Robert Fisk: Police state is the wrong venue for Obama's speech
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Independent Minds
Maybe Barack Obama chose Egypt for his "great message" to Muslims tomorrow because it contains a quarter of the world's Arab population, but he is also coming to one of the region's most repressed, undemocratic and ruthless police states. Egyptian human rights groups – when they are not themselves being harassed or closed down by the authorities – have recorded a breathtaking list of police torture, extra-judicial killings, political imprisonments and state-sanctioned assaults on opposition figures that continues to this day.
The sad truth is that so far did the US descend in moral power under George W Bush that Obama would probably have to deliver his lecture in the occupied West Bank, even Gaza, to change the deep resentment and fury that has built up among Muslims over the past eight years. This, of course, Obama will not do. So Egypt, sadly, it has to be, though he will see nothing of the squalor and fear in which Egyptians live.
Only a week ago, for example, the leader of the opposition Ghad party, Ayman Nour – only released from prison by President Hosni Mubarak's regime in February – complained that he was assaulted in a Cairo street by a man with a make-shift flamethrower, suffering first degree burns to his face. Mr Nour spent three years in jail and is outraged by Obama's visit. "It seems to have been intended to bolster the power of the regimes, not of the people," he said. "We are absolutely astonished that our Egyptian political and civil society are ignored. It gives the impression that American interests are more important than American principles." The investigations of human rights groups show Mr Nour has every reason to be angry.
The latest Cairo Institute for Human Rights (CIHR) report on government abuses in the Arab world is packed with examples of state brutality, including 29 cases of torture and ill-treatment in Egyptian police stations in just six months. The Egyptian Organisation of Human Rights, a separate group, discovered that 10 of the 29 died after torture. In one case, rights groups acquired a videotape of a prisoner being anally raped with a stick by a police officer. Other videos show one of Mubarak's political opponents – a woman – being sexually molested by a plain-clothes police officer in a Cairo street. In 2007 alone, the Egyptian syndicate of journalists reported that 1,000 journalists were summoned to appear before government investigative officials.
A prominent case, the CIHR said, was that of Ibrahim Eissa, editor of Al-Dastour newspaper, who received two months in prison for allegedly publishing "false news" about Mubarak's health, thus "undermining public security". Interestingly, Egyptian state television no longer shows news film of Mubarak climbing aircraft steps or conference podiums; Egyptians, of course, wonder why. When Sa'ad eddin Ibrahim, of the Ibn Khaldun Centre for Development Studies, called upon the US to make its billions of dollars of aid to Egypt provisional upon the country's progress in democratic reform, he was condemned in absentia to two years' hard labour. Several bloggers were detained for calling for a public strike on Mubarak's 80th birthday last year. Al-Jazeera's Howeida Taha was fined 16 months ago for "damaging Egypt's reputation" by shooting a film on torture in police stations.
Human rights workers have been physically assaulted as well as arrested. When Dr Magda Adly, of the Al-Nadeem Centre for the rehabilitation of torture victims, left a police station in Kafr el-Dawa after interviewing four detainees who said they had been tortured, she was knocked unconscious and her arm was broken.
Why does Mubarak allow these obscenities to continue? Does he truly believe the extraordinary presidential election figures – he won the 1999 poll with 93.79 per cent, and an earlier 1993 election with 96.3 per cent – or, in his 81st year, is he afraid of his political opponents, however powerless they may be? Will he discuss all this with Obama? It is unlikely.
In fairness, the CIHR also records a series of shameful attacks on journalists by so-called Islamic courts leading, inevitably, to fines. It also recounts a vast litany of torture and executions by other Arab regimes from Tunisia to Syria, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza. So perhaps Obama should stay clear of the lot.
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Comments
Therefore, I think that it was a big mistake that Obama chose Cairo for his speech because not only Arabs and Muslims all over the world will take his speech with a grain of salt, but also he will be criticized for giving credence to Mubarak's oppressive rule.
The West loves election-riggers and vote denyers who are pro-western. The majority of Middle-Eastern and Third World Countries are pro-western dictatorships. It is now time to dismantle this hypocritical charade which fosters terrorism. Britain and US - who supposedly battle terrorism - are in fact the sole sponsors of the same terrorism which they profess to wish to eliminate. This is a no-win situation in its present guise. Eliminate terrorism by bringing justice and freedom to all nations. Every leader who rigs elections is de facto a dictator. Every dictator must become an ex-dictator. Remove dictators by legal means. Implement fraud-proof elections globally.
