Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | Solidarity squeeze

		5 - 11 September 2002 Issue No. 602 Home news	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Solidarity squeeze
A prominent 80-year-old trade union leader faces imprisonment for collecting donations for Palestine

Click to view caption
Thousands in Sinai join an aid convoy sent by the EPCSPI last June to Palestine
Is solidarity with the Palestinian people without police harassment possible at all? This is the question that many Egyptian political activists and sympathisers with the Palestinian cause are asking in the wake of the interrogation of 80-year- old trade union leader Atteya El-Serafi which was due to start yesterday, Wednesday, at the prosecutor's office for the Delta city of Mit Ghamr, Amira Howeidy reports.
El-Serafi, a respected left-wing, long- time trade unionist was briefly arrested in April along with others for collecting donations for the Palestinians. The donations, comprising food, medicine and clothing, had been packed in a truck that the Egyptian Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada (EPCSPI) was about to send to Gaza. The truck and its contents, however, were confiscated by the police and remain so until today. The interrogations of group members at the time amounted to nothing and the case was shelved. But members of EPCSPI, in which El-Serafi is an activist, were alarmed earlier this week when the Mit Ghamr prosecutor summoned the trade unionist for interrogation on charges of fraud.
The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR) on Monday issued a statement expressing its "deep concern" about the case, and the possible imprisonment of El-Serafi should the prosecutor refer it to court. "The activities of EPCSPI are not secret, [yet it is] not recognised by the state or its security bodies," said the statement. "The committee's members include public figures, politicians and human rights activists including Atteya El-Serafi, who is known for his long-time political activism. In this regard, EOHR will eagerly follow up the developments of the case."
El-Serafi had established a branch of the EPCSPI in Mit Ghamr and was actively mobilising people in the Delta town in support of the Palestinian Intifada, through meetings, gatherings and the collection of medicines and other goods. He was also asking supporters to join his committee's solidarity convoys to Palestine. Since its establishment shortly after the eruption of the Palestinian Intifada, EPCSPI sent 12 aid convoys to the Israeli-Egyptian border, but Israel only allowed five in.
Although public gatherings, political activity and collecting donations are permitted by the Egyptian constitution, the Emergency Law, in force since 1981, severely proscribes such activities. A military decree issued in 1992 bans collecting donations without the permission of the Ministry of Social Affairs. These pieces of legislation were used to arrest dozens of Palestine solidarity activists during the past two years. But most of the arrests occurred last May when solidarity with the Palestinians reached its peak, as tens of thousands of Egyptians joined the mass anti-Israel and anti- American demonstrations across the nation.
Those arrested were invariably released, however, the exception being four members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood who remain imprisoned -- without trial -- since last May, for preparing a one-million-man march in Alexandria to mark the 54th anniversary of Al-Nakba, or the Palestinian catastrophe when the Palestinians were dispossessed of 80 per cent of their homeland to make way for the state of Israel. Despite the arrests, thousands of people took to the streets of Alexandria to mark the event.
Suzanne Fayad, a founding member of EPCSPI told Al-Ahram Weekly that despite the reopening of El-Serafi's case and other forms of government harassment of those collecting donations, the committee is still planning to send another aid convoy on the occasion of the second anniversary of the Intifada.
Although solidarity activism for Palestine has almost completely stopped, observers believe that El-Serafi's summons was meant as a warning to activists to abstain from marking the Intifada's

Send a letter to the Editor Recommend this page

ARCHIVES
Letter from the Editor
Editorial Board
Subscription
Advertise!

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation