The first year for human rights

By Salama A Salama

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First of all, we have to give credit to the human rights groups and civil society activists. Were it not for their efforts over the years the National Council for Human Rights would never have been formed, and its exceptionally transparent, surprisingly informative report would never have seen the light of day.

It is the first time a body created by the government to monitor human rights in accordance with international law has gathered data on such a huge number of violations committed by governmental agencies, including incidents of torture. This report, which has been forwarded to the People's Assembly and international bodies, records the state of distress, degradation and oppression in which the Egyptian citizen lives, despite the restrictions placed on the council by the state itself. The report was a rude awakening for the cosmetic human rights committees created by parliament and the Shura Council to provide oversight of state agencies.

For many years now, human rights groups and their activists have been legal outcasts: pursued by the police, castigated by state agencies and slandered in the public eye. But such persecution has not stopped some of Egypt's most upstanding men and women from carrying out their duty and revealing the flaws and shortcomings that have blackened this country's reputation and ruined the lives of so many of its citizens. These groups have struggled to wake people from their stupor, employing a variety of legal and media techniques to defend the rights of the victimised and the oppressed. The state may have denied it, but the National Council for Human Rights was formed as a result of these groups' tireless work, and nothing else. Whether their funding comes from abroad or locally it's all the same to me: proof is in the pudding.

So it was utterly incomprehensible that the cabinet chose to criticise the report instead of promising to look into and correct the violations it highlighted. Perhaps the government was angered by the sheer number of instances collated in a report which it would have preferred had limited itself to the achievements the government never stops talking about, like setting up the council itself, abolishing state security courts and reforming laws dealing with women. It could also have been the reason the Ministry of Social Affairs threatened to disband human rights groups if they entered into politics, knowing full well that these groups' activities are by nature political, although not party-political, as they are not based on a political platform that seeks to gain office or which supports any one party.

This said the tasks of human rights groups and civil society have become more varied and complex. In other societies, in Europe and Asia, civil society plays a greater role. This is especially true of movements that work in the field of democracy, forcing political forces to replace draconian measures by underlining the rule of law, raising the average citizen's quality of life, demanding social equality and insisting on the citizen's right to participate in deciding his own future.

Some of these outstanding objectives can be reached by cooperating with the National Council for Human Rights, others by coordinating amongst human rights groups themselves. And we must expose all attempts to mislead the population; frightening attempts by closed political regimes ruled by corrupt elites for the sake of preserving their own elevated position.