The Skeptic الشكاك

44 More on Hamas

First, one reader wrote in with a correction. I asked parenthetically, “Granted it?s a different situation, but can you imagine Maronites running on a Hezbollah ticket?”

actually yes:

in ’92 and in ’96 a Maronite ran on a Hezbollah ticket in Baaleback and was part of their parlamentary group.

while in the same district in 2000 and 2005 a Phalangist Maronite ran on a Hezbollah ticket without later on joining their group.

also in 2000 and in 2005 one of the maronites on the Amal-Hezbollah ticket in the South joined their parlamentary group.

I stand corrected.

Another friend who’s spent a lot of time in Gaza alerted me to this op-ed from Khalid Mish’al, head of Hamas’ political wing, published in today’s Guardian (what’s up with the Guardian lately, by the way? First the Brothers, now Hamas?).

We will not sell our people or principles for foreign aid

Palestinians voted for Hamas because of our refusal to give up their rights. But we are ready to make a just peace

Khalid Mish’al
Tuesday January 31, 2006
The Guardian

It is widely recognised that the Palestinians are among the most politicised and educated peoples in the world. When they went to the polls last Wednesday they were well aware of what was on offer and those who voted for Hamas knew what it stood for. They chose Hamas because of its pledge never to give up the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and its promise to embark on a programme of reform. There were voices warning them, locally and internationally, not to vote for an organisation branded by the US and EU as terrorist because such a democratically exercised right would cost them the financial aid provided by foreign
donors.

The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world’s leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives.

We are being punished simply for resisting oppression and striving for justice. Those who threaten to impose sanctions on our people are the same powers that initiated our suffering and continue to support our oppressors almost unconditionally. We, the victims, are being penalised while our oppressors are pampered. The US and EU could have used the success of
Hamas to open a new chapter in their relations with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims and to understand better a movement that has so far been seen largely through the eyes of the Zionist occupiers of our land.

Our message to the US and EU governments is this: your attempt to force us to give up our principles or our struggle is in vain. Our people who gave thousands of martyrs, the millions of refugees who have waited for nearly 60 years to return home and our 9,000 political and war prisoners in Israeli jails have not made those sacrifices in order to settle for close to nothing.

Hamas has been elected mainly because of its immovable faith in the inevitability of victory; and Hamas is immune to bribery, intimidation and blackmail. While we are keen on having friendly relations with all nation we shall not seek friendships at the expense of our legitimate rights. We have seen how other nations, including the peoples of Vietnam and South Africa, persisted in their struggle until their quest for freedom and justice was accomplished. We are no different, our cause is no less worthy, our determination is no less profound and our patience is no less abundant.

Our message to the Muslim and Arab nations is this: you have a responsibility to stand by your Palestinian brothers and sisters whose sacrifices are made on behalf of all of you. Our people in Palestine should not need to wait for any aid from countries that attach humiliating conditions to every dollar or euro they pay despite their historical and moral responsibility for our plight. We expect you to step in and compensate the Palestinian people for any loss of aid and we demand you lift all restrictions on civil society institutions that wish to fundraise for the Palestinian cause.

Our message to the Palestinians is this: our people are not only those who live under siege in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip but also the millions languishing in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria and the millions spread around the world unable to return home. We promise you that nothing in the world will deter us from pursuing our goal of liberation and return. We shall spare no effort to work with all factions and institutions in order to put our Palestinian house in order. Having won the parliamentary elections, our medium-term objective is to reform the PLO in order to revive its role as a true representative of all the Palestinian people, without exception or discrimination.

Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion “the people of the book” who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us—our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.

We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else’s sins or solve somebody else’s problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.

[tags]Hamas, Palestinian Elections, Palestine, Israel[/tags][tags][/tags]

43 Palestinian Elections

I’ve been digesting Hamas’ victory at the polls for the past few days. I’m still digesting. Based on the few conversations I’ve had with folks here, it seems the concensus is that it’s a good thing. A Palestinian friend tells me Egyptians have been spontaneously congratulating him when they hear his accent.

It first seemed to me that Hamas were probably not the best people to capitalize on Sharon’s death. I initially worried about the repercussions with international funders, and the EU’s threats, repeated today, to cut the aid that allows the Occupied Territories to function at all if Hamas does not repudiate violence.

If Hamas takes over the internal administration of the nascent country—maintaining roads, running schools, collecting the trash—then their victory will be a good thing for the Palestinians. Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to some extent Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: All have proved less corrupt and more effective in providing services to the people than the governments. Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel suggests that they might leave those posts that would require dealing with the Israelis to Fatah. And Hamas is increasingly looking like a pragmatic group. They even ran Christian candidates in Bethlehem and other Christian villages in the West Bank (Granted it’s a different situation, but can you imagine Maronites running on a Hezbollah ticket?). While I’m sure they stand behind their rhetorical bluster, I can see them working quietly with the Israelis behind the scenes out of sheer expediency. The reality of the occupation is that no Palestinian government has any choice but to work with the Israelis. It’s not like you can escape Israeli presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It would be childish to pretend it’s not there.

But how long can the Palestinian leadership sustain the tensions between Abbas’ conciliatory, money-for-peace stance, and Hamas’ militant rhetoric? Can Hamas credibly renounce violence without losing its identity and its appeal? Can international donors credibly fund a group widely labeled terrorists, even were Hamas to repudiate violence? And how will their victory affect the Israeli political landscape at this crucial juncture?

One friend noted over sheesha late one night that Hamas’ victory is the one real change in the situation in a long time. He said he hoped that this is the harbringer of new times in the region: “Plainspoken Ahmadinejad in Iran, a Hamas government in Palestine…are people here finally ready to stand up and be men after decades of humiliation?”

I doubt it. This is heady cafe talk. My friend, even at this unguarded moment, hadn’t forgotten Israel’s military strength and lack of compunction about using it.

