video production.

“It’s all homemade, and sometimes the videos are taken without informing the female or receiving her permission,” Farah argues. “We all know that there is no porn production in Egypt.”

One of Egypt’s most widely viewed sex videos was a 2007 production featuring the renowned belly dancer Dina with her then-husband, businessman Hossam Aboul Fotouh. Dina later appeared on a TV talk show in which she tearfully insisted she wasn’t aware her husband was filming her during sex.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, Dina asserted that she was filmed with a hidden camera. “No woman would expect to search under the bed or by the closet to make sure her husband hasn’t planted a camera here or there,” she said. “No woman would expect her husband could harm her in such a way.”

Before finding its way onto virtually every major porn server on the internet, Dina and Aboul Fotouh’s sex tape was widely circulated on video CDs and flash drives, shared even between young students in schools. With the presence of many of these videos online for free, the locally shared material is not subject to financial transactions.

The women appearing in such videos who are aware they are being filmed frequently request of their camera-wielding partner, “Don’t reveal my face,” while others cover their faces with their hands or clothes, Sayed explains.

Because it was difficult to get a response from a female actor performing in a sex video, it wasn’t possible to confirm whether women typically only believe they are agreeing to be filmed, or have also agreed to allow the videos to be distributed.

Abdel Hameed says that anyone who filmed without their consent has the right to take legal action, especially if the resulting video was made public, but legal action is rarely taken.

“It largely depends on the status of the woman,” she explains. “If she’s a public figure like Dina for example, she may be more inclined to file a lawsuit. But many, if not most, would seek to avoid such legal actions in order to avoid the associated social stigmatization, or harm to their reputation.”

Abdel Hameed points out that "there is an increasing occurrence of the violation of privacy and personal rights … and the state usually does nothing to halt these blatant violations of privacy.”

Local vs. global

Egypt’s poor-quality sex videos often pale before the more popular professional productions made abroad.

“I’d definitely go with local porn, if it was on par with foreign porn productions,” says self-employed artist Samir Amman, who describes himself as “a major porn fan.”

Sayed agrees. “If there was Egyptian porn of good quality with actresses who are physically in shape, then I’d prefer to watch them. But this isn’t the case. That’s why I like to watch professionally made foreign porn.”

Awatef (not her real name) also prefers foreign productions as opposed to the domestic variety, saying, “Egyptian men in sex videos are burly, unflattering to watch and rough with their women.”

Egyptian sex videos “lack creativity,” she continues, “while foreign productions invest more on role-playing, costumes, and creating a whole environment.”

On the other hand, as opposed to the professional porn industry, sex videos are “very real,” Farah says, and that’s why she still likes to watch them.

But erotica coming from the region also has its charms for many viewers.

ArabSexWeb is the most popular website for Egyptian pornography, Amman points out. The site compiles erotica from countries around the Arab world, including many videos that appear to be private recordings of solo masturbation performances, heterosexual couples having sex and, to a lesser extent, same-sex acts.

In a few rare exceptions, there are videos filmed by a third party or camera crew, indicating a more public nature to this sort of erotica, or perhaps even a very low-budget, homemade porn that’s a step above the purely amateur productions.

Amman explains there are also Western-based porn websites, such as ArabStreetHookers, that falsely cast non-Arab women sex workers from Egypt and other countries from the region. Many of these women are dressed up in hijabs, niqab, belly-dancing outfits, genie costumes and other Middle Eastern garb as they perform sexual acts.

“Viewers are very curious as to what lies beneath the concealing hijab or niqab,” says Amman. He suggests that in cases where porn is falsely promoted as Arab, the target audience may be Arab men, but is more likely Western porn browsers curious to view taboo images of sex from this presumably conservative region.

Why porn is here to stay?

Entisar’s contentious program intimated that Egyptian youth come to learn about sexuality primarily through pornography, as adequate sex education is lacking in the school system. “Both male and female youth learn little to nothing form their sex-ed. classes,” claims Amman. Indeed, pornographic movies in Egypt are also referred to as “aflam thaqafiya” (cultural films.)

Education aside, porn and sex videos act sometimes as an alternative to the murkier process of having sex outside marriage, which are difficult to circumvent due to legal and societal barriers.

Sayed says that watching porn and masturbating may be more convenient than having sex.

“Bareeza fil yad walla hawga li 'had,” he jokingly concludes: “Masturbation in hand, there is no need for another.”

*Related reports:

Administrative Court rules to ban access to porn websites again

Little evidence that American actress shot porn at Giza pyramids, despite local media reports

***

Egypt: Army scientists "cure" AIDS & Hepatatis C

The Telegraph 
Egypt army embarrassment after it 'cures' AIDS

Army general announces discovery of a wand that can cure disease using same technology as fake bomb detector 

February 27, 2014

Richard Spencer

A controversial Egyptian army decision to back a "detection" device for HIV and Hepatitis C based on a bomb detector revives a Middle East scam that saw a British man jailed for 10 years last year.

A wand has, according to army doctors, also shown almost miraculous success rates in diagnosing patients without the need for a blood sample.

However, international experts say contraptions attached to television aerials have been sold as bomb detectors and drugs detectors around the world. Most recently, a British businessman, James McCormick, was jailed for 10 years last year for selling £50 million worth of fake "ADE651" detectors to Iraq.

"This is a scam that has reared its head for two decades," said Dan Kaszeta, a security consultant who has worked in the - real - explosive detector industry. "The idea is that some very small amount of virus in the blood stream is emitting enough energy to move the aerial, as if some sort of magic waves is coming out of it."

While the country is divided over whether the military regime is brutal and dictatorial, or the saviour of the nation, few wanted to believe that it was abandoning the basic norms of modern science.

But when videos of the general's announcement started circulating online, highlighting the involvement of kebabs made of kofta, or minced meat balls, they became too difficult to ignore.

When the army at the weekend announced it had found an easy detection method and almost foolproof cure for Aids, as well as hepatitis C, it was met largely with an embarrassed silence.

It was not just that the "cure" had not been submitted to the usual international specialist scrutiny, or a peer-reviewed academic journal, it was that the head of the army medical service making the announcement seemed to think this was not necessary or even desirable.

