Egypt Reports

The Black Bloc and the Ongoing Campaign to Quash Dissent

Sat, 18 May 2013 09:31:00 -0400

My first piece for Tahrir Squared is about the government crackdown on street protesters:

In Egypt, brutality, intimidation and legal harassment have long been the blunt tools wielded by the state in its futile effort to quell citizens into submission. In the year since the country’s first democratically-elected president took office, the tactics of Egyptian authorities to quash dissent have changed little. Mohamed Morsi appears content to follow the same playbook as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces and the Mubarak regime before it in dealing with grassroots opposition to his rule.

The police violence that left scores of protesters dead and hundreds more wounded in the days following the second anniversary of the revolution has given way to a less bloody yet more sustained and pervasive crackdown.

Authorities are pursuing a twin-pronged strategy of dragging prominent activists into successive court cases on dubious charges in what appears to be a government campaign to hound and subdue them. Meanwhile, ordinary protesters on the street, often poor and marginalized youth, are being rounded up, mistreated and often handed harsh prison sentences and steep fines.

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Can Mubarak's Cronies Buy Their Way Out of Jail?

Wed, 08 May 2013 03:08:00 -0400

My latest for The Nation:

On March 28, Egypt’s former trade minister, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, was removed from an arrest list after he paid back a total of 15 million Egyptian pounds (approximately $2.2 million) to the state as part of a reconciliation program under President Mohamed Morsi. Rachid, who served as minister from 2004 to 2011, fled just before the toppling of former president Hosni Mubarak and was tried in absentia for profiteering and squandering public funds during his time in office. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison and fined over 1.4 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately $202 million).

The deal struck between Rachid and the Morsi government came amid accelerated efforts by Egyptian authorities to reach out-of-court settlements with former regime officials and businessmen accused of corruption and cronyism. “We will reconcile through a legal process with anyone who did not corrupt or was somewhat corrupt but did not spill blood,” Hatem Saleh, the current trade minister said in January.

The sale of state assets, mainly land for housing and tourism developments, to crony businessmen at prices below market value became a hallmark of the Mubarak regime, particularly during its last decade in power. In the wake of Mubarak’s ouster, cases were brought against numerous businessmen and regime officials. But in January 2012, just days before Egypt’s newly elected parliament was to hold its opening session, the military council that ruled in the interim period issued a decree amending an existing investment law to allow charges to be dropped if the accused paid back their illicit gains. In an attempt to reinvigorate the process, this year the Muslim Brotherhood–led cabinet voted to allow defense lawyers to plea bargain for clients convicted in absentia.

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On Egypt’s Media, Sectarianism & State Violence from Mubarak to Morsi

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:52:00 -0400

While on a trip to the US I had the pleasure of being on Democracy Now! today with Lina Attalah, a remarkable journalist and chief editor of the Egypt Independent. Watch the episode:

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Egypt's Ongoing Revolution

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:06:00 -0400

I had the pleasure of delivering the annual McGill lecture at Trinity College in Hartford, CT today where I spoke about Egypt’s ongoing revolution:

When Will Justice Be Served in Bahrain?

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 06:49:00 -0500

My second article on Bahrain has been published in The Nation after some delay:

The second anniversary of Bahrain’s uprising on February 14 was marked by street protests, tear gas, shotguns and Molotov cocktails. Two protesters and a policeman were killed and dozens of people arrested. The scenes were not unfamiliar in Bahrain, which has gone through two years of upheaval since demonstrators first took to the streets in early 2011 to call for major political reforms.

Since the uprising began, more than eighty people have been killed and hundreds more wounded. Scores of people have been arrested and sentenced before military courts—many of them human rights advocates, political opposition figures and physicians who treated wounded protesters. Reports of systematic prisoner abuse and torture are widespread.

The Obama administration has been relatively low-key in condemning human rights violations by the Bahraini government over the past two years and has largely looked the other way as the monarchy has sought to quash the uprising. Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which patrols the Persian Gulf, through which much of the world’s oil passes.

In January, ProPublica revealed new details of the weaponry sold to the Bahraini government by the US over the past two years, including ammunition, Black Hawk helicopters and a missile system.

“The US says they support democracy but under the table they do something else entirely. This is America’s politics, they look to their interests and that’s it,” says Taimoor Karimi, a 55 year-old lawyer who was arrested in March 2011 and spent nearly six months in jail—where he says he was tortured—on charges of “spreading false news” and “participating in [an] illegal gathering.”