I’m reminded of Mubarak castigating a terrified young interviewer on state television at the beginning of this most recent Intifada. “You know, oh President,” the kid asked him, “Many people think we should go to war…”

“How old are you?” Mubarak snapped.

“Thirty,” the interviewer responded, turning red.

“What do you know about war?” Mubarak asked, “You were still shitting your diapers in ’73.”

The only reason anyone goes to war is that he’s too young to remember what it’s really like. Granted, that applies to most people in this neighborhood. But the rulers are old, pragmatic, and greedy. A Saudi sheikh once told me privately he wished this whole problem would go away so they could start doing business with the Israelis.

So if an Arab Great Patriotic War in the Desert isn’t a realistic option, where is this going? Will the US and the EU really cut funding? Would a less corrupt government in Palestine be able to make up the difference with community service projects? And how will western governments square their rhetoric about wanting to encourage democracy in the Middle East with their tough talk on terrorism?

I suspect Hamas looks to Hezbollah as a successful model, and, like Hezbollah, will continue to seek to enter mainstream politics. The question is whether Hamas, Israel, the US, and the EU will be able to strike a pragmatic compromise in time to avert even more suffering.
[tags]Hamas, Palestinian elections, Israel, Palestine[/tags]

42 On Google China

This is priceless…

41 Online Censorship in Syria

Syrian blogger Ayman Hourieh reports that Syrian ISPs are censoring Wired magazine. Ayman’s account of his conversation with his ISP’s tech support asking why the site was blocked is worth the quick detour.

SyriaMirror.net reports, and Syrian blog readers confirm, that the government has also censored its first blog, Al-Domari of Syria, which takes its name from the banned satirical publication of the same name but has no other relationship with the paper.

[tags]Syria, censorship, Internet, blogs[/tags]

40 Google.cn

My friend Nart Villeneuve adds some science to the media furour over censorship on Google.cn: http://ice.citizenlab.org/?p=178.

39 Joe Sacco on Iraqi Victims of Torture

Joe Sacco fans will appreciate his latest, which tells the story of Iraqi victims of torture.

38 Sudan to Chair African Union?

What can anyone say about such a patently bad idea? This has been simmering for a year. Why is anyone still talking about it? If Sudan’s claims to have lined up the support of 12 African governments are true, I’d be very interested to hear those governments’ justifications given the Sudanese government’s obstructionist stance toward the African Union protection force in Darfur and its problems with its neighbors.

Human Rights Watch has released a wonky new report on what can be done to improve the AU mission to Darfur, pegged to the summit taking place today. This is spinach worth eating.

[tags]Sudan, Darfur, African Union, Human Rights[/tags]

37 Arabic Blogs on Crackdown on the Sudanese Refugees

Casualties, Detention Centers, Mouths Shut

Skip my blather, go straight to the translations

I’m worrying about the bodycount. Seems the SPLM has backed off the number Eric Reeves reported. The official number, 27, has been independently verified several times over. But it represents only those bodies that arrived at the Zeinhoum Morgue, the central morgue where the bodies of all people who died in unusual circumstances are supposed to be taken. It’s possible, especially given one testimony collected by the Nadim Center and translated below, that there are bodies elsewhere. Certainly, there have been all kinds of dark rumors circulating.

I’m also worried about reports that Sudanese security forces went through the detention centers and said, “We’ll take that one, that one, and that one.” It’s normal for an embassy to send officials to visit nationals detained abroad. But given that this embassy represents the government the detainees were fleeing, that they were detained at a protest staged largely because they were afraid of being returned to that government’s jurisdiction, and that there is photographic evidence that Sudanese thugs armed with clubs and knives arrived in a Sudanese Embassy car to attack the protesters early in the protest, this is not a normal situation. I’m concerned that some of the missing might have been sent back to Sudan. I wonder if someone in Sudan can find out. The UNCHR is desperately trying to locate the missing. The Sudanese took names on Dec. 19. The UNHCR wants a list of names. I hope they’ll hook up.

I don’t know whether I should be concerned by what happened when I tried to go back to see the refugees in Abassiya today. (A reporter gave my number to some refugees as the local Human Rights Watch guy. His heart was in the right place, but I learned of this with a bit of chagrin first because I’m not the local HRW guy and second because HRW has decided not to do a full report on this for the moment…the American University in Cairo’s Center for Forced Migration and Refugee Studies is doing what looks to be a fantastic report. But new people keep calling me, and I keep dutifully going out, showing my face, and directing them to the press or to AUC’s researchers). Anyway, I went out this time with a photographer who works for a wire agency. Turns out the guy who called me wasn’t there and was expecting me at another neighborhood across town.

A small crowd was gathered around a Sudanese guy who I was told works for the United Nations.

I asked for some people from the “High Council of Sudanese Refugees” I had met in the neighborhood before. No one had heard of them. Hmm. Fine. Without a contact, and with no good reason to be there, I wasn’t going to go around asking people their life stories for my entertainment. I gave up on the trip.

“So, do you want to ask if you can take some pictures?” I asked my friend so her trip wouldn’t be a total wash.

She got one picture off before Blue Jersey, who said it was his job to protect the market outside the church, stopped her. Blue Jersey was making quite a display, saying he should take the film, so on and so forth. We apologized, tried to explain how we got out there so he wouldn’t think we were spies or profiteers. I got the guy I was supposed to meet on the phone and handed Blue Jersey the receiver. Blue Jersey chewed him out and, projecting so everyone could hear, said he didn’t want anyone snooping around talking to the refugees. We apologized some more, assured him we understood, and he relented.

As we were leaving, a man ran across the street and passed me his phone number and the number of a friend. “Here,” said, “If you want to talk to people, call this number.”