Egypt had no intention of handing the cure over to anyone else, particularly the "international pharmaceutical mafia", one of his colleagues commented.

“I conquered AIDS with the blessings of my Lord, glory to him, with a rate of 100 per cent," the general, Dr Ibrahim Abdel-Atti, said. He said he had developed a method to break down the virus and feed it back into the body where it would attack it.

“I take AIDS from the patient, and feed the patient on AIDS, I give it to him as a kofta skewer to feed on,” he said. “I take the disease, and I give it to him as food, and this is the top of scientific miracles.”

“And I conquered the ‘C,’” he went on, referring to hepatitis C, a major scourge in Egypt which has the highest rate in the world.

The announcement has an added importance in that Field Marshal Abdulfattah el-Sisi, the defence minister and regime strongman, was present at the announcement, lending it his weight. His apparent willingness to attach his name to a dubious scientific precedent before, as everyone expects, declaring himself as a candidate for the presidency has worried those who fear that he has too little experience of civilian matters to tackle Egypt's myriad social and economic problems.

Among the critics was Dr Essam Heggy, the scientific adviser to the interim president, Adly Mansour, who told a local newspaper the announcement was a "scientific scandal". "An issue this sensitive, in my personal opinion, could hurt the image of the state," he said.

Mr Kaszeta said he feared that as with the bomb detector version, which was useless to prevent a wave of terrorist attacks in Iraq, the "Aids detector" could also cost lives as it offered a false sense of hope and security.

"The depths of human ignorance and craziness are effectively bottomless," he said. "Put things in pseudo-scientific language and come up with a plausible bit of terminology and it will always pass a certain level of scrutiny."

It sounds like a sick joke, but it is in fact the question being most avidly asked in Egypt today: how do you cure Aids with a kebab?

Airport authorities bar 61 Canadian Shia pilgrims from entering Egypt

Reuters

Egypt bars Canadian Shias from entering country

61 pilgrims stopped at airport en route to religious sites

Jan 05, 2014

Egypt stopped 61 Canadian Shia Muslim pilgrims from entering the country and decided to hold them at Cairo airport until their onward flight, security officials said on Sunday.

The Canadians landed in Egypt from Iraq to complete a pilgrimage to Shia sites in the region, but were kept out on the orders of security authorities, said airport security officials who gave no further explanation. Canadians are usually allowed into Egypt with a visa bought upon arrival.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is in contact with the group and is monitoring the situation, a spokeswoman told CBC News, though she noted Egypt, like any country, is free to determine who can enter.

A spokesman for Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird said Ottawa would react later on Sunday.
The government of Egypt, an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim nation, has long been criticized for discriminating against the country's small Shia community. Egypt's official Islamic establishment has previously warned against the spread of Shia beliefs.

The U.S. State Department's religious freedom report for 2012 said the government "continued to harass" Shias.

In June, four Egyptian Shias were beaten to death by a mob, a lynching blamed partly on sectarian passions whipped up by ultra-orthodox Salafist Muslim allies of President Mohammed Morsi, who was deposed by the army a few weeks later.

The Shia denomination emerged in the earliest days of Islam from a dispute over who should lead the Muslim community after the death of the Prophet Mohammad. The Shias believe leadership should have passed to Ali, the prophet's son-in-law, and his descendants.

Syria, Iraq & Egypt deadliest countries for journalists

Committee to Protect Journalists

Syria, Iraq, Egypt most deadly nations for journalists

The conflict in Syria, a spike in Iraqi bloodshed, and political violence in Egypt accounted for the high number of journalists killed on the job in 2013. 

December 30, 2013

Elana Beiser

Syria remained the most deadly place for journalists on the job in 2013, while Iraq and Egypt saw a spike in fatal violence. Two-thirds of journalist killings during the year took place in the Middle East.

Seventy journalists were killed for their work in 2013, down from 74 in 2012, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in its annual analysis. CPJ is investigating the deaths of 25 more journalists in 2013 to establish whether they were work-related.

Pakistan, Somalia, India, Brazil, the Philippines, Mali, and Russia also saw multiple journalist deaths during the year, although the number of deaths in Pakistan and Somalia declined significantly. Mexico was notably absent from the list, with no deaths confirmed as work-related.

The proportion of victims who were singled out for murder was 44 percent, less than the historical average. Thirty-six percent of the journalists were killed in combat or crossfire, while 20 percent died during some other type of dangerous assignment.

The long-standing conflict in Syria claimed the lives of at least 29 journalists in 2013. That brings the number of journalists killed covering the conflict to 63, including some who died over the border in Lebanon or Turkey. Among the victims was Yara Abbas, a correspondent for the pro-government TV channel Al-Ikhbariya, who was killed when her crew's vehicle came under rebel sniper fire in the city of Al-Qusayr.

Yet the huge number of deaths in Syria does not tell the complete story of the danger to journalists there. The country saw an unprecedented number of kidnappings in 2013; about 60 journalists were abducted at least briefly during the year, according to CPJ research.

Late in 2013, at least 30 were still missing. Most were believed held by rebel groups. However, at least one journalist died in government custody during the year: Abdul Raheem Kour Hassan, the director of broadcasting for opposition station Watan FM, was arrested in January; authorities informed his family of his death in April, but did not give any details. The station said he was tortured to death at Palestine Branch, a feared Damascus prison operated by Syria's Military Intelligence Security.

At least 10 journalists were killed for their work in Iraq­, nine of them murdered, and all during the final quarter of the year. Unidentified gunmen opened fire on cameraman Mohammed Ghanem and correspondent Mohammed Karim al-Badrani of the independent TV channel Al-Sharqiya as they filmed a report on Eid al-Adha holiday preparations in Mosul in October.

It is unclear why they were targeted; the station has attracted ire from both Iraqi authorities and anti-government militants.

Amid stark political polarization and related street violence, things deteriorated dramatically for journalists in Egypt, where six journalists were killed for their work in 2013. Three were killed in a single day, August 14, as they covered raids by Egyptian security forces on demonstrating supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Since 1992, CPJ has documented the deaths of 10 journalists for their work in Egypt—nine of them since anti-government protests began in 2011.

