Egypt’s draft NGO law draws fierce criticism

April 30th, 2013

A controversial draft law governing the activities of non-governmental organizations, NGOs, operating in Egypt has come under fire from rights groups who denounce it as “a continuation of the repressive policies of the toppled regime” and fear it would “curb the freedom of Egypt’s civil society.”

Despite the criticism, the draft law — which was prepared by the Islamist-dominated Shura Council’s Human Development Committee — has been given preliminary approval by the Council, the upper house of Egypt’s parliament endowed with legislative powers until the election of a new People’s Assembly or lower house.

If passed, the legislation would put the 13,000 or so local and international NGOs operating in Egypt under full government control, requiring security agencies to grant them licenses and monitor their funding. According to the draft law, a committee comprising members of the Interior Ministry and Egypt’s National Security Agency would decide whether NGOs may or may not receive funding from abroad. Furthermore, those allowed foreign funding would not have direct access to the money as transfers would get deposited in a government bank account, ensuring that all transactions take place under close government scrutiny. NGOs would also need the committee’s permission to transfer funds abroad and would be barred from conducting surveys and from profiting from their organization’s activities.
　
Rights groups and campaigners have decried the draft legislation, arguing that it is even more restrictive than the current Mubarak-era Law 84 (issued in 2002) which was designed to limit and control the operations of NGOs. The draft law would severely hamper the work of NGOs, they say.

“The draft law would make it almost impossible for NGOs to operate in Egypt,” lamented Heba Morayef, director of Human Rights Watch, Egypt in comments published in state-sponsored daily al-Ahram.

Freedom House, a U.S.-based NGO working to promote democracy and human rights has also expressed deep concern over the draft legislation, stating “that the proposed bill would radically restrict the space for local and international NGOs working on issues of human rights and democracy.” It called on the Egyptian government to demonstrate its commitment to democratic reform by replacing the current draft law with one that promotes freedom of association.

“The legislation blatantly contradicts the Egyptian government’s stated goal of moving the country toward democracy,” Freedom House President David Kramer said in a statement posted on the NGO’s website. He also urged the international community to link political and financial support for Egypt with the Egyptian government’s actions to advance progress toward democracy.

Lawmakers and some members of the liberal opposition have defended the bill, however, arguing that it was “necessary to protect Egypt’s national security interests. ”

“Some of the NGOs are undercover espionage cells secretly promoting a US-Israeli agenda”, Nagi El-Shehabi, a member of the Generation Party has been quoted by al Ahram as saying.

The allegations echo similar accusations made last year by then-Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Aboul Naga against foreign-funded non-profit organizations working to promote democracy and human rights in Egypt. Aboul Naga had claimed that the pro-democracy organizations were working “to spread chaos in the country”. Her remarks came after a vicious crackdown on NGOs — both local and foreign, including Freedom House by security forces. In December 2011, security raids were conducted on 17 NGO offices and hundreds of their staffers were threatened with investigations. Meanwhile five mostly-US funded NGOs working to promote human rights and democracy were accused of “receiving illegal funding from foreign governments, including the US ” and of “operating in Egypt without a license”–charges that were denied by the NGOs.

Forty-three NGO workers were prosecuted including 17 foreign nationals who left the country some weeks later, save for one defendant who chose to remain and face trial. A verdict in the landmark case is expected on June 4, 2013. While state-run media lambasted the NGOs, accusing them of plotting to divide the country and threatening Egypt’s national security, rights campaigners insisted that the widely-publicized NGO case “was politically motivated”. Bahieddin Hassan, Director of the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, meanwhile suggested that the foreign NGOs were attacked “to intimidate local NGOs and undermine their work.”

The chilling NGO court case also succeeded in fueling suspicions among an already skeptical public of foreign organizations operating in the country, consolidating the government’s view that the NGOs’ activities were tantamount to “foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs”. The trial of the pro-democracy activists (which has dragged on since), meanwhile coincided with public service announcements that were broadcast on Egyptian TV channels, warning citizens against talking to foreigners “because they might be spies.” Although the TV spots were quickly removed after fierce denunciations by critics that they were “fueling xenophobia”, they unleashed a wave of angry attacks by demonstrators on tourists and foreign journalists covering protests against military rule during the country’s turbulent transitional period.

Meanwhile, Essam El Erian, a former Presidential advisor and a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, FJP, has lauded the draft law as “an attempt to curb corruption promoted by some international NGOs.”

“Some of the money given by the US to those NGOs has gone to spreading corruption in the country,” he said, adding that the bill would ensure “greater transparency of NGOs’ activities and funding”.

The storm raised by rights campaigners and NGOs over by the contentious draft legislaion has forced Freedom and Justice Party MPs, who hastily pushed the draft law through at a Shura Council session last week, to back down. After the session during which the draft law was “approved in principle” by lawmakers in parliament, Shura Council Speaker, Ahmed Fahmy — a Muslim Brotherhood member — affirmed that “the Council was still willing to review an alternative NGO law drafted by the government”.

Although no details have yet been released about the government-drafted law, rights groups and activists hope that the alternative legislation — which MPs have promised to discuss in parliament “within days” — will be free from the restrictions and tight control on funding and licensing that threaten to cripple Egypt’s civil society (if the MPs draft law is passed).

“We want an NGO law that would empower civil society organizations contribute to the development of this country not one that undermines their work”, Omar El-Sharif, Deputy Justice Minister, told a parliamentary session last week. Many are holding their breath.

See more coverage: Shahira Amin | Egypt

Cambodia: Land rights group suspended

August 25th, 2011

The Cambodian government this month suspended land rights group Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT), which had been critical of government-backed evictions as a result of a railway rehabilitation project that would link Phnom Penh to Thailand. In another development, a draft law on associations and NGOs is on verge of being passed in the country, which has faced criticism for imposing registration on grassroots movements and community-based organisations.