At first I was glad for what had happened. The intense interest (finally) from journalists, investigators, and people who read what they write may yet wind up being the only phyrric victory of this whole awful saga. It’s also meant that some traumatized and vulnerable people have wound up repeating the stories of their trauma again and again without any clear idea whom they’re talking to or what good it will do. It’s also meant that all kinds of wild rumors and inconsistencies have crept into the public record (and far more have died in reporters’ notebooks), diminishing the refugees’ credibility when they need it most. It’s better for the refugees control how their stories are told and to whom, to control the message now that someone’s listening.

And given that many of the people at the protest and in the city at large were people who’d been denied refugee status and so may now be in the country illegally, it’s probably better for them not to be in the papers. Too much attention from well-intentioned reporters also risks drawing too much attention from Security.

Or maybe they’d decided not to rock the boat now that the UNHCR is processing applications. Maybe they’d grown sick of the activist leadership that organized the protest, or the new leadership that (according to one version of events) overthrew the leaders that brokered the deal UNHCR offered in December. Maybe they said, “Look where you got us with your public approach.” Can’t say I’d blame them.

In any case, I took heart from my wasted afternoon.

But then I got home to an email from a guy who’d previously been very anxious to set up a string of one-on-one interviews with victims for me.

thank you for caring about the refugee need but now iam very to give no appointment . i will let you know when you come to meet with us .

And so now the wheels of paranoia are turning. I thought of the guy who ran after us to give me his number. Has someone instructed the refugees not to talk? If so, who?

Arabic Blog Review

A few telling conversations about the Dec. 30 crackdown on the Sudanese protesters from the Egyptian, Arabic blogs…

First, vintage Alaa, translated:

The scandal is that people have started to believe what the newspapers say

In the two demonstrations that we staged to protest against the massacre, we had lots of debates with people in the street. They repeated exactly what the media say, so much so that at first I thought they were all informers.

“Do you believe what TV and newspapers say when they talk to you about government promises and tell you how you’re doing as Egyptians?” I asked them.

“No, of course not,” they all said.

So for fuck’s sake, why do you believe them when they talk about refugees?

The other problem is that people have gotten used to being morons. One guy told me that the refugees had opened up the stomach of a police officer. Insteading of abusing that animal of a police officer who deserved far more than having his stomach opened and calling for Tanzim al-Jihad to resume their armed operations against the security forces, I told myself it would be better to debate with him. So I asked him, “The four-year-old girl who was killed, did she mutilate a police officer?”

“Of course not,” he said, but blamed her family for exposing her to danger.

“That’s exactly the line the Israelis use to justify killing Palestinian children.”

This caused complete chaos. They were about a million responses to what I said. The simplest was that “Israel kills children when they’re going to school, not when they’re at a protest,” but really it became clear they had no response, and they all fell silent […]

You get the impression people don’t even listen to themselves sometimes. They sit there saying things like, “Would you like your mother to see people shitting in the street?” I asked him, “What, and Egyptians don’t shit in the street?” He shut up. Someone else replied, “Yeah, but not in Mohandisseen!” (You listening to this, you dogs? Shitting in Mohandisseen is a crime punishable by death?)

Anyway, the thing I want to say is that after all these debates and the complete refusal on my part to talk about anything but their deaths, people started to be convinced. One person joined us and started carrying a candle too. Basically, years of shitty education and shitty media and the inhuman treatment that’s made an event like this completely normal have made the average Egyptian forget what dignity is…

Three refugees joined us, including Soliman, whose daughter and wife were killed. I found that there were people who weren’t really able to sympathize with him because he wasn’t screaming and slapping his cheeks and rolling around in the dust. One of the guys we’d convinced to join us was asking, “That guy’s family died? That guy?” The problem is not that we reject diversity of opinion, the problem is that we’re not aware that there’s any such thing as diversity of opinion. This guy expected a particular response to death, a particular kind of drama, but it didin’t happen, and he couldn’t get his head around it.

Although it’s not what I usually do, I’m going to generalize: We’ve become a nation of cowards, to the point where we don’t even understand when someone just isn’t afraid, like when Soliman said, “I’m going to sleep here.” People gathered around him and in all sincerity insisted that he shouldn’t do it, that the Security people would rip him up…. In short, he told them that he wanted to stay there and die like his family, or at least get thrown in prison so he could be with his people. They got the point, then sat there trying to convince to take a rest just for two days and after that we’ll see what we can do and that his death or being imprisoned wouldn’t help anyone. The ordinary people just didn’t understand. As far as they were concerned, he might as well have come from Mars.

The best moment was that complacent young guy who just couldn’t believe that the security forces had killed them: “I’m telling you,” he said, “It was a stampede!”

I asked him, “Why should it be so difficult for Security to kill refugees when they’re perfectly capable of killing voters. Don’t they kill peasants as well?”

So the kid said, “No, I’m telling you, all that stuff about the peasants, that was in the days of the King.”

Whose days are you living in, you ass?

Selected comments (a lot of people objected to the obscenity, I’m leaving one of those in for a taste)

Comment (in English): Don’t u people have any respect for national feelings….Alaa..u heared the same answer over and over again from the people in the street not because they are stupid and listen to the media.but rather it’s ur stupidness that shut off da remaining functioning part. I’m sorry for ur laptop man but that doesn’t give u the right to thrash every sigle little thing that happens to u as “government bent kalb”. Those sudanesse brothers had no right in what they did…the police was patient for 3 months….they took money from the UN….they worked (had no right to as refugees) for wages egyptians don’t get and yet they don’t like egypt and they want out! well that sucks! I just hope one day u leave the country u hate so much and go seek assylum in australia…ur free word..where u’ll be kept in detension camps for up to 5 years till they study ur case and guess what only 15% get granted a stay…….p.s) the war in the southern-sudan is over . p.s2) as far as i’m concerned…we r overpopulated,unemployed,economicaly devestated contry….southern sudanesse (not arab brothers and pro-israel hords) can go to canada for all i care!