Iraq and Egypt displaced Pakistan and Somalia, the second and third most deadly countries for journalists in 2012. Five journalists were killed in Pakistan in 2013, the lowest number since eight died for their work in 2010. While about half of the victims in Pakistan over the years have been singled out for murder, according to CPJ research, four of this year’s five deaths came in bomb blasts. The fifth was murder: Ayub Khattak of Karak Times was shot to death outside his home in October after reporting on the local criminal drug trade.

While Somalia continues to be a very dangerous place to practice journalism, the number of confirmed work-related deaths declined to four, plus one media worker, in 2013, compared with a record 12 in 2012. In both years, all of the victims were singled out for murder. Somalia’s government has made repeated pledges to fight the cycle of impunity in journalists’ killings, but has made almost no progress in solving any of the crimes.

In the meantime, CPJ research shows that journalists have stepped up their own security measures, while political groups and Al-Shabaab insurgents­—believed responsible for many of the murders—have wielded less lethal influence since 2012 elections.

As most of the deadly countries for journalists are or have been recently a setting for conflict or severe political turmoil, Brazil is a standout as a stable democracy where several journalists nonetheless have been killed for their work in recent years. In 2013, three were killed for their­ work—all of them provincial journalists murdered after reporting on local crime and corruption—compared with four in 2012 and another three in 2011. CPJ continues to investigate the motive for another five deaths during those three years.

Mali in 2013 saw its first journalist deaths since CPJ began keeping records in 1992. Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon, veteran journalists at Radio France Internationale, were kidnapped as they finished an interview at the home of a Tuareg separatist leader in the remote Sarahan town of Kidal.

The bullet-ridden bodies of the journalists were found next to their vehicle outside the town.
While those killed in Mali were on international assignment, most journalists who die for their work are local people covering local stories, according to CPJ research. In 2013, nine out of 10 journalists killed were local, in line with the historical trend.
Some other trends that emerged from CPJ’s research:

• In the Philippines, a country long plagued by deadly, anti-press violence, CPJ confirmed that three journalists were killed in reprisal for their work, and is investigating the motive in another six murders. Although it is difficult to determine the motive in many cases in the Philippines, the total number of journalist killings was the highest in four years.
• In Mexico, another country where motives in journalist murders is hard to determine, CPJ could not confirm that any single journalist was killed for his or her work for the first time in a decade. However, CPJ is still investigating three killings to determine the motive.
• Eight of the countries that saw a journalist murdered during 2013 are listed on CPJ’s most recent Impunity Index, which spotlights countries where journalists are regularly murdered and the killers go free.
• CPJ documented the deaths of four media workers in 2013. One of them, José Darío Arenas, was a newspaper vendor who was murdered after helping a reporter write a story on mistreatment by prison guards in his town.
• During 2013, CPJ documented the 1,000th death since it began keeping records in 1992. A video marking the journalist killings can be seen here, and a slideshow of some of the journalists killed over the years can be found here.
• Prior to the 2011 uprising against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, CPJ had not documented a single work-related death of a journalist in Syria since the organization began keeping detailed records in 1992.
• The worst years on CPJ’s record are 2009 and 2012; 74 journalists were confirmed killed because of their work in each of those years.

CPJ began compiling detailed records on all journalist deaths in 1992. CPJ staff members independently investigate and verify the circumstances behind each death. CPJ considers a case work-related only when its staff is reasonably certain that a journalist was killed in direct reprisal for his or her work; in combat-related crossfire; or while carrying out a dangerous assignment.

If the motives in a killing are unclear, but it is possible that a journalist died in relation to his or her work, CPJ classifies the case as “unconfirmed” and continues to investigate. CPJ’s list does not include journalists who died of illness or were killed in car or plane accidents unless the crash was caused by hostile action. Other press organizations using different criteria cite higher numbers of deaths than CPJ.

CPJ’s database of journalists killed for their work in 2013 includes capsule reports on each victim and a statistical analysis. CPJ also maintains a database of all journalists killed since 1992.

Politicians threaten Ethiopia on Egypt's candid camera

Wall Street Journal

As Cameras Roll, Egyptian Politicians Threaten Ethiopia Over Dam Project

June 5, 2013  

As it struggles to replace lost tourism and foreign investment income, Egypt is facing another looming economic threat from a project taking shape hundreds of miles to the south.

Ethiopia’s move last week to begin construction work on a $4.2 billion hydroelectric dam project on the Blue Nile has sparked new worries about the effect on water supplies down river in both Egypt and Sudan, and the long-term threat to irrigation and electricity supplies.

A startling insight into Egypt’s alarm at the start of the dam construction was provided at a meeting hosted by Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi on Monday.

Prominent Egyptian politicians, unaware that the cameras were rolling, were filmed suggesting very undiplomatic ways to get Ethiopia to abandon the so-called Great Renaissance Dam project, up to and including the idea of sabotaging or attacking the dam.

Abu al-Ila Madi, a representative from the pro-Morsi Wasat party, suggested on camera that Egypt should discuss military action in order to push Ethiopia to the negotiating table.

In a similar vein, Ayman Nour, a prominent liberal politician, was broadcast saying that Egypt should spread rumors it plans to acquire new military aircraft to allow it to strike the dam. “This pressure, even if unrealistic, can yield results on the diplomatic track,” Mr. Nour told the gathering.

Other politicians suggested supporting Ethiopian rebel factions who could help Egypt sabotage the dam.
Though none of the politicans hailed from the government, the spectacle is likely to backfire on Egypt by reinforcing Ethiopia’s determination to proceed with the project, according to Hani Raslan, director of Sudan and Nile Basin unit at the state-run Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Egypt receives about 60% of its annual 55 billion cubic meters of river water from the Blue Nile, which the dam is expected to obstruct. According to Mr. Raslan, in the six years that it will take Ethiopia to fill the dam, Egypt is expected to lose up to 19 billion cubic meters of Nile water on an annual basis, causing hardship for millions of Egyptian farmers and their families.

On Monday, Egypt published the findings of an independent commission appointed to investigate the impact of the Ethiopian dam project. The commission’s 600-page report said that the country would suffer water shortages during flood season, and that electricity generated by the Aswan dam in Upper Egypt would fall sharply. It also criticized Ethiopia for failing to take into account the environmental and social impact of the dam project on Sudan and Egypt.  

