Eight Egyptian human rights organizations are wishing General Habib el-Adly a happy Police Day tomorrow:
Cairo 24 January 2007
Can Egyptian prisons house 70 million Egyptians?
Those who are silent today maybe tomorrow’s detainees
The undersigned organizations express their strong condemnation of the detention policy which has been increasingly used by the Ministry of Interior lately and while threatens that detention may become the only way chosen by the Egyptian regime to deal with its opposition or what it considers to be problems with no solution except to put those involved behind bars.
The recent period has witnessed wide detentions among the Moslem Brotherhood, starting from Azhar students who organized a show inside the university protesting the police oppressive police and the rigging of students’ elections, where security forces raided the university hostel and violently arrested 180 students in addition to a number of university professors and businessmen from their homes. Few days ago another round of detention involved Dr. Muhammad Ali Beshr members of the Guidance Bureau of the Brotherhood, Dr. Esam Hashish, professor at faculty of engineering, Cairo university and member of the administrative bureau of the brotherhood for the Giza governorate, four businessman including Engineer Medhat Haddad, member of the administrative bureau of the brotherhood in the governorate of Alexandria, Osama SHarabi, a businessman from Alexandria, Abdel Rahman Seoudi, businessman from Giza and Khaled Ouda from Assiut, a businessman and university professor. It should be noted that the recent round of detentions followed a declaration by the brotherhood that they plan to form a political party, a matter which the brotherhood was frequently invited to do by wirers from other political background. The rationale was that the Brotherhood “should stop working in the dark”.
Two days ago we learned that the detentions were not limited to the Brotherhood, but extended to what was described as a “fundamentalist organization” which was accused of supporting the brotherhood. Maybe tomorrow we shall read about another organization arrested because they support the group which supported the Brotherhood!!!
If today’s detentions involve the Brotherhood more than anybody else, we should not forget that yesterday’s detentions involved others who supported the judges’ movement for the independence of the judiciary, and those who struggle for democracy and against rigged elections and the constitutional changes which ensure the maintenance of the state of emergency and torture. Since we arte about to enter into a new phase of constitutional amendments, not approved except by a narrow circle of the men of the ruling party, and which will probably result in a permanent state of emergency disguised as the “law against terrorism, we are to expect that 2007 will be a year congested with protests and consequently also, oppression, detentions and torture.
And away from the circles of politics, the Egyptian ministry of Interior used its detention plicy against street children, after the disclosure of the what has come to be known as the “turbine gang” and instead of the Egyptian government bearing its responsibility towards those children who are victims of the existing social and economic conditions, instead of dealing with them as children in danger, the Ministry of Interior chose to treat them as potential causes of danger and organized a campaign to arrest them from the streets and allies to put them in police stations under the mercy of police officers and their assistants.
Also less than a week ago, Miss Howeida Taha, correspondent of the Qatar based El Jazeera satellite channel spent two days at the state security prosecution where she was interrogated regarding her coverage of torture stories and citizens’ complaints of the bad treatment they receive in police stations.. the assistant to the Minister of Interior does not stop threatening Egyptian bloggers concerning what they publish on the net concerning torture crimes.. and the threat of imprisonment continues to follow Egyptian journalists who cross “the red lines”. Only recently, during the strike of railway drivers, the photographer of Al-Masry Al-Youm daily newspaper was threatened by detention because he was doing his job.
The list is endless: oppression of journalists, political activists, university professors, students, workers, peasants and even children. The scenery brings to mind the 1981 arrest when a massive round of detentions included each and everybody who had an opinion to voice, irrespective of their backgrounds or ideologies. Does the regime have enough place in its prisons for all those, taking into consideration that those prisons are already full of detainees who continue to be there upon the orders of the Ministry of Interior, sometimes without trial and at other times despite trials where the court ordered their release? Do they still have place in those prisons where every week detainees are organzi9ing hunger strikes protesting maltreatment and bad living conditions?
Where are they taking the country?
The undersigned organizations calls upon all groups, public figures, civil society organizations and political parties struggling fro democracy to voice their protest to the police of detentions which is a violation of human rights irrespective of the political stand or ideology of the detainees. We call upon them to express their rejection of this policy which has become the only instrument used by the Egyptian regime and to pressure and lobby for the release of all detainees, political and nonpolitical and for the lifting of the hand of the Ministry of Interior off the lives of people.
Egyptian Association against Torture
Arab Organization for Criminal Reform
Nadim Center for rehabilitation of victims of violence
Arab network for human rights information
Human Rights Association for Assistance of Prisoners
Hisham Mubarak Law Center
Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression
Association for Human Rights Legal Aid