Comment from Egiziana: The issue of believing anything you hear is something that requires a study of the psychology of the Egyptian people. Are they “good” to the point of being complete morons? Or do they just not want to tire their brains? Or do they just not know how to analyze events?

Comment from anonymous: So what’s so new about the way the security services are acting, you sons of sluts? More than 12 Egyptians were murdered during the elections! Instead of the same old boring shit about the barbarity of the security services, you should do something. But you won’t because you’re all being fucked up the ass and fingered day and night. You fucking fags. You ones who have been fingered. The scummiest police officer in the scummiest police station could fuck any one of you, you cowards, you fags, you sons of filthy women. You want to do something for the Sudanese, but what have you ever done for the Egyptians? “We’re all Sudanese.” You fags. “We’re all niggers.” Why don’t you pull down your trousers and present your asses because [Min. of the Interior Habib] al-Aadli is coming and he feels like a fingering. You’re all talk, you whores.

Comment from red: (in English)
Why the foul Language, I think it’s the tool of the weak. I like what I read here, I can see a lot of genuine intelligent posts, but please guys and girls, please, dont use foul language (3amal 3ala battal), its use distracts the reader from the main arguement.

Comment from somebody: (in English) Only now ya 3alaa u discoverd how messed up our people are. Yabni our goverment should be noted in history cause they created a new type of dictatorship, insted of killing people who object or say no, they decided that they will mess up all values and intentionaly destroy and corrupt the quality of Egyptians so they can never know what is right or what is wrong “3’anam ya3ni” so it is easier to drive them like animals, and hence they will never ever solidify on one single issue.

U may visit this for further explanation http://www.almeezan.blogspot.com

Bye

Comment from beasttrue:
Look, Alaa, this thing about believing or excusing what the government or the security forces do is the thing that really drives me insane. I have heard comments you wouldn’t believe. Like, “But they tried to deal with them politely,” and “They were making a mess of Mohandisseen,” and “Begging was spreading,” and “It didn’t look nice,” etc. Stuff that really just kills you from inside. I would have really liked someone to have said, “If those were Arabs instead of ‘Sudanese,’ how would they have been treated then? If it had happened in France or in England, would society have responded the same way?” I don’t know. I just know I’ve never come across anything so disgusting as the comments I heard about this.

Bint Misreya posted a poll asking what caused the deaths in the crackdown. The results are were dismaying:

What caused the deaths?
A) The refugees stampeding
B) Violence perpetrated by the security forces
C) Fighting between Security and the Refugees
37 respondents. 43 percent: refugees stampeding. 41 percent: violence perpetrated by security forces. 16 percent: fighting between security forces and refugees.

Abu Yousef‘s comments are worth translating:

I’ve been following the massacre in Mohandissen since yesterday morning… Borrowing the government’s and the UNHCR’s excuses about the illegality of the strike some people have been saying that the strikers represented a danger to Egypt, spreading diseases and plagues. I supported this opinion at first, but does this excuse killing them? Have we exhausted all other routes, leaving us with no option but blind stupidity to solve the problems that face us? Then again, is that such a shock? For how long has our proud nation been using such methods to solve its problems? Was it since Black Wednesday [May 25, 2005, when protesters were beaten outside the Journalists’ Syndicate] or before that? Was it since 14 people were killed in the recent elections? I believe that everyone must take some responsibility, starting with the UN, whose secretary general said, “their death is a terrible and inexcusable tragedy,” right down to the lowliest Egyptian who passed by the demonstrators and hated the very sight of them, just this hatred inside of him…

Meanwhile Amr has been nobly slaving away, amalgamating statements on and testimonies from the massacre as part of a new project he and Alaa set up, TortureInEgypt.net. [Correction: Alaa and Amr note in the comments to this post that TortureinEgypt.net is not their project, they merely provided technical support in setting it up.] The always incredible Nora Younis deserves credit for translating a lot of the testimonies the Nadim Center collected. I got half way through one translation, annoying a friend for help, before I realized she’d already done it.

OK, so a quick review of some of the vast amount of information TortureinEgypt collected in Arabic:

First, applause for Al-Tagamma al-Yad, or the Assembly of the Hand, for being the most entertaining opposition group in Cairo today. As far as I’ve been able to gather, they’re a few students who splintered off from Kifayah with some bad blood (Photos from one of their demos here). A friend suggests calling them The Five-Fingered League because they can’t seem to agree on a name for themselves, because it sounds Holmesian, and because they have about five members. Follow the changing names below.

“A cry from ‘The Assembly of The Hand'”: The Doctors’ Syndicate and the government should issue a decree allowing the Sudanese refugees to take back their wounded from Egyptian hospitals.

In a comment to this post, the Assembly of Independent Egyptians/The Hand wrote:

We sent this call on Jan. 6. From the date of the massacre…committed by Central Security officers against Sudanese refugees until now, the Ministry of Health has not allowed anyone to look at the wounded in the hospitals. Is it because there are so many of them and you are scared that the true size of your crime will be known? Why do the Ministry of Health and the head of the Doctor’s Syndicate not reply? Have some of the organs of the dead been stolen? We want an immediate reply.

Further down, Jan. 5: The Assembly for Egyptian Activists/The Hand reports: according to refugees, 70 missing in addition to 28 bodies in the Zeinhoum Morgue.

Right, enough of The Hand.

The Iraqi Association for Human Rights “has with great sorrow received news” of the crackdown. “The way the security forces acted is proof of the irresponsibility in the way they deal with human beings and an approach that had a catastrophic result,” the group said. “It was a crime that deserves to be condemned, first and foremost, and those who committed this massacre should be brought to account and the families of the victims compensated. At a time when news of this is flying around and a number of international parties, notably Kofi Annan, we have to point out that the UN, as represented by the UNHCR and its director in Cairo, must bear responsibility for the situation that has taken place, for the hardships that the Sudanese have undergone and continue to undergo, particularly this one. The UN and its Secretary General must work with genuine intent to organize the performance of its high commissions, especially in Arab countries, by putting in pure cadres who work transparently.”