Egypt is already suffering from water and power shortages, as it struggles to deal with the economic difficulties that followed the toppling of former autocrat Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.

Egyptian authorities are currently in talks with Qatar, Libya and Iraq over supplies of oil and gas, needed to plug up an energy deficit at a time when recurrent power outages are hitting homes and businesses across the country.

Mr. Raslan estimated that energy supplies from the Aswan dam could be reduced by 25-40% once the new Ethiopian dam project is completed. At some point in the future, the lower supply of water could halt electricity generation altogether, he added.

President Morsi’s aide Pakinam El-Sharkawy apologized for failing to inform politicians that the talks with the president were being aired on live television.

 *Photo courtesy of European Pressphoto Agency

Security forces build clumsy world of walls & barricades detrimenting shops, commuters & traffic across Cairo

TIME

Cairo’s New Normal: Protests Spawn a World of Walls and Barricades

January 8, 2013

Jared Malsin

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

The curious case of a censored history book

Egypt Independent
The curious case of a censored history book 

Sun, 26/08/2012

Omar Cheta 

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.

Egypt vows to tackle interfaith violence

Al-Jazeera
Egypt vows to tackle interfaith violence

08 May 2011

Tough measures promised following Christian-Muslim clashes that have killed 12 people and led to scores of arrests.

Egypt's government has announced a series of security measures to curb religious violence after 12 people died in clashes in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba, sparked by rumours that Christians had abducted a woman who converted to Islam.

The country's army also pledged on Sunday that 190 people will be tried in military courts over Saturday's violence.

The fighting was Egypt's worst interfaith strife since 13 people died on March 9 after a church was burned, and poses a new challenge for generals ruling the country since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, the president, in February.

Tension was high and the army cordoned off streets near the Saint Mina church, where about 500 ultraconservative Salafi Muslims had massed on Saturday to call on Christians to hand over the kidnapped woman.

Violence had broken out as more people converged on the church on Saturday. Both sides traded gunfire, firebombs and stones, witnesses said.

Soldiers and police fired shots in the air and used teargas to separate the sides but stone-throwing went on into the night.

A power cut plunged the neighbourhood into darkness, making it harder for the security forces to quell the violence.

"Ths Salafis are being blamed, but who exactly is responsible is not clear," Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh said from Cairo.

"The violence is symptomatic of a bigger problem. In fact, it's about increasing lawlessness in the country since the revolution, and the perception that security forces are being quite lax - not just in dealing with petty crime but with sectarian tension."

Later on Sunday, hundreds of young Christian men ran through central Cairo towards the main state television building calling for the removal of Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who leads the military council ruling Egypt.

A crowd of Muslim men met them and some sought to calm the Christians' anger but fights broke out and the two groups pelted each other with stones.

INTERFAITH STRIFE

Saturday's attack was the latest sign of assertiveness by the Salafis, whose increasing hostility towards Egypt's Coptic Christians has met with little interference from the country's military rulers.

Some Christians said security forces had been too slow to disperse the crowd in front of Saint Mina and just looked on as the tension got out of hand.

Essam Sharaf, Egypt's prime minister, cancelled a tour of Gulf Arab states to chair a cabinet meeting where the government decided to deploy more security near religious sites and toughen laws criminalising attacks on places of worship.

"Gatherings around places of worship will be banned to protect their sanctity and ensure the security of residents and prevent sectarian strife," Mohamed el-Guindy, the justice minister, said in a statement read on state television.

The governor of Giza province, where the targeted church is situated, said relatives of the dead and injured would receive financial compensation.

"I think the army is in a state of confusion," Gamal Eid, a prominent author and human rights activist, said.

"It is afraid to take serious action against extremists so as not to be accused of suppressing these movements."

Peter el-Naggar, a Christian lawyer, blamed the clashes on Salafis seeking the support of more moderate Muslims.

"They want to gain the sympathy of the Egyptian Muslims and they think that by doing what they are doing, they would reach this goal and gain political ground," he said.

SALAFI ATTACKS

Sectarian strife often flares in Egypt over conversions, family disputes and the construction of churches.

Muslims and Christians made demonstrations of unity during the protests that overthrew Mubarak, but interfaith tensions have grown.

Hundreds of people gathered in Alexandria on Sunday to call for religious unity and punishment for those who took part in Saturday's violence.

"They must strike with an iron fist against anyone who has killed an Egyptian, regardless of their religion or political orientation," Mina Gergis, a 22-year-old college student, said.

Al-Azhar, Egypt's highest religious authority, held an emergency meeting to discuss the clashes, and the Grand Mufti called for a conference of national reconciliation.

In one of the worst attacks against Coptic Christians, a suicide bomber killed 21 people outside a church in the port city of Alexandria on January 1, setting off days of protests.

Egypt made some arrests but never charged anyone with the attack.

"The government didn't apply the law over the past few decades," Sameh Fawzi, an Egyptian columnist, said.

"But now I would like to see the government take over and sustain sovereignty in Egyptian society."

INCREASING DIVISIONS

Tensions have been building for the past year, as Salafis protested the alleged abduction by the Coptic Church of a priest's wife, Camilla Shehata.

The Salafis claim she converted to Islam to escape an unhappy marriage, a phenomenon they maintain is common.

Because divorce is banned under the Coptic Church, with rare exceptions such as conversion, some Christian women resort to conversion to Islam or another Christian denomination to get out of a marriage.

Shehata's case was used by the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda as a justification for an attack on a Baghdad church that killed 68 people.

On Saturday, just before the violence erupted in Imbaba, Shehata appeared with her husband and child on a Christian TV station broadcast from outside of Egypt and asserted that she was still a Christian and had never converted.

"Let the protesters leave the church alone and turn their attention to Egypt's future," she said from an undisclosed location.

**Source:Al-Jazeera and agencies
*Photo: AFP

Libya & the Hypocrisy of Western States' Foreign Policy

ABC.net.au
Hypocrisy the new policy in West's dance with Gaddafi

March 3, 2011

Antony Loewenstein


The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in charge), the Western media have labelled him “mad” and “dangerous to know”.

This is not a defence of Gaddafi or the countless crimes against his own people or outsiders. He should be held to account for all violations of international law. The crimes are multiple and must be punished.