“Our hope is in the American people. They can pressure their government to pull their hand away from under dictatorship,” he says.

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Scenes from a Bahraini Burial

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:56:00 -0500

My first of two pieces in The Nation on Bahrain:

Ali Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Jaziri helps lower his son’s shrouded body into a grave as dozens of mourners crowd around. Many cover their noses and mouths to ward off the sting of tear gas wafting nearby. On the outskirts of the graveyard, hundreds of young men and boys armed with rocks and molotov cocktails are confronted by a phalanx of security forces in full riot gear, backed by armored cars and SUVs. The booms of firing shotguns and tear gas canisters punctuate the buzzing of a police helicopter surveilling the scene below. This is a Bahraini burial.

“I want retribution for my son,” Al-Jaziri says calmly. “We want real accountability, not like what happened with the other martyrs.”

Sixteen year-old Hussein Al-Jaziri was killed on February 14, the day marking the second anniversary of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising. Eyewitnesses told The Nation a police officer shot him twice from a distance of just three or four yards at a street corner in Daih, a village west of the capital. The claims are supported by photographs taken at the morgue showing birdshot wounds clustered tightly together on Hussein’s upper right abdomen—proof of the shooter’s close range. The Bahraini government says it has launched an investigation.

The circumstances of Hussein’s death are especially poignant. On the same date two years earlier, 21 year-old Ali Abdulhadi Mushaima suffered a strikingly similar fate in the same village, where he was fatally shot in the back by police. He would become the first martyr of Bahrain’s uprising; since then, nearly ninety people have killed in Bahrain according to local human rights groups, though some put the number at more than 120, a high toll in a population numbering just 600,000.

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Two Years into Uprising, Bahrain Feels Like a Nation Under Occupation

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:23:18 -0500

I was interviewed on Democracy Now today about the second anniversary of the uprising in Bahrain:

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Bahrain: Two Years Later, the Uprising Continues

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 02:31:00 -0500

I just returned from a reporting trip to Bahrain where I covered the two year anniversary of the February 14 uprising. I was one of the few foreign reporters on the ground. Click on the photo to see the full slideshow:

Port Said, a City of Grim Numbers

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:43:00 -0500

My report for The Nation from Port Said, where more than 40 people were killed and some 1,000 wounded over the span of four days:

Port Said has become a city of numbers, its narrative punctuated by a grim arithmetic: twenty-one sentenced to death in a trial for seventy-two killed in a soccer riot, thirty-two killed after the verdict was announced. Seven killed in a funeral march the next day. Four more shot dead the night after that.

In a struggle to make sense of the toll, residents resort to macabre calculations. “Maybe when the number of dead reaches seventy-two, like in the stadium last year, the shooting will stop in Port Said,” says Adel Shehata.

Shehata’s 21-year-old son, Mohammed—known to friends and family as ‘Hommos’—is one of twenty-one men, all of them local soccer fans, who were sentenced to death by a judge in a Cairo court on January 26 on charges relating to the deaths of seventy-two people in Port Said’s soccer stadium last year. Fans of Port Said’s Masry club stormed the field after a match on February 1, 2012, and attacked the vastly outnumbered visiting supporters of Cairo’s Ahly club. The majority of those killed were crushed to death in a stampede. As the massacre unfolded, security forces and riot police looked on and did nothing to intervene.

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Reporting from the restive city of Port Said

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 10:42:34 -0500

I reported for Democracy Now! from Port Said today where some 45 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since Jan. 26th:

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Egypt on the Brink

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:44:00 -0500

My latest for The Nation:

The second anniversary of Egypt’s revolution has been marked by rocks, firebombs, tear gas and bullets. More than fifty people have been killed and over a thousand wounded across the country. The army has been granted arrest powers, and military troops have been deployed to the three cities where President Mohamed Morsi has declared a state of emergency and ordered a curfew.

This outbreak of rage has laid bare the precarious state of a country plagued by a disfigured transition process, a lingering sense of injustice and the repeated failures of an entire political class that has forsaken a host of popular grievances in its scuffle for power.

Much of the vitriol has been directed toward Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood. Using a highly contentious decree that granted him near-dictatorial powers, Morsi forced a controversial constitution through a referendum process last month. The move sparked mass protests and deadly clashes and left a deep national rift in its wake. It also bolstered fears of the “Brotherhood-ization” of the state, namely that the group was asserting control over the regime left behind by Hosni Mubarak rather than reforming state institutions.

