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atm
Joined: 16 Apr 2006
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 Posted: Thu Dec 29, 2011 1:36 pm Post subject: |
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Egypt police raid offices of human rights groups in Cairo
US National Democratic Institute among 17 organisations targeted as part of inquiry into funding of civic society groups
Egyptian security forces have launched raids on a series of high-profile human rights and pro-democracy organisations based in Cairo, including the US National Democratic Institute, founded by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and the International Republican Institute.
During the raids riot police confined staff to their offices and forbid them from making phone calls. Seventeen Egyptian and international groups were targeted as part of a widespread investigation into foreign funding of Egyptian civic society groups.
The raids on NDI and IRI, however, both of which have received US state department funding for their operations, are likely to cause friction with the US government, which underwrites military aid to Egypt to the sum of $1.3bn (£843m) annually.
In recent months, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has accused local non-governmental organisations of receiving money from abroad, and has argued that the recent unrest in the country is by "foreign hands".
Hana el-Hattab, an NDI staffer trapped inside her office, tweeted: "We're literally locked in. I really have no idea why they are holding us inside and confiscating our personal laptops."
In other tweets she wrote: "I was on the balcony, dude with machine gun came up and told us to go in and locked it … we asked if they had a search warrant, they said the person who issues warrants is in building & doesn't need to issue one for himself. They're even taking history books from people's bags."
Heba Morayef, who works with Human Rights Watch in Egypt, said she had received a message from an NDI staffer confirming they had been confined inside their offices by riot police. Images posted on Twitter showed armed police in body armour stationed outside.
The official Mena news agency said the 17 "civil society organisations" had been targeted as part of an investigation into foreign funding of such groups.
"The public prosecutor has searched 17 civil society organisations, local and foreign, as part of the foreign funding case," the agency cited the prosecutor's office as saying. "The search is based on evidence showing violation of Egyptian laws, including not having permits."
Security forces, both uniformed and plainclothes, forced their way into the offices where employees were informed that they were under investigation by the public prosecutor. According to witnesses, laptops and other documents were also seized during the raids.
The IRI put out a statement saying it was "dismayed and disappointed by these actions. IRI has been working with Egyptians since 2005; it is ironic that even during the Mubarak era IRI was not subjected to such aggressive action.
"Today's raid is confusing given that IRI was officially invited by the government of Egypt to witness the people's assembly elections, and was in the process of deploying a high level international delegation to observe the third phase of elections on January 3 and 4, having successfully deployed witnesses for phases one and two.
"IRI has worked with Egyptian political parties and civil society to share technical skills and provide information about democratic participation. IRI does not provide monetary or material support to political parties or civil society groups in Egypt."
The raids follow a far-reaching investigation into the foreign funding of human rights and civic advocacy groups launched under the aegis of the country's ruling generals earlier this year.
Ironically, the law being used to pursue the groups is one from the era of former president Hosni Mubarak, which the government had said it intended to repeal.
During the Mubarak era, groups such as NDI and IRI and others had existed in a grey area, unable to obtain permission to operate in full legal compliance.
Other groups reportedly raided, say activists, include the Konrad Adenauer-Stiftung, which supports political dialogue, Freedom House and the Egyptian Public Budget Observatory.
Morayef condemned the raids, and the investigation that led to them, as "entirely inappropriate" adding: "This is part of a wider crackdown on civil society groups in Egypt using Mubarak-era laws. They are using these pre-revolution laws as a broadbrush investigation that could result in wholesale shutting down of human rights and other groups that have been at the forefront of criticism of the army.
"This is very selective and really, really serious. It has huge potential implications for human rights in Egypt."
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies said: "The NDI, IRI and Freedom House have been previously investigated by the ministry of justice on charges of receiving foreign funding, while the Arab Centre for the Independence of Justice and Legal Professions has not been yet investigated."
The army has pledged to step aside by mid-2012. "In Mubarak's time the government never dared to do such a thing," said prominent human rights activist Negad el-Bourai on his Twitter account.
Political experts said the groups raided have taken a neutral political stance, focusing on fostering democracy in Egypt by training members of nascent parties. "The National Democratic Institute has been training new parties … in how to participate in elections," a leading member of a liberal party said on condition of anonymity. "This has been with the full knowledge of authorities and was not clandestine."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/29/egypt-police-raid-human-rights-groups
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/search/label/egypt
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Fintan
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 6098
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| Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:21 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | "What happened yesterday in Port Said was a heinous punishment
on the fans of Al-Ahly for their participation in the revolution."
-Presidential hopeful Hamdin Sabahi
"We won't allow punishment of fans for their participation in Cairo's Tahrir protests."
Presidential candidate, Abd-al-Mun'im Abu-al-Futuh |
On-screen commentators from Al-Ahly's own TV station are left visibly
distraught as they listen to emotional accounts of the scenes of violence
that killed 74 people in Port Said stadium.
| Quote: | Egyptians incensed after 74 die in soccer tragedy
PORT SAID, Egypt | Thu Feb 2, 2012 6:49am EST
(Reuters) - Egyptians incensed by the deaths of 74 people in clashes at a soccer stadium staged protests on Thursday as fans and politicians accused the ruling generals of failing to prevent the deadliest incident since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown.
Young men blocked roads near the state television building and the capital's landmark Tahrir Square, and a crowd gathered at Cairo's main rail station hoping to see relatives returning from the game in Port Said.
As covered bodies from Egypt's worst soccer disaster were unloaded from trains, thousands chanted "Down with military rule".
"Where is my son?" screamed Fatma Kamal, whose frantic phone calls seeking news of her 18-year-old had gone unanswered. "To hell with the football match ... Give me back my boy."