Events in Libya are moving fast and I won’t try to cover all the latest developments here. Al-Jazeera English’s daily Libya blog is one of the best places to read all the news.

But it’s remarkable to watch how quickly Western leaders and commentators, many of whom have celebrated the increasing ties between them and Gaddafi, are suddenly calling for his departure.

It was seemingly only yesterday that a newfound, supposedly reliable ally in the “war on terror” had come in from the cold, rejected terrorism, ditched a nuclear program, given information about Pakistan’s covert nuclear program under AQ Khan and perhaps most importantly opened up Libya for Western businesses. The EU was only recently so keen to sell arms to Tripoli.

In the last years the West embraced Gaddafi and his children because he was the kind of dictator we could deal with. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has visited Libya a number of times as an employee of J.P. Morgan, who pays him millions of pounds annually, to push for banking opportunities.

Newly released documents indicate the Blair government wanted to provide weapons to Tripoli and train some of its military.

The current British government of David Cameron has at least acknowledged the moral bankruptcy of backing autocrats in the Middle East and not believing Arabs can rule themselves freely but his message was contradicted by travelling across the Middle East with arms dealers in tow to sell weapons to “democratic” Kuwait.

Why am I bringing all this sordid history up now? Because it shows the hypocrisy at the heart of Western political and media elites and how language is abused and selectively applied to the “good” and “evil”.

Gaddafi is clearly “mad” while western presidents or prime ministers, who have caused far worse carnage in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Palestine, are still given respectful interviews in our media. It is inconceivable that an ABC or Murdoch journalist would openly call Tony Blair, Barack Obama, David Cameron or Nicholas Sarkozy a “war criminal”, even after they leave office. “We” are always better than “them”, a spurious democratic imprimatur that protects officialdom in our system. Killing literally hundreds of thousands of civilians – far in excess of anything Gaddafi could imagine – is ignored to maintain access to the powerful.

I’m reminded of the former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interview with CNN’s Piers Morgan in January. Aside from a few questions about the Iraq war, the two laughed about Condi’s piano playing. There was nothing about her authorising torture against terror suspects after 9/11 or the huge civilian death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Western commentators will show respect to a person such as Rice because she seems reasonable, calm and doesn’t dress in overly colourful garb like Gaddafi. This elaborate dance, an old tradition to protect a fellow powerful figure you’re likely to see at a cocktail party or media event in the weeks or month ahead, is what allows Rice to escape scrutiny, mockery or justice while somebody like Gaddafi is thrown to the wolves when he’s no longer useful. Piers Morgan is unlikely to catch him in Hollywood anytime soon.

This is despite the fact that she has unarguably caused far greater trauma to far more people than Gaddafi or Mubarak. Journalism all too often reflects and defends the government line because reporters inhabit a world where that is their only logical perspective. As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently wrote:“…’The American press’ generally and ‘senior American national security journalists’ in particular operate with a glaring, overwhelming bias that determines what they do and do not report: namely, the desire to advance U.S. interests… America's "establishment media" is properly described as such precisely because their overarching objective is to promote and defend establishment interests in what they report to - and conceal from - their readers.”

When it comes to Libya, how many Western media services even irregularly published voices from inside the country – bloggers, dissidents etc – that questioned how ordinary Libyans felt about the ever-increasing Western largesse being showered on Tripoli? US foreign policy, post the 2003 Iraq war, dictated a friendlier face towards “mad dog” Gaddafi and many Western writers bought this spin and transmitted it to their readers and viewers (“Gaddafi has a terrible record but in a remarkable transformation has ditched his nuclear program and embraced Tony Blair…”).

While the situation on the ground in Libya is dire and the border with Tunisia, reports Robert Fisk from the scene, is a seething mass of bodies, it seems everybody is now an expert on Libya. Foreign military intervention is being openly discussed, despite many Libyans being openly opposed to it and The Los Angeles Times editorialising against imposing a no-fly zone.

It’s time to put Libya into some perspective. Gaddafi may be a brute and autocrat but this didn’t suddenly occur in the last weeks. Good journalism has a responsibility to treat its subjects equally, not to the whims of US foreign policy (and therefore Australian foreign policy). Unfortunately, too many in the West view our behaviour as central to any radical change in the world; independence is unimagined.

The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote this week that the Arab revolutionaries were inspired by Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009. The “Arab” youth in his head said:

“Hmmm, let’s see. He’s young. I’m young. He’s dark-skinned. I’m dark-skinned. His middle name is Hussein. My name is Hussein. His grandfather is a Muslim. My grandfather is a Muslim. He is president of the United States. And I’m an unemployed young Arab with no vote and no voice in my future."

Even though he was in Cairo during the uprising against Mubarak, Friedman clearly missed the deep anger at Washington’s funding and backing of the Egyptian dictator. Friedman is a “serious” writer, regularly re-published in the Fairfax press here, who argued Israel, the Beijing Olympics, Google Earth and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad were the main causes of the Arab protests. Seriously.

Finally, some ground rules for decent journalism in the Middle East in the midst of the new Arab world:


1) Not every story is about Israel and its “security” (do Palestinians not have security concerns, too?). Base yourself somewhere other than Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Try the West Bank, Beirut, Cairo or Tunis.

2) “Moderate” Arab regimes are anything but so don’t simply repeat State Department lines about “stability” in the region.

3) Libya’s Gaddafi is a delusional thug but he’s an easy target. So is Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Don’t ignore such regimes but remember our own responsibility for backing Arab autocrats in the name of “stability”.

4) Locate and cultivate local sources in multiple countries that send reliable information, therefore reducing the need to send in white correspondents for a few days, with no real knowledge of a nation, on the frontline of a battle they don’t really understand.

5) Don’t fear everybody who talks about Islamic democracy or democracy with an Islamic hue.

6) Don’t continually quote or interview Western officials who have spent a lifetime implementing failed and Israel-centric policies in the Middle East and frame them as “experts”. I’m talking about people such as neo-conservative, former George W Bush official and Barack Obama adviser Elliot Abrams and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. Their time has past. Move on.