In the weeks since, the economy has edged closer to the precipice with the Egyptian pound plummeting to record lows against the US dollar causing a rise in the price of staple goods like sugar, rice and cooking oil and exacerbating the economic burdens of the poor.

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Qursaya: A story of betrayal and struggle

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:36:00 -0500

After a hiatus, I have a new column in the Egypt Independent:

It is important to consider the story of Qursaya as the second anniversary of the revolution approaches. It’s a story of violence and imprisonment, of the powerful targeting the marginalized, of ruling interests trampling over the rule of law, and of an ongoing struggle against a state that regards its poorest citizens as a bothersome nuisance impeding plans for progress.

The island of Qursaya is a rarity in the crowded cacophony of Cairo: an undeveloped stretch of lush agricultural land near the west bank of the Nile in Giza. With no bridge tying it to the mainland, Qursaya is only accessible by boat or a manually operated chain ferry. The island is home to a community of roughly 4,000 farmers and 1,000 fishermen who have managed to stake out a rural life in one of the world’s most congested cities.

Generations of families have grown up on the island. They built houses, cultivated the land and fished the surrounding waters. They set up basic infrastructure, bringing in electricity and water, paid for alongside taxes for real estate and farmland. While the government never granted the residents ownership rights, to them, Qursaya is home.

Yet the community was sitting atop prime real estate in the heart of Cairo. In 2007, the government issued an eviction order and ordered that farmers’ land contracts not be renewed, claiming the island was state property, in what was seen as a prelude to selling it to wealthy developers.

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Political Turmoil, Torture & Fatal Clashes in Run-Up to Referendum

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:13:48 -0500

My video report on events leading up to the referendum - as well as voting day itself - ran today on Democracy Now! Unfortunately the last 30 seconds were cut off (the perils of live television) so it ends a little abruptly:

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Anti-Morsi Protesters Voice Their Grievances

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 13:15:00 -0500

I had a brief report today on Democracy Now! on protesters gathered at the presidential palace four days before the scheduled referendum on the constitution.

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Report: Unrest, Polarization Before Egypt’s Referendum

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:48:00 -0500

I have a long report on Democracy Now! today about the latest developments in Egypt that I produced with videographer Hany Massoud.

It includes interviews with: Gehad El-Haddad, senior adviser to the Muslim Brotherhood; Khaled Fahmy, the chair of the history department at the American University in Cairo; Ahmed Shokr and Egyptian writer and activist; Lobna Darwish, a longtime Egyptian protester and Khaled Dawoud, the spokesperson for the National Salvation Front.

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Street Fights Rock Cairo as Supporters and Foes of Morsi Clash over Constitution

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:20:00 -0500

My latest for The Nation, unfortunately it was published just a few hours before President Morsi delivered a speech where he offered some concessions which are being criticized by the opposition as being merely cosmetic and a case of too little, too late.

Thousands of supporters and opponents of Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi clashed in the streets around the presidential palace Wednesday, hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails and firing birdshot at each other in the largest outbreak of violence between rival political groups since the revolution began. Seven people were killed and more than 670 injured, according to the Health Ministry, as Cairo’s affluent Heliopolis district was transformed into a scene of chaos and bloodshed.

The clashes spread outside of Cairo, erupting in Alexandria and Mahalla. The offices of the Muslim Brotherhood were set ablaze in Suez and Ismailia.

The street battles marked a major escalation in the crisis that erupted on November 22, when President Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a constitutional declaration that granted him near absolute powers and placed him beyond the review of any court until the ratification of a new constitution.

The decree united Morsi’s fractured non-Islamist opposition and sparked some of the largest street demonstrations in Egypt since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square and launched a mass sit-in to oppose Morsi’s seizure of power. Meanwhile, thousands of judges—including the leaders of Egypt’s highest appeals courts—launched a strike in protest.

Morsi and the Brotherhood responded by doubling down on a strategy to force the transition process and hastily called for a final vote by the Constituent Assembly on the draft constitution. Nearly all of the 100-member body’s non-Islamist members, including representatives of the Coptic Christian Church, had already withdrawn from the assembly.

In a marathon, seventeen-hour session broadcast on state television, assembly members—nearly all of them Islamist—passed each of the 234 articles of the constitution in near unanimity, finally ending at 7 am the next day. Critics blasted the process as reminiscent of the Mubarak era, when the regime would ram legislation through the parliament. The text itself has come under criticism for restricting certain freedoms and containing vague language that lawmakers could use to curtail rights.

