Tag: children

Hypocrites!

Posted on By 3arabawy

Give me a break! I can’t take this bullshit anymore!

Mubarak’s grandson died? I’m heartbroken, but to declare three days of mourning at the State TV and private satellite channels, stop broadcasting films and songs, and just keep playing religious tunes and Quran on private and public radio channels?!! That’s just too much! Oh, and not only that, the Muslim Brothers, Ayman Nour  and the opposition were also quick to send condolences and express their devastation over hearing the news of the tragic event. Film screenings are canceled and the Cairo Opera House is in “chaos.”

Excuse me, Who is Muhammad Alaa Mubarak? A government official? A national hero? Who is he to put the state on hold for three days?

Why didn’t we have this national mourning when the kids in Duweiqa died? Everyday there are children who die in Gaza because of Mubarak’s insistence on strangling the strip by closing the Rafah crossing, No national mourning for that? What about the Mahalla children who were abused by Mubarak’s police in April 2008- No mourning for them?! What about those children who get whipped by Mubarak’s police in custody, no mourning for them?! No national mourning for the Shaha kid tortured by the police by electric shocks to death?!

Hypocrites!

Police fear the people, says former officer

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

The recent death of a pregnant woman allegedly at the hands of a police officer in the town of Samalut has again brought to the fore the transgressions of officers from the police force in Egypt.
And while the transgression is just one in a long line of reported cases, what was more of a rarity was the reaction the incident propelled: more than a hundred people attacked policemen with rocks and sticks in retaliation.
That change in the dynamic between the police force and the general public is attributable to a fear of what citizen unrest might result in, according to former police officer Omar Afifi.
“Don’t underestimate us. The security apparatus is terrified of the youth of Egypt right now,” he said.
“You ask how can we affect change when the police are everywhere, activists and journalists are in prison, and [the regime] has a stranglehold on the country as if you’re afraid [but the truth is] they’re afraid.
“We’re making them afraid, not the other way round. Look at the Shura Council fire [last August]; that is the police. This failure [to put out the fire] extends to all other departments of the security apparatus,” he added.
Afifi, a police officer for 20 years, authored a book which was swiftly pulled as soon as it hit the bookstores, titled “Alashan Matederebsh Ala Affak” (So You Don’t Get Slapped on the Nape of the Neck). In Egypt, being hit on the nape of the neck signifies dishonor and having the wool pulled over your eyes.
“If we abide by the law and constitution in Egypt, many things will change.”
The book reads like a treatise on the law governing the interaction between the police and the people, and is written in the same question and answer format used in police interrogations. Afifi wrote it to raise public awareness about citizen rights when dealing with the police; and what the police can legally do and not do, laws that the police flaunt according to the former officer.
“The policeman should serve his people, not what we see now where they stomp on people’s necks. It has turned into a tool of oppression. We imagine the police to be this ogre that is controlling people, but they depend on peoples’ ignorance of the law to do what they want,” he said.
Afifi, who fled to the United States in the aftermath of the furor surrounding the book (it was the only country he had a visa for), managed to talk via videoconference at the Heliopolis chapter of the Democratic Front party last month.
He stated that he fled due to fear of what might happen to him had he been arrested, and duly highlighted several different methods of torture carried out here.
Amongst the methods of torture used in Egyptian police stations, according to Afifi, is electrical shocks, urination in the mouth and covering prisoners in sugar and leaving them for the ants.

In related news, the Torture in Egypt blog is reporting that a police informer kidnapped and sexually abused three children in Wadi el-Natron as a favor for a friend! The informer also fabricated charges against the kids, keeping them in custody for 38 days.

Schools reject enrollment papers of Bahai children

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports…

Local schools are denying Baha’is the right to enroll their children, five months after an Egyptian court recognized the right of members of the minority religion to leave the religious affiliation field on birth certificates and ID cards blank.
Adel Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) — which brought the case that was ruled on in January — says that schools are refusing to accept personal identity documents printed on paper.
Egypt recently replaced handwritten personal identity documents printed on paper with computerized ones, but the Ministry of Interior has reportedly been stalling on issuing them for Baha’is.
While under the system involving paper documents the religious affiliation field on birth certificates and ID cards could be left blank, a 2006 Supreme Administrative Court decision held that Baha’is had to either list themselves as Muslim, Christian or Jew (the only religions recognized in Egypt) or be denied the official documents necessary for them to access state services such as education and healthcare.
The effect of the policy was to force Baha’is to commit fraud by falsely listing a religious denomination in order to obtain the documents necessary for them to open bank accounts, apply for jobs and enroll in school.
The Administrative Court, which overturned this verdict in January, stated that even though Baha’is do not belong to one of the three religions officially recognized by the state, they enjoy the right to refuse to identify themselves as one of these religions. It also said that members of the Bahai faith have the right to access state services.
The Interior Ministry, however, has been slow in implementing the court decision and producing identity cards with a blank religious affiliation field.