Coptics protesting bombing clash with Egypt police

REUTERS
Coptics protesting bombing clash with Egypt police
Sun Jan. 2, 2001

By Sarah Mikhail and Sherine El Madany

(Reuters) - Angry Coptic Christians clashed with police on Sunday as they demanded more protection for Egypt's Christians following a New Year's Day church bombing that killed 21 of their brethren.

Hundreds of members of Egypt's large Christian minority protested in Cairo and Alexandria, the northern city where the presumed suicide bomber detonated a device outside a church during a midnight service.

A security source said Egypt was holding seven people for questioning over Saturday's bombing, which also wounded 97 people, and had released 10 others.

At Saint Mark's Cathedral, the Cairo base of Orthodox Pope Shenouda, several hundred young Copts fought police on Sunday as they tried to leave the cathedral grounds and take to the streets to demand more protection for Christians.

Their protest continued into the night, the crowd held back by a cordon of riot police nine men deep. A church official approached the crowd briefly to try to calm them down, without success.

"Security - are you with us or with them?" the men cried. "You government are cowards."

"Pope Shenouda, have a care. We are youth. We will protect you with our blood," the men shouted, many of them holding aloft makeshift wooden crosses. "Revolution, revolution in Egypt, in all churches of Egypt."

Earlier, protestors in Cairo had heckled government officials who visited the cathedral compound to offer condolences: "Where are you, Interior Minister, when they are killing our brothers before your eyes?"

Some protesters pelted a minister's car with stones when he left, witnesses said. Some visiting Christian officials had cars shaken by angry demonstrators, while other protesters scuffled with police outside the compound.

Extra police officers were posted outside several churches in Cairo and Alexandria on Sunday, preventing cars from parking next to the buildings, witnesses said.

Pope Benedict, head of the Roman Catholic church, condemned the bombing as a "vile gesture," the latest in a series of attacks on Christians in the Middle East and Africa.

Egyptian officials said there were indications that "foreign elements" were behind the blast and that it seemed to have been the work of a suicide bomber.

An Iraqi group linked to al Qaeda threatened in November to attack Egypt's Coptic Church. And about two weeks before the bombing, a statement on an Islamist website urged Muslims to attack churches in Egypt and elsewhere around Christmas, which for Orthodox denominations such as the Copts falls on January 7.

A statement on another Islamist website after the blast read: "This is the first drop of heavy rain, hand over our prisoners and turn to Islam." No group was named.

Islamist groups have accused the Church of trying to coerce Christian women who wanted to convert to Islam.

One protester, Nader Shenouda, said: "When there was a threat from al Qaeda a month or a month and a half ago, did the government have to wait till the disaster happened before protecting us?"

Sheikh Ahmed El-Tayeb, the head of al Azhar, Egypt's most prestigious seat of Sunni learning, visited the Muslim Orthodox Coptic Pope Shenouda to express condolences.

President Hosni Mubarak, 82, has pledged to track down the culprit. He made a televised address on Sunday calling for national unity, saying the attack was directed at all Egyptians, not just Christians.

Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's 79 million people. Tensions often flare with the majority Muslims over issues such as building churches or close relationships between members of the two faiths.

Analysts said the attack was on a much bigger scale than typical sectarian flare-ups but said laws that make it easier to build a mosque than a church, and similar causes of Christian complaint, meant such an attack would fuel sectarian tension.

Angus Blair, head of research at investment bank Beltone Financial, said the blast was likely to be brushed off by investors in the bourse and was not likely to have a "material negative impact" on tourism, a major revenue source.

*(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, writing by Edmund Blair; editing by Jon Boyle)

Marks & Spencer opening in Egypt revitalizes boycott movement

Al-Masry Al-Youm
Marks & Spencer opening in Egypt revitalizes calls for boycott
Fri, 17/12/2010

Jano Charbel


The boycott movement against Israeli products and services in Egypt is just over a decade old. Domestically, the movement is closely associated with the boycott of US goods and services, which began to gain momentum during the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000 and again during the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

The movement campaigned against the opening of the first Starbucks Coffee in Egypt in December 2006. And, most recently, it has been campaigning against UK department store chain Marks & Spencer, due to open an outlet in Egypt by the end of this year.

This domestic boycott movement has been criticized as being ineffective (there are now 24 Starbucks outlets in Egypt) and confined to pan-Arab nationalist, Islamist, and leftist activists who sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians. Yet the movement is growing, both locally and internationally.

An international campaign to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions on Israel began in July 2005 and has since spread to numerous countries around the world. The boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) campaign seek to isolate Israel--on the economic, academic, cultural, and political levels--due to its ongoing occupation of Arab land and its abusive and discriminatory policies towards the Palestinians.

This international BDS movement has campaigned against multinational corporations that do business with Israel and/or have close ties to the Zionist movement, including Starbucks, Marks & Spencer, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Nestle, amongst others. Marks & Spencer in particular has been the target of a burgeoning BDS campaign in the UK and Ireland since 2006.

In Egypt, the boycott campaign against Marks & Spencer commenced in November. The campaign's website, dubbed "Stop Marks & Spencer in Egypt," lists 15 reasons why Egyptians should boycott the soon-to-open department store.

"We’re calling on Egyptians to boycott because we know that it is easier and less risky to abstain from purchasing products than it is to engage in activism and street protests,” campaign organizer Salma Shukrallah told Al-Masry Al-Youm. "We are specifically targeting Marks & Spencer because it is one of the primary corporations that support the Zionist movement.”

Shukrallah went on to say that the Jewish owners of the store chain had been involved with Zionism since the early 20th century, "decades before the establishment of the Zionist Entity [Israel]."

"We are not campaigning against Marks & Spencer because its owners are Jewish, but rather Zionists,” she stressed. “Nonetheless, accusations of anti-Semitism are typically leveled against the BDS movement by supporters of Zionism."

Marks & Spencer failed to reply to Al-Masry Al-Youm's questions by email regarding the corporation's historical links to Zionism and its position on BDS campaigns targeting the store’s new Egypt operations. The company’s customer-service section did, however, send a standard reply to activists’ inquiries, which read as follows:

“At M&S we do not support or align ourselves to governments, political parties or religious bodies. Despite this, we are sometimes asked to boycott products from various countries for a number of political, moral and social reasons.”

