Unsatisfactory improvements?
High-profile human rights initiatives proposed by the ruling National Democratic Party were greeted with heavy scepticism this week at the Shura Council and the People's Assembly. Gamal Essam El-Din report
Even though a high-profile package of political reform initiatives proposed by the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) was overwhelmingly approved by both the Shura Council (a consultative upper house with no legislative powers) and the People's Assembly's Legislative and Constitutional Committee this week, independent and opposition MPs used the opportunity to criticise the new laws for being more evocative of window-dressing than real reform.
The proposed package includes the scrapping of 1980's Law 105 on state security courts, abolishing the hard labour penalty enshrined in the penal code, and setting up a National Council for Human Rights (NCHR).
The NCHR -- approved by the Shura Council on 7 June -- will be affiliated to the Council and will include 21 public figures with significant expertise in human rights issues. They will be appointed by the Shura Council for a renewable term of three years. Its functions include mapping out a national plan for the protection of human rights, verifying citizens' complaints regarding human rights abuses, and ensuring an honest implementation of international treaties on human rights. Other functions include coordinating with local and international human rights organisations, fostering a culture of human rights, and presenting an annual report on the human rights situation to the president, the Shura Council and the People's Assembly.
The NCHR will include six committees (on civil, political, socio- economic and cultural liberties, as well as legislation and international relations) and be headed by Shura Council Chairman Mustafa Kamal Helmi. According to Justice Minister Farouk Seif El- Nasr, the proposed NCHR is "a striking new example of democratic reform in the Arab world". It was significant, Seif El-Nasr said, that a law rather than a presidential decree would create the NCHR. "This is necessary to ensure the permanence of its activities," he said. The minister, however, also made clear that the NCHR is just a consultative council. "It is a watchdog commission with no powers. It issues recommendations rather than gives binding orders."
Seif El-Nasr also argued that the NCHR's affiliation with the Shura Council will not affect its independence. "By contrast, the fact that the Shura Council is a legislative upper house will guarantee the NCHR's full independence," he said.
Seif El-Nasr's optimism regarding the NCHR did not go over very well with a group of opposition and independent MPs, most of whom are lawyers. According to the outspoken Ragaie Attiya, "Contrary to what was expected, the government preferred to water the commission down by limiting its activities to championing human rights values and issuing best practice advice." In Attiya's view, the only way the NCHR could be an effective -- rather than a cosmetic -- commission, was by being affiliated to the President of the Republic and be given sweeping powers to investigate public organisations that fail to uphold human rights.
Independent MP Adel Eid accused the Interior Ministry of being at the forefront of such organisations. "There is widespread evidence that this ministry has not put respect for individuals' rights at the heart of its policy and practice," Eid told Al-Ahram Weekly. In his opinion, the Interior Ministry's arbitrary application of the Emergency Law is the source of all of Egypt's major human rights violations. "Instead of setting up a toothless rights watchdog," argued Eid, "this law has to be repealed."
Rifaat El-Said, secretary-general of the leftist Tagammu Party, had a problem with the limited number of NCHR members. "I wonder how [only 20 or so people] will be able to fulfill NCHR's 14 objectives and run its six affiliated committees."
At the People's Assembly Legislative and Constitutional Committee, independent MP Mortada Mansour said he feared that the NCHR would be hijacked by the NDP just to "improve Egypt's image". Other independent MPs like Abdel-Moneim El-Oleimi and Georgette Sayigh predicted that in the hands of the Shura Council, the NCHR would be completely powerless. "Why shouldn't this body be affiliated with the President of the Republic or the People's Assembly?" asked El-Oleimi, echoing Attiya's point of view.
Attiya, meanwhile, lamented the fact that the NCHR was under the auspices of the Shura Council because, "you must remember that three years ago, the Shura Council's Legislative Committee was entrusted with investigating human rights violations, and yet this -- deplorably -- has never happened."
Mansour also argued that the Shura Council was by no means an independent organisation. "It is a toothless body aimed at giving some kind of political prestige to certain public figures. This confirms our fears that the proposed NCHR will be manipulated by the Shura Council to provide Egypt with a sort of democratic camouflage."
MPs suggested that the NCHR must also include representatives from different political viewpoints, as well as former chairmen of such prestigious independent judicial organisations as the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Court of Cassation.
Another of the reform initiatives proposed by the NDP -- the scrapping of 1980's Law 108 on state security courts -- also inspired heated debate. Seif El-Nasr said the proposal would end the practice of civilians being tried on criminal charges before state security courts. "They will be referred to trial at criminal rather than state security courts," Seif El-Nasr explained.
According to independent and opposition MPs, however, the simultaneous transfer of the sweeping powers that the prosecution-general acquired via Law 108 to the older criminal procedures law was offsetting this positive development. Attiya called it "a setback, rather than a step towards reform, because the bill is making the exception a rule".
According to Attiya, 1980's Law 108 gives prosecutors the power to hold defendants in custody for as long as six months, pending investigation of certain charges. "This power -- which is exceptional under Law 108 -- will become permanent when it is transferred to the Criminal Procedures Law." Currently, the Criminal Procedures Law only empowers the public prosecution to hold citizens in custody for four days. "This will be extended to six months under the new bill," Attiya said.
Minister Seif El-Nasr argued that the public prosecution is a judicial authority, which must retain these powers in order to protect national security from crimes of terrorism, spying, breach of trust, bribery, embezzlement and fraud.
Shawki El-Sayed and other independent members of the Shura Council did not agree, calling the public prosecution's sweeping powers a breach of human rights. "They are even a breach of international conventions and charters on human rights and civil liberties," El-Sayed said.
El-Said wanted to know what would happen if a citizen, who was remanded into custody for six months by the public prosecution, was found to be innocent. "These innocent citizens are not entitled to compensation for such injustice," El- Said said.
Attiya, El-Said and El-Sayed also argued that the public prosecution is not a judicial authority in the first place. "It is an investigative body that reports to the Ministry of Justice," said El-Said.
Independent MPs claimed that the abolishing of state security courts was motivated by considerations other than a genuine commitment to civil rights. "The law regulating these courts will be abolished so that the government can convince other countries to hand over those who have been convicted of looting bank funds over the past few years," Eid said.
Independent MPs also described the third of the policy reform initiatives -- the revocation of the Penal Code Article pertaining to hard labour -- as cosmetic since the hard labour penalty has not even been applied in Egypt since 1983.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 12 - 18 June 2003 (Issue No. 642)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/642/eg7.htm