Interesting the dig at the unpopular Iraqi head of the UNHCR office here…

The Association of Sudanese Journalists and Writers in Washington singled out the Sudanese government for criticisim: “The official silence of the Sudanese government on this and its continual complicity in actions to hurt Sudanese at home and abroad means that it is the historic duty of Sudanese organizations abroad to defend the rights of Sudanese and their dignity and their freedoms where ever they may be by maintaining contact with the organizations of the international community,” they said.

Meanwhile, Sons of Darfur cast the deaths as a latest in a string of attacks against the Sudanese people, accusing Mubarak (in his Air Force days) of leading Egyptian fighter pilots to bomb the Ansar at Aba Island at the end of the Mahdi’s rebellion and more recently of bombing the people of Darfur as part of the Joint [Egyptian-Sudanese] National Security Defense.

Torture in Egypt has also posted testimony collected by the Nadim Center. Here are a few translations:

They took us to Torah [prison], our clothes were damp, we couldn’t change them until the second day, when they threw us out into the sun. On that day, people were broken. We had to carry them…They would call to us more than for times and we couldn’t move. It seemed as if they were doing it on purpose.

A child died in the camp. His mother was screaming hysterically and couldn’t let him go. The soldiers were pulling her and we were pulling back. It was like mass hysteria. They tried to break us up. All of us were crying for the child. On the same day that we arrived at Torah, they took us to the airport. There were about 45 of us. It looked as if they were going to send us away. We would whisper to each other, “We’ll fight them, and, God willing, we’ll die, because going back to Sudan would be extremely dangerous for us.”

They got a call on the wireless, and they changed their minds and sent us back to Torah. It was about 12 at night…. There was a disabled woman called Naglah, there were women who had been separated from their husbands at the camp. There were women who’d lost their children. We got off in the middle of the street. We looked awful. We were barefoot, and our clothes were all in rags. People were telling us that they were glad we had been beaten up. I feel really guilty that we left the children at the camp. I’m scared for them…

We went to Qanata Prison. We stayed five days. There were more than 150 women there. We were kept in prison clothes in a cell open to the sky. We slept on the ground and each had one blanket. It was extremely cold. On the second day, they sent us to the interrogation cell. In the interrogation cell, there were a few bunk beds, but most of us slept on the ground. The toilet was inside the cell and water would spill out of it onto the ground. It was extremely damp. I had a wound on my leg. I went to the prison hospital, but they didn’t heal me properly, and I still have a wound.

The female prisoners who were already in the prison welcomed us and said that they had known a day before the strike was broken that we were going to be coming. [Emphasis mine]. There were about five children, one of whom was only about seven or eight months old. There were mothers breastfeeding. There was a five-year-old orphan and an 11-year-old girl who had been separated from her family. The thing that really killed me was the kids.

Whenever I sit by myself, I remember the protest and how it looked.

And another:

I think about everything that happened. This harshness and violence. That they could kill people. I can’t get my head around it. I’m scared to go in the street. I’m scared to see Egyptians. No offense, but I can hardly bear to look at you. They watched it take place and they didn’t say a thing. The officers were getting the soldiers all juiced up and telling them, “Those are infidels, they’re coming to destroy Egypt, they’re coming with whiskey doing filthy and obscene things. Your duty is to beat them.” the soldiers were really wound up and they were singing. Even during the beating itself, you felt the soldier wasn’t beating you because he wanted to disperse you, he was beating you because he hated you in a racist way, as if the Sudanese man was less than him. Even as they were beating us, they would distinguish between northern and southern and beat the southerners more. As far as they’re concerned, a Sudanese citizen is a northerner. I remember everything as if it’s on a video tape. It doesn’t want to leave my head.

From the strike, they took us to Dashour prison. And from the protest to Dashour prison, my mouth and lips were disfigured and I was bleeding from the nose. I’d been beaten on the head. I was dizzy and hallucinating. I spent the whole day wandering around… they put us on buses and dropped us off on the autostrade. I was barefoot, my clothes were ragged, and there was no public transportation. I was compelled to walk in that condition.

One more:

Abd al-Halim Omar, 33, arrived in Egypt June 16, 2005, registered at the UNHCR. He was released from Shabeen al-Qom (general prison) on Jan. 5:

We were sitting at the gates of the garden. Plainclothes Central Security officers came up to us and told us that there was a Muslim Brotherhood demonstration and that the police were coming to protect us. We were confident that the police would protect us. An officer addressed us with a microphone. I and another woman negotiated with him. He said they would send us to camp. I said where. He said you don’t need to know. I said we will get together a delegation and go with you to see the camp. He refused and warned us that after five minutes they would attack us.

After five minutes [witness reports suggest it was more like five hours] they sprayed us first with hot water, then with cold water. They asked us once again to leave. But the park was surrounded from all sides. Then they started attacking us from all sides. I was holding my wife by her hand. I was terrified for her. I was beaten so much I fell down and they trampled on me until I lost consciousness.

I woke up in a hospital whose name I don’t know. When I woke up, I saw that they had given me an IV drip. There was a swelling in my head and my legs were in great pain. It felt like they were broken. There were about 20 Sudanese people in the room and plainclothes guards who would escort us even to the bathroom. When I asked a guard, “Are we under arrest?” He said, “You’re one of Ayman Nour’s lot.”

Our clothes were wet and we were barefoot. They treated us extremely badly on the first day. The next day, a nurse covered us with blankets and was crying for us. They took us to identify the bodies in the second cell. [Emphasis mine. At the hospital morgue?] It was an awful site. Two or three bodies would be piled up on one trolley. I recognized a small child, whose name I didn’t know, but I had seen his father thrown on the ground and then thrown up in the air. He fell on the ground and the soldiers trampled him. They took us to some trucks and brought us to Torah prison.