“Israel is one of over 70 countries we source our products from. It is important that we visit each factory or supplier location to check that our quality and ethical standards are maintained. As we are not able to do this in the West Bank or Golan Heights areas, we are not sourcing goods from there.”

“We do not feel that we should impose any specific views on our customers. All our products are clearly labeled with the country of origin or production to enable customers to make their own informed choice about what they wish to buy.”

The first Marks & Spencer store is to scheduled to launch operations in early 2011 in Dandy Mall, located on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway. A larger branch is also scheduled to open in the Cairo Festival City shopping mall by spring 2012.

"People in Egypt are sympathetic with calls to boycott these businesses, but most are not active in these campaigns,” said BDS campaigner Tarek Shalaby. “There are a few who are willing to actively boycott, while there are more people who are willing to spread the word via online petitions, social networking sites and blogs."

Shalaby estimates that there are around half a million Egyptians currently involved, directly or indirectly, in the campaign--and, he says, that number is growing. Shalaby added that BDS campaigns and solidarity with Palestine were among the few issues on which both leftist and Islamist activists could find common ground.

According to Wael Khalil, founder of the Anti-Globalization Egyptian Group, which was established in 2000, the momentum behind the group's boycott campaign against US products "reached its peak between 2002 and 2004," during the second Palestinian Intifada and the US-led war on Iraq.

"While thousands of young people are still involved in boycott campaigns, the movement began to run out of steam and energy following the conclusion of these conflicts," he said. "US stores, restaurants and products were the focus of local boycott campaigns, especially since there are very few Israeli goods available in Egypt, while Israeli investment is limited to some agro-businesses and services."

Other activists have called for a boycott of Egyptian-Israeli business deals, especially cement and natural gas exports to Israel. A small group of Egyptian activists had briefly organized around the slogan "Mesh hanedfa'a el fawateer tul ma fi tasdeer"--"We won’t pay our (gas) bills as long as exports (to Israel) continue"--but this campaign's impact has been negligible.

Local BDS activists have also called for the closure of Egypt’s Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs), which operate using a percentage of Israeli industrial input. Other local groups calling for the boycott of businesses that engage in trade with Israel are "Kulena Muqawma" ("We are all Resitance") and "Nushata' Min Agl Filistin" ("Activists for Palestine").

*Photograph by Tarek Wageeh

Mubarak asserted Iraq had biological weapons, Bush memoir says

NTI: Global Security Newswire
Egyptian Leader Asserted Iraq had Bioweapons, Bush Memoir Says

Friday, Nov. 12, 2010

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak privately asserted prior to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that the regime of then-dictator Saddam Hussein held biological weapons, former President Bush said in his memoir published this week (see GSN, Nov. 4).

The Bush administration said intelligence demonstrated Iraq possessed of weapons of mass destruction in making its case for war against the Hussein regime. However, no operational WMD stockpiles or programs were discovered in the Middle Eastern country following the invasion.

"President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt had told [U.S. Gen.] Tommy Franks that Iraq had biological weapons and was certain to use them on our troops," Voice of America quoted Bush as saying in his book, titled "Decision Points."

The Egyptian leader "refused to make the allegation in public for fear of inciting the Arab street," Bush wrote.

"Intelligence from a Middle Eastern leader who knew (former Iraqi President) Saddam (Hussein) well had an impact on my thinking," he said. "Just as there were risks to actions, there were risks to inaction as well" (Diaa Bekheet, Voice of America, Nov. 11).

Zionists settlers & "Al-Qaeda" attack churches

The deadly attack on the church in Baghdad, at the hands of "Al-Qaeda", received wide international coverage; while an attack by Zionist settlers on a church in Jerusalem received virtually no coverage whatsoever.

True, there were casualties and deaths in the Baghdad attack; yet the mainstream media across the world is clearly willing to turn a blind eye to attacks on churches perpetrated by Zionist settlers/terrorists.

This is biased news coverage.

JC

***

Palestine News Network
Extremist Settlers Burn Jerusalem Church

29.10.10

Jerusalem – PNN - Extremist settlers burned a church on Prophets Street in Jerusalem on Friday.

Zachariah al-Mashriqi , one of the leaders of the church, condemned the crime and said it was intended to destabilize relations between the religious groups. He said the attack should be seen in the context of others by extremist settlers as a way of baiting Palestinians.

The church was built in 1897 and housed the Palestinian Bible College until 1948, when most parishioners fled the old city during the Nakba.

Al-Mashriqi explained that the information he received indicated that extremist settlers broke several back windows and threw Molotov cocktails into the first floor of the church. He appealed to the political sector and the public to act quickly to protect the city’s sacred sites and called on all priests and holy men to pressure the Israeli government to pursue justice.

Al-Mashriqi also stressed the need for an international authority in Jerusalem to protect the holy sites and the Palestinian population from violence and promote interfaith dialogue.

Source: Wafa (Palestinian News and Information Agency)

***

CBC News
Baghdad church attack kills 58

Monday, November 1, 2010

Unclear whether hostages died at the hands of attackers or during rescue siege


Iraq's prime minister says a deadly attack on a Catholic church in Baghdad was an attempt by insurgents to pull Iraq back into sectarian fighting.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in a statement Monday that the attackers also sought to drive more Christians out of the country.

At least 58 people, including a priest, died after Iraqi security forces stormed a Baghdad church where militants had taken an entire congregation hostage for several hours, Iraqi officials said Monday.

The incident began when militants wearing suicide vests and armed with grenades attacked the Iraqi stock exchange at dusk Sunday before turning their attention to the nearby Our Lady of Deliverance church — one of Baghdad's main Catholic places of worship — taking about 120 Christians hostage.

It was not immediately clear whether the hostages died at the hands of the attackers or during the rescue late on Sunday night in an affluent neighbourhood of the capital. Roughly 4.5 hours passed between the car bombing and the end of the siege at 10 p.m.

Officials said the bloodbath left at least 58 people killed and 78 wounded, more than the total number of hostages.

At least one priest and 12 policemen were among the dead. It is believed at least five bystanders were killed by the blasts outside before the massacre began inside.

Pope Benedict XVI denounced the "ferocious" attack and called for renewed international efforts to broker peace in the region.

