Government denies rights violations

By Amira Ibrahim

The second negative development was the implementation of a new law regulating the relationship between owners of agricultural land and tenant farmers. "This law gave owners the right to expel farmers from the land and the homes they had built on it," said the EOHR.

The reports documented what it called "gross human rights violations" committed by both governmental and non-governmental bodies. Prisoners of conscience included hundreds of people detained throughout the year in connection with opposition to the agricultural law. According to Amnesty, journalist Hamdein El-Sabahi and three others were arrested in connection with their non-violent opposition to the law. Twenty-one were killed in violent actions protesting the implementation of this law. The fierce confrontation between security forces and Islamist militants was highlighted by both reports as the main cause of human rights violations. Torture, ill-treatment of prisoners, extra-judicial executions and excessive use of force in dealing with angry demonstrations came top of the list of violations.

The reports recognised an increase in the number of victims of violence between security forces and Islamist militants from 174 in 1996 to 191 in 1997. The EOHR report noted that 67 of these were killed in only two attacks: one outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and the second at the Luxor temple of Hatshepsut. During the previous seven years, only 26 tourists had been killed, the report said.

Innocent civilians were directly targeted by the Islamist militants, the EOHR said. Seven citizens were killed because they were suspected of acting as police informers and 25 Copts were killed in four attacks by militants.

Security forces were also targeted by the militants. Forty-four policemen were killed in 21 attacks focused mainly in the southern provinces of Minya and Assiut. On the other side, the report said that 24 militants were killed by security forces in attacks on their strongholds. There are concerns, the report added, that the killings were the result of an excessive use of force, or were an act of revenge, or that security forces had resorted to extra-judicial executions as an alternative to the arrest of militants.

The EOHR report recorded no cases of death in prisons as a result of police torture. But both reports referred to complaints of torture and ill-treatment in police stations and said three people died in suspicious circumstances inside police stations.

The EOHR report documented nine new disappearances in 1997 following on from 12 cases the previous year.

Naila Gabr, chief of the human rights desk at the Foreign Ministry, declined to respond to the contents of the EOHR report. "As far as we [the foreign ministry] are concerned, the EOHR does not have the necessary legal status. Therefore, the government should not be expected to comment on this report," she said.

Gabr said that she was particularly disappointed by the report from Amnesty International. "I am really disappointed to see that an organisation like Amnesty can issue a report that fails to take notice of some very obvious violations of human rights that were committed by terrorist groups against innocent civilians in Luxor and near the Cairo Museum". In Gabr's view, if Amnesty's prime mandate is to defend the right to life, "then the very first paragraph of its report should have been dedicated to this matter. But Amnesty chose to use double standards".

On the issue of alleged abuse of police force while enforcing the new agricultural law, Gabr said that there had only been "a very few incidents of violence" related to the enforcement of this law. "In any case, this file is now closed. The law is now being enforced without any problems," she said.

Gabr also rejected accusations made by the wives of certain wanted Islamist militants that the police were using torture-interrogation methods. "On this particular issue, I had a very lengthy session with the representative of Amnesty International, Mr Said Bou-Hamouda. I provided him with answers to all the questions he raised and I suggested that for further information he could always check with our embassy" in London, Gabr said. She added: "But to my great disappointment, I found that the report did not take any notice of the answers that we provided. I dare say, it chose to ignore our point of view."

A security expert criticised the work of human rights organisations in this country as far from impartial. "We have become used to such inaccurate reports, which do not take into account the viewpoints of any party except the militants," said Fouad Allam, former head of the Interior Ministry's anti-terrorism department.