Human Rights in the Arab Countries

By Haytham Manna

If the world trembled on November 13, 2001, it is the Arab countries that have paid the price for the globalization of the state of emergency declared by George W. Bush following the tragic events of September 11. With Ariel Sharon’s assumption of power in Israel, our misfortune has reached an all-time high. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Arab world has not seen this degree of decline for decades.

In 1992, only one Arab country possessed a law against terrorism. Today, a score of them have laws of exception, temporary decrees, or laws against terrorism. More than 300 laws and statutory orders have been imposed in the name of the so-called pre-emptive war. The number of torture victims has increased significantly in the majority of Arab countries. Previously, interrogation was exercised locally against the political opposition. Today it is directed against both citizenship and sovereignty. Participation of American agents in interrogations is confirmed by the testimony of torture victims in Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan. The United Arab Emirates, which historically has had a virtually clean record in terms of arbitrary detention, has been shown to be responsible for some 100 cases of arrest. Since 20 December 2004, Oman has led a campaign of arrest in which dozens of people have been arbitrarily detained. 29 of those detainees – among them workers, university students, and intellectuals – have only recently been released from prison (June 2005). Today, torture in the majority of Arab countries has become an issue of tremendous concern for the Arab Commission for Human Rights (ACHR).

In addition, in Saudi Arabia we are facing a serious attack on the liberty of association: the authorities are denying society the right to create associations that can freely determine their objectives and appoint executive committees which assume responsibility for their activities before the law and their own members. The establishment of the Saudi National Agency for Overseas Relief and Charitable Works under the authority of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, as well as the closure of a host of agencies, institutions, charitable associations, and commissions lacking royal authorization, signifies the death – in the full view and knowledge of all – of society-based initiatives and individual participation in public affairs. This agency is, in part, characteristic of a policy to create a contemporary authoritarian State with a single purpose: to garner good grades from the current US administration. And this even though the agency’s operating methods contradict the spirit of our age and the imperatives of political, social, and economic reform. In May 2004, the ACHR published a damning report on arbitrary detention in Saudi Arabia where more than 600 detainees are being held in the al-Haer prison. Among those targeted were four distinguished symbols of peaceful constitutional reform and members of the ACHR, Dr. Abdellah Al-hamed, Dr. Matrouk Al-faleh, the poet Ali Dimini, and their lawyer Abderrahmane Al-Lahem; Al-hamed, Al-faleh, and Dimini were given prison sentences of six, seven and nine years respectively while Al-Lahem remains in detention without charge or apparent cause. The case is the same for Dr. Saïd Ibn Mobarak Al-Zair and his two sons, Mobarak and Saad. Five minutes on Aljazeera was all it took for Dr. Al-Zair, a former detainee who had spent more than seven years in prison without judgment or trial, to find himself back in prison for five more years.

We have already published information on 54 cases of torture in Kuwait where the elections reflected an American-Kuwaiti translation of democracy: neither Bidouns nor naturalized Kuwaitis had the right to vote – a right that is reserved for only 30 percent of society. The founder of the Association Against Torture in Kuwait, Khaled al-Dosary, is being prosecuted for having revealed information about torture in his country to human rights NGOs. Following close on the heels of the arrest of his brother Turki, his other brother, Bandar, has been imprisoned. And the torture continues: the mutilated body of Amer Khalif Al Anzi, who died as a result of torture, was returned to his family on 12 February 2005 for burial. In addition, we have come to learn of two cases, Mohamed Ben Aoun and Ahmed Moussameh, both of whom were arrested on the same date and under the same circumstances as Amer Al Anzi, and who at the time of writing were in critical condition in a military hospital in Kuwait, the result of being tortured following their arrest on 31 January 2005.

In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, many Arab countries (Kuwait, Morocco, Syria, etc.) have not kept their promise to punish crimes of torture. A year after it was revealed that these barbaric acts were taking place in broad daylight, our Iraqi colleagues have, with supporting evidence, confirmed that torture continues in American-controlled detention centers.

Although the State of Qatar has not been touched by terrorist acts (with the exception of a single incident carried out by non-Qataris and non-residents), it has promulgated arbitrary laws under the pretext of protection against terrorism. Thus Law No. 3, issued in 2004 and relating to the war against terrorism, is one of the worst laws to be published in the Arab world. A reading of the text reveals the expansion of the law’s scope of application to cover all acts of opposition, not only those of violence. The first article reads: “An act is deemed to be terrorist if the goal of that act is, through the use of force, violence, threats, or fear, to paralyze the clauses of the provisional and revised Basic Law, to endanger the law, to threaten the public order, to expose to danger the peace and security of society, or to undermine national unity. An act is deemed to be terrorist if the intentions or the effective consequences of the act are: to cause people fear or harm, to endanger their life, liberty, or security; to pollute the environment, the public health, and the national economy; to endanger institutions, businesses, and public and private assets through occupying or causing damage to them or in otherwise preventing or obstructing the authorities from carrying out their duties.”

Article 2 calls for greater severity in the criminal law concerning these acts. It envisions, for example, the death sentence in place of life in prison and notes, “in every instance the death sentence (shall be applicable) when the act perpetrated by the condemned has caused the death of a person or required the use of a weapon in the commission of the crime.” Article 3 envisions “a penalty of death, or life in prison, for every person who creates, organizes, or directs an unauthorized group or organization, regardless of its purpose, with the goal of committing a terrorist act.” Article 6 stipulates “the penalty of death, or life in prison, for every person who directs an organization or a private establishment that, having been created in conformity with the law, has profited from supporting the commission of a terrorist act.” In the event of an emergency, the law authorizes the use of house arrest and other restrictions on movement (article 13) in addition to seizure of mail, publications, packages, and faxes, surveillance of communications by all means, and recording of movements in public and private places (article 19). Of even greater cause for concern is that in the event of launching an inquiry or trial on the basis of terrorist charges, the general prosecutor is not subject to the condition of lodging a complaint or request, as is normally required in criminal proceedings (article 17). Moreover, judicial procedure does not weaken with the passage of time (article 16): pre-emptive detention can continue for up to six months, renewable by a competent court of law (article 18).