Fraud-proof voting systems exist on paper, but the West and China are terribly afraid of these systems and their "undesirable implications" (Andrew Ellis, International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Stockholm, Sweden, February 2007).
Mr Alex Weir, Harare, Zimbabwe
Disenfranchising Palestinians seems to be considered entirely acceptable by many so-called democrats.
"It seems to have been intended to bolster the power of the regimes, not of the people,"
Spot on; Obama and Mubarak (and Brown) are of like minds.
Did you know Barack means Mubarak in Swahili, Obomber's mother tongue? Mubarak Obomber and Hosni Mubarak are birds of the same feather, both running state-dominated crony capitalist economies and police states. The "opposition" that Mubarak is constantly lambasted for locking up is the Wahhabi Muslim Brotherhood, that cuts tourists' throats, assassinates Egyptian leaders, and bombs Israeli tourist resorts. 90% of the "anti-government intellectuals" given top billing by the bought-and-paid Wurlitzer media of the West are mouthpieces of Jihadi terrorists.
Mubarak is sitting on a pressure cooker of Jihadism, as unemployment & Saudi subversion drives Egyptian youth towards Wahhabism. His preventive police state measures are far preferable to the Yank-style wedding-bombing or Pak-style epic refugee crisis should the cooker explode. Mubarak knows what he's doing: His crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood has kept Egypt pretty much safe from the spread of Wahhabism from Saudi and now Hamas while his economic policies have kept Egypt growing even during this recession. That growing GDP unfortunately ends up in the pockets mainly of regime cronies but it isn't a bunch of Jihadi nutters who are going to fix that.
Replacing Mubarak should be far down on anyone's agenda because you first have to remove the threats against which Mubarak's regime protects Egypt, like Saudi-backed Wahhabi Jihadism (which now Iran too is bizarrely financing and arming) and Netanyahu/Lieberman-style ultrazionism (which gives the Palestinian Jihadists a raison d'etre) and Mubarak Obomber with his "new improved" war on Islam.
I love Egypt, been all over, I have had 3 holidays there- one an extended one of 6 weeks. Wonderful delightful people run by a police/military state. I have mixed with some wealthy/educated Egyptians who told me openly that they keep themselves well protected from the 'street.'who they actually call 'street people.' They have to live in enclaves rather like S. Africa. They have massive problems there mainly they have no idea of their population number which is still growing at a frightening speed. Their economic situation is bordering on the hopeless.
I wish Obama luck I really do.
How do you call British political system or Italian wher Government cant last more than few months....So please tell me why Arabs has to practice democracy....if they elect whom they want, then West says that party is not politcally correct (Palestine people elected by democratic means Hamas and you know what happens)....in reallity there is no difference between Arab world and Western world...how do you call Dutch attempt to ban Quran....or british BNP...or Hitler/Mussolini...or Slobodan Milosevic....they are not at same level, of course, but they all represent white people not Arabs
Even if an alien from outer space who's never heard of Israel, simply visited the website of "B'tselem", an Israeli human rights organization, he would quickly learn of the grotesque methods the Israeli regime employs against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Alas, many of Israel's defenders sit in remote European or North American countries, far from the refugee camps, the roadblocks and the checkpoints, and regurgitate talking points and fallacies.
There was never any reason to believe that Obama would change that practice. It is at the basis of a system of propaganda that requires allegiance from the American public regardless of what is actually happening (ex: in Egypt,as described by Fisk). Speeches from far flung despotic states are largely useful to the US on geopolitical terms as ways to bolster and pay off the protectors of the multinationals that are slowly impoverishing even the majority of US citizens in order to protect wealth and control of global supply of resources.
In return, the despots are required to show their allegiances to the US through making their US sponsored and enhanced systems of imprisonment and torture available for the use of the enforcement tactics employed against any who are considered to be a true threat, as well as those innocents who get caught in the dragnet of US/multinational paranoia and control. Of course, these innocents cannot easily be afforded freedom for fear they would break through the silence that is maintained and cultivated around these systems of imprisonment and torture by such puppet despots as Mubarek. Hence, the continuation of the need for charismatic (or not so charismatic ) leaders from the US to go on widely and sunnily projected PR trips abroad to appear to be reassuring the people who must live under such inhumane constraints in places such as Egypt.
