Match your words with action

Britain can help expand human rights and political freedom in Egypt, but only if it leads by example in its anti-terror campaign

Hossam Bahgat
Wednesday September 7, 2005
The Guardian

Egyptians go to the polls today for what are - theoretically, at least - the first-ever contested presidential elections in the country's history. However, President Hosni Mubarak's government has refused to allow international monitoring of the process and has excluded all vocal judges from supervising polling stations.

The presidential elections commission, which he appointed, has ignored last week's court ruling allowing local human rights and civil society organisations to observe the elections. All of these are indicators that the regime, as usual, is up to no good.

Since Britain assumed the European Union presidency in July, it has been called on repeatedly to put Europe's own human rights foreign policy guidelines into practice. So far the guidelines have largely amounted to ambitious pledges, with little concrete impact on countries such as Egypt, which signed an association agreement with the EU that came into force last year. These agreements include a human rights and democratisation clause, but this will only be transformed into measurable improvements through the mechanism of agreed bilateral action plans.

As EU president, Britain is expected to lead negotiations with Egypt over such a bilateral action plan. Plans already concluded with other countries in the region, such as Morocco and Jordan, aim to reward countries that move speedily towards reform and development goals, with extra financial assistance and increased market access.

Negotiating the human rights section of the plan with Egypt will be challenging. The outcome will also be highly significant, as this will be the first time that the Egyptian regime will have told the world, as well as its own citizens, what it plans to do about its dismal human rights record. It was therefore particularly disappointing to learn that civil society organisations will be excluded from the entire negotiating process.

 Action plans elsewhere also give cause for concern. Ukraine's plan, for example, includes detailed steps towards judicial and legal reform, and prevention of torture. Conversely, the Jordanian plan lists some vaguely worded "actions", such as "intensify ongoing efforts to promote freedom of _expression" or "ensure effective implementation of existing legislation against ill-treatment". Arab human rights activists know better than to believe that such broad declarations will carry any weight.

We will expect the EU to take a firm, and public, position on torture. Egyptian and international human rights groups, as well as the state-appointed National Human Rights Council and UN experts, believe that Egypt has one of the world's worst records on torture. The practice is widespread and systematic, and the government has utterly failed to take effective measures to bring it to an end.

Britain should request specific steps from the Egyptian government under EU foreign policy guidelines on torture. An obvious start would be to confiscate torture equipment from police stations, bring the laws on torture into line with international conventions and establish an independent judicial body to investigate all allegations of torture and ill-treatment.

Another priority must be judicial independence. The government has a long record of election-rigging. Egypt's judges are constitutionally mandated to supervise elections, but their union has just threatened to withdraw unless they are allowed to supervise the entire electoral process - not just the polling stations.

An independent fact-finding panel appointed by the judges recently published a groundbreaking report into how government agents rigged the results of the May referendum on the constitutional changes to allow for today's presidential elections. But the report fell on deaf ears, despite ongoing attempts by the anti-Mubarak Kefaya (Enough) movement to use the report to get the referendum and the ensuing elections nullified.

The judges simply refuse to continue to take the blame for rigged elections where they are only allowed partial supervision. They are also demanding an end to government interference in their affairs. These demands are in line with Egypt's legal obligations under international treaties. Britain, on behalf of the EU, has every right to insist they are included in Egypt's action plan if the government fails to respond to the judges before the parliamentary elections planned for next month. In fact, the EU is legally mandated to do so under its association agreement with Egypt.

But to push for a comprehensive human rights agenda in its negotiations with Egypt, Britain also needs to show some leadership by example. The way Britain nationally and the EU collectively respond to recent acts of terrorism will determine their ability to hold Egypt accountable for, say, its 24-year-old state of emergency and the thousands of prisoners the regime keeps in detention without either charge or trial.

Tony Blair's proposed package of anti-terror measures will not only be detrimental to Britain's long history of civil rights, but will also kill any chance for the UK to have an impact on the human rights situation in Egypt during its EU presidency. Mubarak has chosen to campaign on a new anti-terror law that we have every reason to expect will be the worst news Egyptians have received since the state of emergency was announced in 1981. British diplomats will not be able to prevent this negative development if their Egyptian counterparts can shame them for their own politically opportunistic response to terrorism.

Blair was right to emphasise the importance of dealing with the root causes of terrorism in the wake of the London bombings. An important way to achieve this is through strengthening the EU's role in human rights protection at home as well as abroad. The EU's record on encouraging human rights improvements in our region since 1995 is not one to celebrate. The political will has been lacking. Britain has the responsibility - and the motivation - to overcome this failure in the months ahead.

· Hossam Bahgat is director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

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