Additionally, in Syria, despite calm in the Aljazeera region as well as in areas with largely Kurdish populations, security forces conducted a massive campaign of arrests during the month of April 2004 that affected more than 300 Kurds, among them a number of minors. Following arrest, the detainees were incarcerated in centers throughout Qamechli and Al-Hassaka where, during interrogation, they were subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment. This treatment resulted in two deaths: Hussein Hanif Nehso succumbed on 6 April 2004, two days after his arrest and as a direct result of having been tortured; Ferhad Mohamed Ali died on Thursday 8 April 2004 – his death was also torture-induced. Both men were around the age of 20 and in good health prior to their arrest. More than 180 Kurds remain in arbitrary detention. In general, over 800 detainees are languishing in Syrian prisons. A score of them are in an extremely bad health, others are suffering psychologically, and the most severe cases have been transferred to the hospital.

In Morocco, the so-called anti-terrorism law, which had been under preparation prior to the events of Casablanca, is a virtual copy of the American Patriot Act of October 2001. Today, all human rights NGOs denounce the intrusion of law into all matter of affairs under the guise of the war on terrorism. In reopening old files, the authorities are attempting to quietly ignore the consequences of “the war on terror” on the public.

Following the 8 October 2004 attack on Israeli tourists at the Hilton Taba resort in Sharm el-Sheikh, the Egyptian authorities arrested more than 5000 people. According to the Minister of the Interior, nearly 800 remain in detention; human rights NGOs put the figure over 3000. In the spirit of security, Mubarak is preparing himself and his son to maintain a hold on power in Egypt.

Abu Slim prison has not changed, it is Qaddafi who has found his place in the war against terrorism: not a single prisoner freed and collective capital and life sentences pronounced at the end of 2004 by the so-called court of the people. One prisoner sentenced to death succumbed in his cell during the month of December. Libyan society remains hostage to the Libyan security apparatus.

To all Arab democrats, men and women: Do not forget the tragedy of Darfur in Sudan. How many have been displaced? How many have died? It is time to launch a mission of independent inquiry to unveil the massacre perpetrated by the Sudanese authorities and amplified by the militias on all sides.

If we are currently witnessing a movement that I call the globalization of the extrajudicial, then the Arab world is the microcosm of that movement.

This policy of all-encompassing security is a road that leads to extremism, not a path to democracy. Arab democrats thus find themselves confronted with a concept of their own making as well as by the troubling changes that have come to pass in the name of that concept. After a decade of fighting for change from the ground up and the inside out, the American administration now states that we must change from the top down and from the outside in. To this end, the administration closes its eyes to the violations committed by its friends - symbols of corruption and authoritarianism. The American discourse on democracy and its contradictions is largely used against Arab democrats by defenders of obscurantist projects. That is why the establishment of a line of demarcation between the US Administration and the Arab democrats is essential to reviving the democratic project in this part of the world.

A mixture of ignorance and arrogance has gone into the application of the American model in Iraq. It is a model that allows for good conscience to be maintained while confidence in Arab dictators is restored. Torture, destruction of homes, corruption, sectarianism, arbitrary rule, summary execution, the extraordinary distinction between good soldiers and evil ones, the creation of a race that is above the law (all those who L. Paul Bremer mentions in his decree 17) – all of these elements are determined on the basis of a single criteria: the extent to which they serve the immediate interests of the US administration.

In November 2003, the US Army declared with pride that they had received 10,402 complaints from parents of individuals who were either killed or wounded in non-combat situations and to whom they had disbursed $1.5 million for loss of Iraqi life and goods – in other words, one eighth the amount that Libya paid out for a single victim of Lockerbie. Following the scandal of Abu Ghraib, the Americans increased the amount of compensation. Now, one Iraqi life is worth $2500.

During my mission to Iraq in June 2003, I asked Bremer’s spokesman several questions about the arrest of PLO executive committee member Abul-Abbas (Mohammed Abbas). I remarked that he been given amnesty under the Taba and Oslo accords as well as by a decision issued by the US Attorney General in 1996. I also pointed to Abul-Abbas’ regular visits to Gaza and Cairo. How, I wanted to know, could his detention by the Americans be explained, particularly in light of these circumstances? He had no answer. On 9 March 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) announced that Abul-Abbas had died in prison as a result of so-called natural causes. It is only one example among many: hundreds of prisoners have died under inhuman conditions, or as a result of unspecified causes, in jails administered by the occupying forces in Iraq. The “elections” in Iraq demonstrate the limits of the American project. Their friend Ben Ali paved the way two months earlier with his extra-constitutional election.

The year 2004 marks the first time since 1967 that the number of persons held in prisons run by the Israeli, American, and British occupying forces surpassed the number of those held in the prisons of 20 Arab countries combined.

-----------------------------------

Haytham Manna is an anthropologist and doctor of psychosomatic medicine. He has authored over thirty publications and is senior editor of The Short Universal Encyclopedia of Human Rights. A human rights activist for more than 25 years, Manna is the spokesman for the Arab Commission for Human Rights.

This text was originally presented as a speech for a conference organized by the Arab Cultural Center in collaboration with the League for Human Rights (la Ligue des droits de l’Homme) of Liège-Verviers-Huy.

Liège, 25 February 2005 (updated for English translation)