There were about 20 of us, and to the best of my recollection, it was Saturday. I found my wife at Torah. There were no rooms. Everyone had a single blanket. They divided us into those who had a yellow card, those who had a blue card, and those who, like myself, didn’t have any identification. They started to put us on to trucks. I refused, and asked to be with my wife, who has valid residency. The officer explained that the men and women were going in separate trucks and that I would meet her again when I got to Torah prison. We looked out the truck window and saw the sign saying Shabeen al-Qom, and that’s when we knew we’d been taken there instead of Torah prison. The truck stopped in front of the gates, we got out, and were surrounded by two lines of soldiers. They sat us down in rows and counted us. then they lined us up and gave us clothes with Interrogation written on them. When I protested the officer told me, “You’re our guests.” They put us in the clothes and photographed us, each person holding a sign with his name written on it. They put 25 of us into a small room, with small high-set windows, and in the corner, a small toilet stall.

Soon after we arrived, someone screamed, “Someone’s hanging in the bathroom.” We thought he was joking, but when we saw it we were terrified and hammered on the cell door. A soldier came, took a glance, and left again. Then came a lot of officers, followed by a colonel. They sent us out of the room and took the body out. He was a southerner and his name is difficult to remember. He’d hanged himself with the rope that they use to tie up the blankets. I couldn’t sleep or drink any water from the bathroom sink next to where the man had hanged himself…
[Oh, wait, Nora’s already done this one…]

Finally, a vapid post from Nermeena, in English:

I can’t deny that am glad this situation is coming to an end…gotta admit that having a Sudanese Colony in an Egyptian vital square wasn’t really that interesting or impressive at all…..do I like the way it ended up with…of course not, that was very brutal….and I clearly resent such an attitude…but what were the alternatives????

[tags]Sudan, Egypt, Sudanese Refugees, Human Rights[/tags]

36 What the Sudanese Protesters Wanted

I’ve noticed that a lot of the news stories on the Sudanese protesters have been confused. That’s natural. It’s a confusing situation, and from the dozen or so interviews I’ve had with the refugees, it’s clear that there’s a lot of contradictory information floating around. This whole thing is a mess.

In the spirit of helping journalists, researchers, and interested readers abroad make sense of what led up to this situation, I thought it would be helpful post a copy of the protesters’ requests verbatim, without comment (though I hope readers will comment). A protest leader gave me this in hard-copy in November:

1. The Sudanese refugees object the UNHCR programme of compulsory voluntary repatriation.
2. We object the local integration.
3. We object the unfair crertaria the UNHCR applied on the Sudanese refugees
4. We refuse to distinguish between Sudanese refugees according to their ethnic backgrounds and/or geographical zones.
5. We refuse the arbitrary detention for Sudanese refugees without guilty
6. We request the UNHCR to consider Sudanese refugees status determination as individuals not as a group.
7. We request not to apply the four freedom principles between Sudanese government and Egyptian government on Sudanese refugees.
8. We request the UNHCR to protect Sudanese refugees from the Sudan national conference personnels.
9. We request the UNHCR to register Sudanese asylum seekers on arrival.
10. We request the UNHCR to search for the missed Sudanese refugees.
11. We request UNHCR to care about vulnerable categories as elders, minors without family members and women at risk.
12. We request the UNHCR to re-open the closed files of all Sudanese refugees.
13. We request a radical solution for all Sudanese refugees, problems otherwise move them to another country where there is no discrimination.

[tags]Sudan, Egypt, Sudanese Refugees, Human Rights[/tags]

35 How the FBI Spied on Edward Said

This was forwarded to me (I don’t read CounterPunch), but I think it’s worth posting in its entirety:

January 13, 2006
How the FBI Spied on Edward Said
By DAVID PRICE
CounterPunch

The FBI has a long, ignoble tradition of monitoring and harassing America’s top intellectuals. While people ranging from Albert Einstein, William Carlos Williams to Martin Luther King have been subjected to FBI surveillance, there remains an under-accounting of the ways in which this monitoring at times hampered the reception of their work.

In response to my request under the Freedom of Information Act, filed on behalf of CounterPunch, the FBI recently released 147 of Said’s 238-page FBI file. There are some unusual gaps in the released records, and it is possible that the FBI still holds far more files on Professor Said than they acknowledge. Some of these gaps may exist because new Patriot Act
and National Security exemptions allow the FBI to deny the existence of records; however, the released file provides enough information to examine the FBI’s interest in Edward Said who mixed artistic appreciations, social theory, and political activism in powerful and unique ways.

Most of Said’s file documents FBI surveillance campaigns of his legal, public work with American-based Palestinian political or pro-Arab organizations, while other portions of the file document the FBI’s ongoing investigations of Said as it monitored his contacts with other Palestinian-Americans. That the FBI should monitor the legal political activities and intellectual forays of such a man elucidates not only the FBI’s role in suppressing democratic solutions to the Israeli and Palestinian problems, it also demonstrates a continuity with the FBI’s historical efforts to monitor and harass American peace activists.

Edward Said’s wife, Mariam, says she is not surprised to learn of the FBI’s surveillance of her husband, saying, “We always knew that any political activity concerning the Palestinian issue is monitored and when talking on the phone we would say ‘let the tappers hear this’. We believed that our phones were tapped for a long time, but it never bothered us because we knew we were hiding nothing.”

