Human Rights Need Vigilance on the Local Level
Egypt has made admirable steps towards protecting human rights in recent years. Under the oft-quoted 46th article of the national constitution: “the State shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of practising religious rights”. However, like in many countries the rights of ethno-religious minorities, particularly Copts, continue to be violated, mainly at the local-level. Christian converts from Islam are particularly targeted.
For example, on April 6 this year a 46-year-old Christian convert from Islam was arrested on the charge of endangering national security under Egypt’s Emergency Security Law. El-Akkhad, an engineer, was alleged to have defamed Islam and preached Christianity to Moslems. He was held for 45 days before being transferred to Mazra’at Tora Prison in Cairo, one of the country’s most infamous gaols.
On June 9 another Christian convert, Gasir Mohammed Mahmoud, was discharged after being locked up for five months in a Cairo psychiatric hospital. He was forcibly admitted to the ward after his parents discovered he had become a Christian two years prior. While in hospital for five months he endured beatings and torture by security police and was heavily drugged twice daily. His doctor advised him that he would not leave until he returned to Islam. Mahmoud was released after knowledge of his incarceration found its way into the international media.
Reports of forced religious conversions are most often of teenage Coptic girls by Islamic men. Observers, including human rights groups, find it extremely difficult to determine whether compulsion was used, as most cases involve a Coptic girl who converts to Islam when she marries a Moslem man. Reports of such cases almost never appear in the local media. They also represent a failure of the authorities to uphold the law, which states that a marriage of a girl under the age of 16 is prohibited, and between the ages of 16 and 21 is illegal without the approval and presence of her parents.
Clearly much more needs to be done on the local-level to ensure that incidents like this do not happen. Often it requires media and human rights groups to break the news before the government intervenes. Low-level government officials and law enforcements officers also often involve themselves in discriminatory conduct or crimes against minorities.
In January 2004 the National Human Rights Council (NHRC) was established by the Egyptian Government, and a Coptic Christian was appointed as its head. The Government and the international community has high hopes for the organisation to promote and preserve human rights in Egypt. The Council have already called for an end to Egypt’s misused Emergency Law.
The Vice-President of the Council Dr. Ahmed Kamal Abu al-Magd has said, “The council’s committees have noted the great difference in the estimated number of people detained under emergency law … They also noted that many detainees were not brought before criminal courts, while others have been repeatedly acquitted by the judiciary. These rulings lose their value with the prisoners’ continued detention. Moreover, this does not conform to the rule of presumed innocence—a person is assumed innocent until proven otherwise.”
The misuse of emergency decrees to criminalise otherwise peaceful religious expression was also criticised by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a recent visit to Egypt.
With continued vigilance and appropriate law reform human rights in Egypt can continue to provide greater protections to ethno-religious minorities and freedom of religion.
GORDON MOYES
