Weekly human rights roundup

This week saw a number of human rights violations throughout the Middle East. Even in countries that have publicly voiced a commitment to political reform, such as Egypt and Syria, domestic tensions and foreign pressures have colluded to thwart progress. Egypt Egyptian human rights activists and lawyers accused the state of using torture to quell dissent, and have promised to continue organising despite the state’s violent reaction to recent demonstrations. “If we’re silent now, then we’ll become accomplices to the state’s crimes,” said George Ishaq, general coordinator of the pro-democracy Kifaya movement. According to his lawyer, Mohamed al-Sharqawi, an activist detained on 25 May during a peaceful protest at the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate, was tortured at a Cairo police station prior to being transferred to the general prosecutor’s office. “The general prosecutor himself was shocked on seeing al-Sharqawi’s condition,” said Gamal Eid, who represents the Kifaya activist. According to a statement issued by al-Sharqawi from prison, he was also sexually assaulted by police. Activists also condemned the beating of co-protester Karim al-Shaer, also arrested on 25 May, as well as the treatment of female journalists Dina Samak, Jihan Shaaban and Dina Gameel, who had been accompanying him. The protest had been called in commemoration of last year’s sexual assaults on female journalists and activists during a public protest of a controversial referendum on constitutional change. Both men will be held for 15 days pending investigations by order of the state security prosecutor. Authorities had earlier released al-Sharqawi and al-Shaer from Tora prison on 22 May following protests on 24 April and 7 May. In Alexandria, meanwhile, during a local chamber of commerce election in which the banned Muslim Brotherhood fielded four candidates, ballot stations were sealed off and 28 brotherhood members were arrested. Growing numbers of dissidents arrested over recent weeks have been accused of insulting the president of the republic and disturbing public order. Interior ministry officials regularly justify such arrests by saying that they are maintaining order. Jordan Two men are currently being held by the General Intelligence Department for political reasons, say rights groups. The men – Assem Saleh Abdullah and Fadi Farah Tam – were detained one week ago, according to the Arab Organisation for Human Rights, which received complaints from the detainees’ families on 28 May. They are being denied access to lawyers and their families have been barred from seeing them. Additionally, two editors of weekly newspapers were sentenced this week to two months in jail for reprinting controversial cartoons of Muslim prophet Muhammad. Lawyers for Jihad al-Momani, chief editor of Shihan, and Hashim al-Khalidi, chief editor of Al-Mihwar, said they would appeal the decision. The editors have been released on bail. Syria Haitham Maleh, the former head of the Human Rights Association in Syria, said on 27 May that he would appeal a jail sentence passed against him two days earlier. On 25 May, a military court sentenced Maleh to three months in prison on charges of insulting the army. He received another ten days imprisonment for insulting a civil servant, and a further ten days for insulting a government official. Maleh criticised the recent arrests of those human rights activists who have signed on to the so-called “Damascus-Beirut Declaration”, a petition calling for the improvement of Syrian-Lebanese relations. Maleh called the series of arrests “a step backwards.” Meanwhile, Akram al-Bunni said on 27 May that his brother Anwar, a prominent human rights lawyer arrested on 17 May along with nine others, had gone on a hunger strike to protest the conditions of his arrest. According to Akram, he visited his brother in prison and found him “pale and exhausted”. He called on the Syrian authorities to release him immediately. Khalil Mae'touk, a human rights lawyer and activist, said that some of those arrested had been beaten before being taken to the Adra prison near Damascus. Mae'touk urged President Bashar al-Assad to intervene personally for their release. Two weeks ago, about a dozen human rights activists were arrested in the largest crackdown on democracy campaigners in years. Detainees included prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo. Yemen The Yemeni Journalists Syndicate (YJS) expressed its concern over the detention of two prominent journalists at Sana’a Airport for two hours on Thursday and the confiscation of their papers. “What happened to YJS Secretary General Hafedh al-Bukari and Jamal Amer, editor-in-chief of Al-Wasat newspaper, violates the law and is a clear transgression of press freedom,” said YJS Charge d’Affairs Said Thabet. He went on to warn that the syndicate planned to sue the security officers who detained the two journalists. “We demanded a legal investigation, but the Ministry of Interior said it was only a routine measure,” Thabet noted. Additionally, two French Muslim nationals were detained without charges, said Khalid al-Anesi, executive director of the National Organisation for Defending Rights and Freedoms. “Ahmed Didosh and Patris Metirra have been detained for no clear reason,” said al-Anesi. “They haven’t even been tried. And Didosh’s wife told us he was tortured in prison.” Al-Anesi added that, although the attorney general had requested an investigation, the security services had not carried it out. The Yemen Times, meanwhile, received the International Press Institute’s Free Media Pioneer Award for 2006 because the newspaper “operates in a part of the world known for harsh government restrictions on the media”. SA/MBH/AO/MAJ