Human rights activists ‘from hero to zero’

By: Ahmed El Sebaie

The societal perception of human rights workers in Egypt has been varying from regarding them as heroes to villains and foreign agents over the past few years, said Heba Moray, Egypt’s director of Human Rights Watch.

Speaking on campus last Wednesday, Morayef discussed the tough situation of human rights work in Egypt now. Any criticism of the military’s performance has become taboo, she said.

“The human rights organizations that criticize what happens are being smeared, they are being accused of being foreign agents or Brotherhood supporters, or being part of the international Brotherhood organization or working for the US to further a Brotherhood agenda,” Morayef said.

According to Morayef, even the media and some of the groups that supported the Jan. 2011 revolution have recently turned against human rights activists.

She summarized the obstacles that faced the human rights community in the country since the days prior to the January 2011 revolution up till now.

She explained how the general view of human rights workers has been shaped by many factors during this period, including the different authorities that took over the country as well as the media agenda.

Morayef said that human rights groups have always criticized the Mubarak regime for its constant human rights violations.

She added that the human rights community was a small one at the time; and despite the systematic intimidation from authorities, the general opinion appreciated the type of work they did in opposition to the state abuse of power.

The activist said 2011 was a turning point for human rights workers in Egypt. Since then, more individuals have started working on human rights.

Independent human rights activists, such as Hossam Bahgat, started to appear on both the state media and private media, which was not the case during Mubarak’s time, she added.

In Jan. 25, 2011, millions of protestors took to the streets in Egypt demanding the removal of the Mubarak regime.

Mubarak stepped down from office on February 11, and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) was handed the power to run the country, marking a new period in Egypt’s modern history.

During the time SCAF was in charge, human rights agencies had to deal with a number of violations by the council, including incidents like that of Mohamed Mahmoud, where more than 50 people were killed by security forces, and the clashes of Maspero, where at least 28 people, mainly Coptic Christians, were shot and crushed to death with armored personnel vehicles.

According to Morayef, human rights advocates also had to fight against issues such as torture and military trials of civilians practiced heavily by SCAF at the time; the Muslim Brotherhood stayed silent during this period, and they had no interest speaking up against these violations, she said.

She added that during the time human rights advocates were fighting against SCAF over those human rights violations, the Muslim Brotherhood were busy negotiating with the military for their personal interest.

The Brotherhood and SCAF had a good working relationship, which is ironic retrospectively, she added.

When the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate, former President Mohammed Morsi, came to power on June 30, 2012 after the first post-revolution presidential elections, he set up a fact finding and detention committee to review detention, which was something that the human rights workers were optimistic about because there were two people from the independent human rights community on each committee, Morayef said.

She added that while the detention committee managed to release some of the detainees, their overall experience was not very successful.

The fact-finding committee, however, did a very good job and collected information on incidents such as Mohamed Mahmoud.

The committee concluded a report by the end of Dec. 2012, but Morsi refused to issue it, she said.

Morayef said that the sense of optimism had totally ended by the time Morsi issued the constitutional declaration, which was followed by the Ittihadiya clashes between protestors and Morsi supporters.

The 2012 constitution was later issued by late Dec., and Morayef argued that it “was a serious regression in terms of rights protections, even compared to the 71 constitution.”

Morsi issued a constitutional declaration on Nov. 22, 2012 that aimed to protect the Constituent Assembly that was drafting a new constitution from any judicial interference.

The declaration also immunized Morsi’s actions from any legal challenge, and the decree stated that it was of effect until the new constitution was to be put forward.

This decision was generally rejected, and the declaration was condemned by several human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Freedom House.

Morayef said that the Ittihadiya incident was a defining moment for the human rights community of Egypt because, “Brotherhood members openly admitted that they broke up a sit-in because protestors were insulting the president, and then they set up their own detention center outside Presidential Palace gate number four.”

She added that the Muslim Brotherhood abused protestors and put the videos on television, and this made the human rights community lose faith in the organization completely.

Morayef added that the attitude of the Egyptian media towards human rights organizations changed during that time; the media started inviting human rights workers “to come and talk about the Muslim Brotherhood violations, after being completely uninterested in human rights violations throughout 2011 and 2012,” she said.

Commenting on June 30, Morayef said that it is only fair to look at it separately from July 3 and what happened after that.

Around 22 million Egyptians reportedly signed a petition, Tamarod, as a form of opposition to Morsi, taking to the streets on June 30, 2013 demanding his removal after one year in office.

The military removed Morsi from his position on July 3 following the mass protests, and several human rights violations, especially against pro-Morsi protestors, have been reported ever since.

Morayef noted that among the violations was the unjustified closure of Islamist satellite channels, in addition to the mass killings carried out by the military in both Rabaah and Al-Nahda squares, and in many other locations nation-wide.

The military used force in dispersing the pro-Morsi protests on Aug. 14, 2013 in Al-Nahda and Rabaah squares, in an incident that was described by Human Rights Watch as “the most serious incident of mass unlawful killings in modern Egyptian history.”

Morayef said that there were some recorded incidents of gunfire from the sides of protestors towards the security forces, but these were used as an excuse to use life ammunition against protestors.