Emergency law fails to quell terror, say activists

Activists say that a triple bomb attack in the Red Sea resort town of Dahab on Monday is proof that a long-standing emergency law is ineffective in combating terror. “The state of emergency has consistently failed to protect anyone – Egyptian or foreign – from terrorism,” said director of the Cairo-based South Centre for Human Rights Wagdi Abdel Aziz. Activists have also expressed concern that proposed anti-terrorism legislation, intended to replace the 25 year-old emergency law, will only constitute a cosmetic change. “Instead, the government should seek to fight terror with well-thought-out policies and genuine reforms that allow freedom of expression,” Abdel Aziz said. “This in turn will minimise the desire among would-be terrorists to carry out such attacks.” Some critics have gone further, suggesting that, not only has the emergency law failed to quell terrorism, but that it has itself become a principal reason for violent anti-state activity. “Terrorist incidents are completely linked to the continued enforcement of the emergency law,” said Bahieddin Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. “The savage treatment of thousands of prisoners – many of whom have been arbitrarily detained since the emergence of terrorism a quarter century ago – has given rise to new terrorists, rather than to a genuinely effective security apparatus,” Hassan added. “Ironically, by granting the security apparatus extraordinary powers and immunity, the emergency law has weakened it, rendering it unable to protect the country from terror.” Meanwhile, in the wake of the bomb attacks in Dahab, 610 km south-east of Cairo, which killed at least 22 people including Egyptians and tourists, security measures are expected to be significantly enhanced. “Security bodies have immediately started action in the…location and hunting down the culprits,” the government-run State Information Service reported. On Wednesday, additional reports of attempted terrorism emerged from the Sinai Peninsula, home to several popular tourist destinations. According to an interior ministry statement, a man armed with a small bomb was killed while trying to attack international peacekeeping forces at an airport in the north of the peninsula. A few kilometres away, another man, reportedly of Bedouin origin, died when a bomb he was carrying on a bicycle detonated prematurely. The interior ministry has continued to deny that the two men, whose identities remain uncertain, were suicide bombers. Critics, meanwhile, fear the incidents could be used by the government to justify a renewal of the emergency law. Declining to discuss the issue at length, one interior ministry official said on condition of anonymity that, “We will have to wait for developments before any decision [to extend the emergency law] is taken”. As to the possible perpetrators of Wednesday’s attacks, the same source said that evidence suggested the culprits did not belong to an organised terrorist cell, given the relatively small scale of the operations. “What the two operations show is that the attackers don’t belong to a major terrorist network, but rather that they were acting of their own accord,” he said. The Dahab bombings follow a string of similar attacks on tourist locations over the past 18 months. In October 2004, an attack on tourist sites in Taba, 720km south-east of Cairo, killed at least 30 people. In July 2005, 88 people were killed following three simultaneous explosions in Sharm el-Sheikh, 510km south-east of Cairo.