Fresh eyes needed on WikiLeaks’ treasure trove of secrets

December 31st, 2010

With maybe hundreds of human rights activists named in the WikiLeaks files, and frontman Julian Assange threatening to throw them open to the world if  “forced” to do so, it’s time for fair assessment of the potential threat to whistleblowers and free expression advocates argues Rohan Jayasekera

When WikiLeaks turned from publishing battlefield reports to secret US State Department cables, the initial effect of seeing state-to-state relations shorn of traditional diplomatic obfuscation was electric. The lasting effect was more like reading your teenager’s Facebook page, initially shocking but ultimately predictable, and for those with the right experience, actually pretty familiar.

Again, there were fears about exposure and endangerment. The Atlantic magazine even alleged that WikiLeaks had exposed Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to treason charges by revealing his views on sanctions, as if Robert Mugabe had ever felt that he needed “evidence” to jail someone.

Some regimes are passing laws to extend the meaning of treason to cover economic “attacks” as well as military or political ones. In that particular hall of mirrors simply voicing sympathy for a tourism boycott can get you bundled into the back of a van.

And any association with the US looks bad to a lot of people in some parts of the world, especially when done in private. WikiLeaks frontman Julian Assange hardly helped this week by telling al-Jazeera TV that many officials visiting US embassies are “spies for the US in their countries”.

Generally though, the diplomats and politicians named and shamed (and sometimes praised) in the WikiLeaks cables tended to escape chastened but safe from the experience.

The risk is far greater for the many ordinary human rights defenders and civil society activists who have risked a visit to US embassies in their home countries. They come, often in suprisingly large numbers, to make advocacy cases to what they hope are sympathetic US ears, and until WikiLeaks, away from the dictators’ prying eyes.

Mercifully, it seems — though Assange now suggests otherwise, to al-Jazeera at least — the rights defenders have been saved from being cited in US embassy CIA staff reports.

Intelligence officers have a reputation for boosting the significance of their reports by making more out of routine contact with dissidents than the exchanges actually deserve. But the CIA removed them all from the SIPRNET digital shoebox of US diplomatic cables that alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning drew from.

But the risk remains, as I was firmly told by a US embassy political attache in an Arab state this month. A veteran human rights campaigner had already warned that many local rights activists expect more support from US diplomats than they will actually get; in the vault-like security of a typical US embassy they speak more freely than they possibly should.

The embassy attache was adamant. It was only a matter of time before a human rights defender was exposed by WikiLeaks, and jailed or killed as a result. “Then in that case,” he said grimly, “you may ask Mr Assange exactly what he thinks he has done for ‘transparency and human rights’”.

Weirdly, almost on cue, Wikileaks released a cable that might have proven his point, in which the name of the source — a public critic of a particularly reprehensible head of state — was redacted by WikiLeaks. However the redactor, presumably unfamiliar with the dissident’s work, failed to recognise a giveaway clue cited in the cable’s title.

Even with the redactions, anyone with reasonable knowledge of the country concerned could have guessed who was being quoted giving off-the-record, publicly unatributable, deep background information — or so he thought — to US diplomats about top-level state corruption.

Again, dictators don’t need evidence to jail people, and the key equation at the heart of the work of free expression defenders supported by Index on Censorship is simple: risk balanced against effect.

The risk posed by exposure by WikiLeaks is one more fresh edge to the multi-faceted threat they, their families and friends already face.

But WikiLeaks is supposed to be helping, no?

Redaction of data was never meant to be WikiLeaks’ prime duty, so it should be no surprise that they do it unwillingly, and when they do, that they can do it badly or obscurely. Index on Censorship raised the issue of the giveaway clue in the title of the otherwise redacted leaked cable with WikiLeaks directly.

They replied sympathetically, but noted that the redacted name was already out there as author of a critical book about the head of state. “…(S)o we feel that too much redaction is futile,” said the reply. “However, we do feel it is better to be safe than sorry and so have redacted the title…”

Well, OK, but the root of the question is the same as that raised everywhere, very specifically at an Index on Censorship debate between WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and UK journalist David Aaronovich at London’s City University this year.

Since WikiLeaks decided to take editorial responsibility for selecting, redacting and publishing the content, what editorial criteria do they apply, what process is followed, what in-house oversight is there of their work and what qualifies for redaction under its “harm minimisation procedure”?

WikiLeaks itself said this was a problem, solved by opening up the data in advance to selected international publications, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times among them. That relationship has since splintered over coverage of Julian Assange’s personal issues, but the relevance of adding external expertise to the process — expertise that WikiLeaks doesn’t have — still stands.

Assange repeatedly maintains that “(WikiLeaks) must protect our sources at whatever cost. This is our sincere concern”. But while he says his organisation presently releases files in a “responsible” manner, he fears extradition to the US and makes a clear threat to everyone involved, willingly or otherwise. “If I am forced we could go to the extreme and expose each and every file that we have access to.”

It’s easy to underestimate how much time US embassy staff spend talking to dissidents, opposition leaders, human rights and civil society activists. Hundreds could be named in the WikiLeaks collection of diplomatic cables still unreleased. It might be helpful to provide advance warning to dissidents about to get their moment in the WikiLeaks sun, and prepare the various organisations charged to defend them.

The WikiLeaks core principles, at least as they were when Index on Censorship honoured the organisation in 2008, are good ones. But surely it’s possible to bring together independent groups of advisors, or draw on the advice of local human rights defenders. Maybe just three experts, easy to find, who before redacting or not redacting a name, will have at least read one of the redactee’s books or are more personally acquainted with the threats he or she faces?

Rohan Jayasekera is Associate Editor and Deputy Chief Executive of Index on Censorship