The FBI’s first record of Edward Said appears in a February 1971 domestic security investigation of another unidentified individual. The FBI collected photographs of Said from the State Department’s passport division and various news agencies. Said’s “International Security” FBI file was established when an informant gave the FBI a program from the October 1971 Boston Convention of the Arab-American University Graduates, where Said chaired a panel on “Culture and the Critical Spirit”. Most of Said’s FBI records were classified under the administrative heading of “Foreign Counterintelligence,” category 105, and most records are designated as relating to “IS – Middle East,” the Bureau’s designation for Israel.

Post-Patriot Act alterations of the Freedom of Information Act facilitate the FBI’s efforts to keep significant portions of Said’s FBI file classified – as if concerns with resolving Palestinian sovereignty from twenty or thirty years ago are indelibly linked to Bush’s “war on terror”. Large sections of Said’s file remain redacted, with stamps indicating they remain Classified Secret until 2030, 25 years after their initial FOIA processing. One 1973 “Secret” report is now “exempt from General Declassification Schedule of Executive Order 11652, Exemption Category 2,” and is “automatically declassified on indefinite”. Such administrative stonewalling diminishes our ability to understand the past and further complicates our ability to document the FBI’s role in undermining domestic democratic movements.

In February 1972, New York FBI agents produced a report listing Said’s employment at Columbia University, his home address and phone number, including a notation that his home telephone service was provided by New York Telephone Company – information that was later used to request listings of all toll calls charged to Said’s home phone number. A July 1972 FBI report indicates Said received a phone call from someone who was the subject of intensive FBI surveillance. The NYC agent wrote that “reasons for phone call, activities of the professor, and his sympathies in relation to [blank in the document] matters have not been ascertained”.

In the months after the attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics there was a flurry of FBI interest in Said and other Palestinian Americans. In early October 1972, the NY FBI office investigated Said’s background and citizenship information as well as voting, banking and credit records. Employees at Princeton and Columbia Universities gave FBI agents biographical and education information on Said, and the Harvard University Alumni Office provided the FBI with detailed information. As Middle East scholar Steve Niva observes, “looking back, this post-Munich period may have marked an historic turning point when statements in support of the Palestinian cause became routinely equated with sympathies for terrorism.”

The FBI spoke with their “Middle East informants” in Boston, Newark and New York to gather information on Said. One report indicated that “several confidential sources who are familiar with Middle East [blank in the document]in the United States were contacted during 1972 and 1973, but were unable to furnish any information pertaining to Edward William Said.” During this investigation, FBI agents located and read a 1970 Boston Globe article headlined “Columbia Professor Blames Racist Attitude for Arab-Israeli Conflict”.

One FBI report detailed events at the fifth annual convention of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAAUG) held in November 1972 in Berkeley. Said was living in Lebanon at the time and did not attend the conference, but because he was a member of the AAAUG Board of Directors, the FBI included their convention report in his FBI file. There was a significant FBI presence at the conference, and the FBI’s released records include the conference program indicating presentations from a selection of Arab-American scholars such as anthropologists Laura Nader and Barbara Aswad.

The extent of the FBI’s surveillance of the conference is seen in the FBI’s list (provided by a “reliable” FBI informer) of all AAAUG convention’s attendees staying at the Claremont Hotel. Why the FBI collected information on conference attendees’ accommodations is not clear. Was it to break into participants’ rooms to plant listening devices, search for documents, or to monitor attendees? The redacted report does not say, but the FBI’s well-documented reliance on such “black bag jobs” during this period raises this as a likely possibility.

The Bureau’s policy for these illegal operations was to maintain separate filing systems for them. The FBI’s report contains summaries of several talks, including a detailed account of Andreas Papandreou’s keynote address criticizing “the imperialistic forces of the United Stats against the peoples of the Middle East, Greek and Arab peoples alike.”In January 1973, the FBI undertook further criminal and biographical background checks on Said, and the New York Special Agent in Charge recommended in February that the case be closed. But an FBI investigation the next month of a “subject [who had] traveled in the United States in 1971” began a new investigation of Said as one of several individuals whose phone numbers had come to the attention of the FBI and were believed to have possible “connections with Arab terrorist activities.” Such alleged connections remain unspecified as do Said’s connections to such activities, but such vague associations are frequently used to keep investigations active.

FBI memos from this period discuss the creation of a LHM (Letterhead Memorandum, meaning a memo identified as coming from the FBI) that “should be suitable for dissemination to foreign intelligence agencies”. The agency or country to receive this LHM report is not identified, but Israel’s Mossad was a likely candidate.

During the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War the FBI collected several of Said’s newspaper columns and interviews, and his file includes a New York Times column arguing that Arabs and Jews in the Middle East had historically been pitted against each other rather than against “imperialist powers”. In 1974, the FBI received word that Said would speak at the Canadian Arab Federation Conference in Windsor, Ontario, and the Bureau again tracked Said’s movements, though an FBI informer indicated that “he did not consider Said to be the type of individual who would be involved in any terrorist activity”.

The FBI made no entry in Edward Said’s file in 1978, the year of the publication of his groundbreaking book, Orientalism.

A July 1979 FBI report summarized information on thirty-six individuals (names blacked out in the released documents) preparing to attend the August 1979 Palestine American Congress (PAC) at the Shoreham-Americana Hotel in Washington, D.C. The FBI noted that Said was an ex-officio member of the council. Snippets of paragraphs on other unidentified attendees mention past academic and political conferences attended, and one FBI informant is identified as being linked to the “pro-Iraqi Ba’ath Party”. FBI offices receiving this report were advised to check their files for pertinent information on any of the mentioned individuals.

The extent of the FBI’s conference surveillance is shown in a partially declassified Secret Report Index indicating that attendee records had been consulted from FBI field offices in twenty-five listed cities alphabetically listed from Albany to Washington. This report contains sentence summaries on participants. Said’s summary, for example, says, “EDWARD SAID – Previously identified as being from Columbia University, New York City, New York, and as being deeply affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.” Other released passages find the FBI preoccupied with tracing various attendees’ PFLP sympathies.