In fact the reassurance and PR is all meant to coddle and placate the voters back home.
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
This "cool" Euro anti-Americanism is becoming trite and annoying. Next time you need a friend call Fidel.
2012 doomsday prediction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I thank you
Firozali A. Mulla
They love their freedom of speech in Israel, don't they?
I know who Khalid Sheik Mohammed is, you don't have to explain in brackets. Probably a hero of yours.
Shame Arabs did not follow afetr the human rights policies of Britain and the US, or did they? the tortures and assassinations these two countries have spread across the world...self declare democratic, human rights defenders, Saxon countries are the main cause of most bloodiest conflicts in this world
The Duke of Windsor had a "wonderful" holiday in Germany in 1937, but that doesn't mean the Nazis ran a democratic state and supported human rights for all.
Are you visitng Burma this year? Or North Korea?
Hey dublin, why is it when anyone speaks the truth about Israel they are accused of being an anti-Semite? The Israeli's and their friends have been using this tactic for decades.
Considering that Arabs are Semitic people, if I criticise them does that make me an anti-Semite? No.
What you are saying is that anyone who tells the truth about Israel is anti-jewish. Which is of course preposterous.
Please stop being deceitful.
peteq8
Lets keep in mind that Mubarak did not deprive hundreds of thousands of people off food and medicine (1990s Iraq), did not kill hundreds of thousands of innocents civilians, and did not lie to go to war. He has been preaching for peace in the region, for a middle east that is free of WMDs, for a better life for Palestinians, and for the end of regional wars. The man has flaws, but remember that Egypt is not an oil rich country, and is facing many challenges, Iran, and local terrorists - the "Muslim" brotherhood, who is a supporter of Hamas, Hizbulla, and Iran. Egyptian police do torture terrorists, and suspects, but that is no where close to Guantanamo, or the famed Israeli prisons.
The US wants Mubarak in power and will do anything to keep him in power. Because the US knows well, that local opposition is weak, and any fair elections would see the Muslim brotherhood coming into power, i.e. another regional war!
Egypt may seem like a police state, to someone who is only reading article headings, or to someone who is not familiar with Egyptians and Egyptian politics. Egypt has to crack down hard on terrorists and must imprison reporters paid for buy Iran. One has to remember that the HR problems facing Egypt to day, are nothing compared to what Americans faced no so long ago.
So, is Obama right in choosing Egypt? Absoloutly! If he can sway Egyptians, then he's owned the Arab and Muslim world. Hopefully, unlike his predecessor, Obama can persuade - rather than demand - the Egyptians to be more democratic, yet preventing terrorists from gaining more power.
Although Obama did intend to make this speech in an Arab country. Arab countries that are not police states are a little hard to come by. So I don't really see his options.
It's true that certain politics about maintaining Egypt's status in the region were in play when choosing Egypt for this speech. But you might be asking a little too much from Obama. He can't try to appease the Arab world without working with any of the current ruling governments in the Middle East.
Regarding the I/P conflict: Egypt currently holds a major role in the stability vis-a-vis Gaza: they were put in charge; even before the commitments they signed with Israel after the war against Hamas, to prevent rocket smugglings into Gaza.
Most of the rockets and explosives to Hamas go through tunnels and passages in Rafah- through Egypt. No only that, but the route before getting to Rafah goes through the Sinai by ground, and the red sea before that. These tunnels need to be shut, and the borders policed more thoroughly. That is, without preventing supplies reaching the Palestinian population.
One of the issues discussed with the U.S., I'm sure, will be Egypt fulfilling with conviction the actions it has signed to perform as part of the effort to end smuggling into Gaza. So far, reports suggest the Egyptian forces have stepped up their efforts after the latest Gaza operation. But hardly enough.
A very large part of the solution to a halt in hostilities and a restart of the peace process is their role in weakening Hamas. It remains to be seen if they wish, and can, meet their commitments and back up with actions their self-possessed view as a responsible, regional leader.
Regards,
Tizab