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After Deadly Clashes in Cairo, Egypt Faces One of Its Largest Political Crises Since Revolution Began

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 12:03:26 -0500

My interview on Democracy Now! about the clashes outside the presidential palace:

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Egypt's Looming Constitution Referendum Amid Growing Political Polarization

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:54:33 -0500

I was interviewed on Democracy Now! today about all the latest developments in Egypt:

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Uproar in Egypt Over President Morsi's Power Play

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 17:52:00 -0500

My latest in The Nation on Morsi’s constitutional decree and the Muslim Brotherhood’s forcing through a Constituent Assembly vote on the constitution:

Egypt’s turbulent transition is in the midst of one its most chaotic and divisive periods since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. The leaders of the assembly drafting Egypt’s new constitution are hurriedly forcing through a final document amid an uproar by the body’s non-Islamist members. A quarter of the assembly has withdrawn in protest and a growing national strike by judges threatens to bring the country’s judicial system to a halt. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, culminating in one of the largest demonstrations in post-Mubarak Egypt. The offices of the Muslim Brotherhood in several governorates have been ransacked and firebombed and protesters have faced off against police amid clouds of tear gas in downtown Cairo.

President Mohammed Morsi ignited the political firestorm on November 22, when he issued a controversial constitutional decree granting himself sweeping and unchecked powers. The declaration stipulated that, until a constitution is approved and an elected parliament in place, all presidential decisions since taking office in July are “final and binding and cannot be appealed by any way or to any entity.”

The decree puts Morsi—who already had executive and legislative authority—beyond the reach of the judicial branch, adding, ominously, that “The President may take the necessary actions and measures to protect the country and the goals of the revolution.” The decree also denies judges the power to dissolve either the Constituent Assembly, tasked with writing the country’s constitution, or the Shura Council—Parliament’s largely toothless upper house. Both bodies are dominated by Islamists, with the Muslim Brotherhood holding the most power.

In two moves viewed more favorably, Morsi also replaced the public prosecutor—a longtime revolutionary demand—and established a new court to try those responsible for violence against protesters. (To date, almost no one has been brought to justice for the killing of over 1,000 protesters during the revolution.) But these actions are like a “drop of honey in poison,” as Egyptians say, given the larger power play by the president.

In a joint statement, twenty-two Egyptian human rights organizations condemned the decree, saying Morsi, “who now possesses authorities beyond those enjoyed by any president or monarch in Egypt’s modern history, has dealt a lethal blow to the Egyptian judiciary, thereby declaring the beginning of a new dictatorship.”

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As Gazans Recover From Israeli Attacks, Trauma Mixes With Tentative Hope

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:48:00 -0500

My piece for The Nation telling the effect of Israel’s assault on Gaza through the stories of ordinary Palestinians:

The traces of the Israeli drone strike that killed 28-year-old Samaher Qdeih are all around her family home. A large indentation in a sandy courtyard marks the point of impact. Shrapnel is etched in the trunk of a lemon tree and the side of the house it stands next to. Water drips slowly out of a cracked pipe around shards of glass and plastic that litter the floor. A nearby concrete wall is stained with blood.

Samaher died on November 17, day four of Israel’s assault on Gaza, when she rushed home with her brother, Nidal, at 9 pm, after hearing the bombs begin to fall in their neighborhood in the southern town of Khan Yunis. The drone strike hit as the two were crossing the family courtyard to seek shelter indoors. Samaher was killed instantly, her family says. The blood-soaked blanket they covered her with is still piled in a corner. Twenty-seven-year-old Nidal’s leg and arm were badly wounded and he was eventually evacuated across the Rafah border crossing to Egypt for medical help, escorted by his father.

Forty days earlier, Samaher had given birth to her first daughter, Mayar. When the motherless baby is brought out wrapped in a blanket, her great uncle—who had been standing quietly to the side, resting both hands on his cane—begins to sob heavily, kissing Mayar on the forehead before being gently pulled away and consoled by family members.

“We have seen death with our eyes,” says Samaher’s sister.

Samaher is one of more than 160 Palestinians killed during Israel’s eight-day assault on Gaza. Of those who died, more than 100 were civilians, including thirty-four children, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Some 1,000 were wounded, all but thirty of them civilians. Meanwhile, countless others—who do not figure into most casualty figures—are suffering from deep emotional trauma.

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