RESCUE OPERATION 'NOT PROFESSIONAL'

A Christian member of parliament on Monday described the Iraqi rescue operation as "not professional," saying "it was a hasty action that prompted the terrorists to kill the worshippers."

"We have no clear picture yet whether the worshippers were killed by the security forces' bullets or by terrorists, but what we know is that most of them were killed when the security forces started to storm the church," Younadem Kana said.

Video footage from an American drone that was overhead during the attack showed a black plume of smoke followed by flashes from inside the building before what appears to be soldiers going in. U.S. forces often supply air support to Iraqi forces conducting operations on the ground, feeding them video footage of what American drones see from the air.

There were conflicting accounts about the number of attackers involved in the assault, with Baghdad military spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi saying Sunday night that security forces killed eight, while the U.S. military said between five and seven died.

Two police officers on the scene, however, said only three attackers were killed and another seven arrested afterward.

Outside the Syrian Catholic church Monday morning, Raed Hadi leaned against his car on top of which rested a casket holding the body of his cousin, who was killed in the siege. Hadi was waiting for the police to let him onto the church grounds to bury his relative. He railed against Iraqi authorities.

"It was a massacre in there and now they are cleaning it up," said Raed. "We Christians don't have enough protection .… What shall I do now? Leave and ask for asylum?"

Police pushed back onlookers from around the church by erecting a barbed wire fence but residents and people from the Christian community claimed that it was too little, too late.

A cryptically worded statement posted late Sunday on a militant website allegedly by the Islamic State of Iraq appeared to claim responsibility for the attack. The group, which is linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, said it would "exterminate Iraqi Christians" if Muslim women in Egypt were not freed.

'ABSURD VIOLENCE'

During a holiday blessing Monday from his studio overlooking St. Peter's Square, Benedict said he was praying for the victims "of this absurd violence, made more ferocious because it was directed against unarmed people gathered in the house of God."

He called for new international and national efforts to end violence, and said he wanted to renew his solidarity with the Christian community in the Middle East and encourage the faithful there to "be strong and safe in hope."

"Faced with such brutal episodes of violence which continue to tear apart the people of the Middle East, I want to renew again my heartfelt appeal for peace," Benedict said.

His appeal came just a week after he closed a two-week meeting of Mideast bishops dedicated to supporting the minority Christian flock in the largely Muslim region. During the meeting, Iraq's bishops in particular denounced how their faithful were disproportionately targeted by violence.

Iraqi Christians, who have been frequent targets for Sunni insurgents, have left in droves since the 2003 U.S.-led war.

The Truths About Iraq that Obama Couldn't Utter

SALON.com
The truths about Iraq that Obama couldn't utter

Wednesday, Sep 1, 2010

Joe Conason

As troops withdraw from Iraq, the president gave a dutiful speech. But there was so much he could not say

Barack Obama, who once seemed the most fortunate of candidates, now looks like the least lucky of presidents. His speech announcing the conclusion of American combat operations in Iraq starkly illustrated the adversity he endures every day as the heir of George W. Bush, its desultory tone and flat delivery almost inevitable in speaking of a war whose human, economic and diplomatic costs have so far outstripped its benefits. The president obviously felt that he had no choice but to deliver this address, to mark this occasion, and even to praise the patriotic intentions of his predecessor, author of this grave mistake.

Somber as he sounded, the president was nevertheless trying to reassure us. His proffer of hope is that the fulfillment of his campaign promise to withdraw troops from Iraq will permit him to devote greater force to Afghanistan -- and to reinvest in pressing domestic needs. Having squandered a trillion dollars and probably much more over the past seven years, in other words, the government will eventually stanch our bleeding. In Iraq, anyway.

Today that is what passes for good news.

There was little in the Iraq speech that was exceptional with respect to language or policy, and not much that was exceptionable either. In his description of the current situation in Iraq, however, the president predictably indulged in optimism that is almost certainly unwarranted. He wants to bring American troops home, after all, so he insists that the Iraqis are moving beyond sectarian destruction toward a brighter democratic future. And he preferred not to dwell on the absence of an operational government and functioning services, let alone the dim prospects for ethnic and religious comity.

What the president could not utter, under any circumstances, is an accurate description of the war, the occupation and the ruinous reasoning that led to them.

He could not say, for instance, that the Iraqis are broadly resentful of the U.S. presence in their country and have wished to see us go for years. He could not say what even the most enthusiastic supporters of the Iraq war have been forced to admit: namely that peace in Iraq is tenuous and bloody civil conflict could soon break out again.

He could not say that the predictions of the war’s proponents, both within and outside government, proved to be entirely wrong -- from their claim that weapons of mass destruction would be discovered to their claim that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of the invasion and pacification to their claim that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would result in a wave of democratic reform across the region.

He could not say that U.S. prestige and influence in the Mideast have declined sharply, or that our capacity to criticize human rights violations in other countries -- ruled by thugs like Saddam -- has suffered lasting damage due to our own illegal and brutal mistreatment of detainees in Iraq.

He could not say that the war and occupation resulted in historic levels of corruption, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on ghost projects, phony public relations scams, and crooked Iraqi politicians and American contractors -- not to mention all the money that simply vanished in pallets of cash, without a trace.

He could not say that the misconduct and irresponsibility of the previous administration’s officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former proconsul Paul Bremer, and many others who botched the occupation so lethally, were a disgrace to the United States.

He could not say that imperial overstretch in Iraq inflicted lasting damage on our soldiers and our military infrastructure -- what he called the steel in our ship of state -- and that our standing has been diminished in the eyes of the world. And he could not say that the most lasting consequence of the invasion of Iraq, to date, has been to strengthen Iran, a rogue state that may well acquire the ultimate weapons of mass destruction.

He could not discuss any of those sour realities, aware of them as he must be, at a moment when his party’s majorities on Capitol Hill are threatened by the national atmosphere of defeat and gloom. Instead he fulfilled his duty as commander in chief by copiously praising the troops and noting, correctly, that patriots on both sides of the war debate honor those who served and suffered in Iraq. If he cannot speak the truth about the war, then he should at least be held to his other promise regarding the Iraq debacle: to ensure that America will not, in a final act of dishonesty and dishonor, neglect the soldiers whose bodies and spirits were wounded there.