At least 1,000 people were injured in the violence on Wednesday evening when soccer fans invaded the pitch in the Mediterranean city after local team al-Masry beat visitors from Cairo's Al Ahli, Egypt's most successful club.
Hundreds of al-Masry supporters surged across the pitch to the visitors' end and panicked Ahli fans dashed for the exit. But the steel doors were bolted shut and dozens were crushed to death in the stampede, witnesses said.
Angry politicians denounced a thin security presence given the tense build-up to the match and accused Egypt's military leaders of allowing, or even causing, the fighting.
Parliament was holding an emergency session to discuss the violence. The Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates the assembly, said an "invisible" hand was behind the tragedy.
The Interior Ministry blamed the violence on a section of the crowd which it said had deliberately set out to cause "anarchy, a riot, and a stampede".
Hundreds gathered near the stadium in Port Said on Thursday, chanting: "Port Said people are innocent. This is a conspiracy."
The army's fiercest critics regularly accuse it of sowing disorder in Egypt to scupper a transition to civilian rule. The military has pledged to step aside by mid-year.
Activists called a march at 4 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET) from Al Ahli's club ground in central Cairo to the interior ministry to protest at what one minister said it was Egypt's worst soccer disaster.
"The military council wants to prove that the country is heading towards chaos and destruction. They are Mubarak's men. They are applying his strategy when he said 'choose me or choose chaos'," said Mahmoud el-Naggar, 30, a laboratory technician and member of the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth in Port Said.
Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, 76, who heads the ruling military council, took the unusual step of speaking by telephone to a television channel owned by Al Ahli, vowing to track down the culprits. The army announced three days of national mourning.
"I deeply regret what happened at the football match in Port Said. I offer my condolences to the victims' families," Tantawi said in comments broadcast on state television.
It did little to assuage the anger of fans, who, like many Egyptians, are furious that Egypt is still plagued by lawlessness and frequent bouts of deadly violence almost a year after Mubarak was driven out and replaced by an army council.
"The people want the execution of the field marshal," fans chanted at the Cairo rail station. "We will secure their rights, or die like them," they said as covered bodies were unloaded from the trains.
ENRAGED
The post-match pitch invasion provoked panic among the crowd as rival fans fought. Most of the deaths were among people who were trampled in the crush of the panicking crowd or who fell or were thrown from terraces, witnesses and health workers said.
Television footage showed some security officers in the stadium showing no sign of trying to stop the pitch invasion. One officer was filmed talking on a mobile phone as people poured onto the field.
"The rush caused a stampede, people were pushing each other against the metal door and stepping on each other," said one witness who attended the match, 23-year-old Ossama El-Zayat.
"We saw riot police firing shots in the air, and then everyone got scared and kept pushing against the locked door. We didn't know whether police were firing live rounds or not. People were crying and dying," he said.
Several enraged politicians and ordinary Egyptians accused officials who are still in their jobs after the fall of Mubarak of complicity in the tragedy, or at least of allowing a security vacuum that has let violence flourish in the past 12 months.
"The security forces did this or allowed it to happen. The men of Mubarak are still ruling. The head of the regime has fallen but all his men are still in their positions," Albadry Farghali, a member of parliament for Port Said, screamed in a telephone call to live television.
Some saw the violence as orchestrated to target the "Ultras", Al Ahli fans whose experience confronting police at soccer matches was turned with devastating effect against Mubarak's heavy-handed security forces in the uprising.
They played a significant role in defending Cairo's Tahrir Square, the heart of the uprising against Mubarak, when men on camels and horses charged protesters last year. Thursday is the anniversary of the notorious February 2 camel charge.
"All that happened is not for the sake of a game. It's political. It was orchestrated by the military council to target the Ultras," said Abdullah el-Said, a 43-year-old driver in Port Said. "The military council wanted to crush the Ultras because they sided with protesters ever since the revolution began."
Yet many Egyptians still see the army as the only guarantor of security. When one activist in a group outside a hospital accused the army of sowing chaos, a man chimed in blaming the youths: "Security has to return to the streets. Enough with all those protests that caused this security vacuum," he yelled.
'THUGS'
Some blamed the violence on "thugs", the hired hands or plain clothes police officers of Mubarak's era who would often emerge from police lines to crush dissent to his rule.
"Unknown groups came between the fans and they were the ones that started the chaos. I was at the match and I saw that the group that did this is not from Port Said," said Farouk Ibrahim.
"They were thugs, like the thugs the National Democratic Party used in elections," he said, referring to Mubarak's former party and the polls that were routinely rigged in its favor.
The two soccer teams, al-Masry and Al Ahli, have a history of fierce rivalry. Witnesses said fighting began after Ahli fans unfurled banners insulting Port Said and one descended to the pitch carrying an iron bar at the end of the match.
"I saw people holding machetes and knives. Some were hit with these weapons, other victims were flung from their seats, while the invasion happened," Usama El Tafahni, a journalist in Port Said who attended the match, told Reuters.
Many fans died in a subsequent stampede, while some were flung off their seats onto the pitch and were killed by the fall. At the height of the disturbances, rioting fans fired flares straight into the stands.
Television footage showed fans running onto the field and chasing Al Ahli players. A small group of riot police formed a corridor to protect the players, but they appeared overwhelmed and fans were still able to kick and punch players as they fled.
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Location: The Caribbean of Canada
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| Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2012 10:29 am Post subject: |
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Egyptian junta stages coup against parliament
Johannes Stern | 15 June 2012 | WSW
'The US-backed Egyptian military junta dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament yesterday in a military coup.'
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