The PAC was perhaps the most open and democratic deliberative effort by displaced American Palestinians to address the goals of the Palestinian struggle. With great concern the FBI documented how the PAC “created a Preparatory Committee that empowered it to prepare a working paper on a proposed constitution for some mechanism for collaborative action”.

The FBI noted some internal arguments about the legitimacy of some delegates coming from Arab communities with low Palestinian populations. The FBI reported that one delegate at the Congress “reminded all in attendance that the FBI has no legitimate interest in the activities taking place during the three day convention. There was no reason to be afraid of one’s presence at all functions of the PAC.”

Without irony the FBI then noted with concern that some present used false names to register their hotel rooms.

Following opening remarks by Jawad George, another speaker described in the FBI report as a revolutionary black male named Smith, “ensured the PAC that the black Americans would render assistance to Arab revolution.” Other speakers discussed in the FBI report included a member of the Organization of Arab Students and Ramallah Mayor Krim Khlif speaking on efforts to establish a Palestinian State on the West Bank.

The FBI report discussed problems arising at the conference’s conclusion when there was “much discussion on just the preamble to the constitution. Strong disagreement on the wording of a sentence concerning return to its national homeland, to national self-determination, and to its national independence and sovereignty in all of Palestine, by the Arab peoples.” Fights over the wording of the constitution’s preamble continued, and several disputes “almost broke out into fist fights” between rival factions. Said’s FBI file contains a copy of the “Proposed Constitution of the Palestine American Congress” that had been distributed to PAC attendees, which the FBI marked as classified “SECRET.” This information provided by an FBI informant from this period has now been reclassified under the Patriot Act measures making the document classified “Secret” until the year 2029.

In May 1982, the New York FBI Special Agent in Charge sent a Secret report to FBI Director William Webster saying that Said’s name had “come to the attention of the N.Y. [FBI Office] in the context of a terrorist matter.” FBI headquarters was then requested “to contact liaison with State Department’s Middle East section with regard to their knowledge of Said”. A week later, Said’s file gained a photograph of him addressing the December 1980 Palestine Human Rights Campaign National Conference.

One 1982 newspaper clipping added to the file attempted to connect his wife Mariam Said and the PLO to the funding of a full-page anti-Israel advertisement in the New York Times.

During the summer of 1982 an unidentified individual was arrested and deported from the United States, and the “INS obtained photocopies of all documents in his possession”. Among this deported individual’s papers was Edward Said’s name and home phone number. Documents relating to Said and this deportation are still being withheld and are being vetted under National Security Classification review processes.

On September 3, 1982, FBI Director Webster instructed FBI librarians at Quantico to use their computerized New York Times index to locate all past references to Said. This generated a thirteen-page report containing abstracts of forty-nine NYT articles featuring Edward Said.

These articles range from political columns by Said, features about him, to literary book reviews by Said. The New York Times Information Service was long used by the pre-Google FBI to compile dossiers on persons or organizations of interest. Thus did the FBI collected a filtered analysis of Said’s writings and public statements formed by the reports and prejudices of Times reporters and editors.

Said’s FBI file, in the form in which it reached me, concludes with a few redacted reports (now reclassified until the year 2030) from 1983 and a highly censored Classified Secret memo from August 1991 that ends with the suggestions that the FBI “may desire to contact your Middle East Section for additional information concerning Said”.

Curiously, Said’s FBI file, as released to me, contains no information on the remaining dozen years of his life. Either the FBI stopped monitoring him, or they couldn’tlocate these files, or they won’t release this information or even the fact that the information exists in the files. The latter two possibilities seem far more likely than the first .

It did not matter how frequently or clearly Edward Said declared that he “totally repudiated terrorism in all its forms”. The FBI continued to focus its national security surveillance campaign on him. Had the FBI read the Palestine American Congress’s proposed constitution placed in Said’s file in 1979, they would have seen the group’s commitment to upholding the “basic fundamental human and national rights of all people and affirms its opposition to racism in all of its manifestations including Zionism and anti-Semitism”. Instead, they kept searching for connections to terrorism.

The FBI’s surveillance of Edward Said was similar to their surveillance of other Palestinian-American intellectuals. For example, Ibrahim Abu Lughod’s FBI file records similar monitoring – though Abu Lughod’s file finds the FBI attempting to capitalize on JDL death threats as a means of interviewing Lughod to collect information for his file.

Having read hundreds of FBI reports summarizing “subversive” threads in the work of other academics, I am surprised to find that Said’s FBI file contains no FBI analysis of his book Orientalism. This is especially surprising given the claims by scholars, like Hoover Institute anthropologist Stanley Kurtz in his 2003 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Select Education, that Said’s post-colonial critique had left American Middle East Studies scholars impotent to contribute to Bush’s “war on terror”. Given what is known of the FBI’s monitoring of radical academic developments it seems unlikely that such a work escaped their scrutiny, and it is reasonable to speculate that an FBI analysis of Orientalism remains in unreleased FBI documents.

But some known things are obviously missing from the released file.

Chief among these are records of death threats against Said and records of the undercover police protection he received at some public events.

But there are no reasons to withhold such records, and their absence gives further cause to not believe the FBI’s claim this is his entire releasable file.

The reasons for the temporal and thematic gaps in Said’s file remain unknown. One explanation for such gaps is suggested in Kafka’s The Trial, where reference is made to cases of suspects never cleared of vague accusations but who are instead given an “ostensible acquittal” under which the accused’s dossier circulates for years, “backwards and forwards with greater or smaller oscillations” on “peregrinations that are incalculable”. Perhaps such Kafkaesque forces move within the FBI, empowered by post-9/11 legislation and desires to shield the public’s eye from acknowledgments of past persecutions of Edward Said.

David Price is author of Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists (Duke, 2004)

[tags]Israel, Palestine, FBI, United States[/tags]

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