CASES of torture in police stations continue in Egypt despite an uprising that ostensibly began against police brutality, Amnesty International says.
The recent case of death by torture inside a police station occurred in the area of Meit Ghamr on 16 September.
Amnesty International released two reports on Tuesday on Egypt, focusing on the many clashes that occurred during the military-led transition period.
One focuses on abuse and violations committed by the military which included killing with impunity in the Maspero protests of October 2011, the Cabinet clashes the following December and the crackdown on the Abbaseya protests last May.
The other report looks at rights violations by the police and highlights the dire need for reform. It focuses on the first Mohamed Mahmoud clashes in November 2011, the second wave of clashes after the Port Said Stadium disaster in February 2012 and the Nile City tower clashes last August.
Even though the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi has now assumed power, cases of police torture are still endemic with no signs of abating. One recent case took place in the area of Meit Ghamr, in a small village called Wesh El-Balad on 16 September, according to Amnesty.
A woman who owned a local café was beaten by police in front of her children. A man called Atef El-Mansy accompanied the woman to the police station to file a report.
At the station he was taken, alongside another man Rami Mohamed Rami, and they were beaten and tortured for hours. El-Mansy died on the way to hospital as a result of the wounds he sustained.
Clashes ensued in front of the police station as a result of El-Mansy’s death, which led to another man being shot dead. Amnesty stated that police responses to gatherings and protest is not commensurate to the situation and is often excessive and results in death.
‘Since the (Meit Ghamr) incident, two other people have been killed as a result of police torture, a pattern is emerging of continued police brutality,’ said Karim Medhat Ennarah, a researcher at the Egpytian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Amnesty researcher Said Haddadi said: ‘The police are the biggest instruments of oppression of citizens in Egypt, and there have been no serious steps for reform after the revolution. If there isn’t reform in the future then this torture will continue.’
The second report about police abuses indicates the ‘total impunity’ enjoyed by the three main branches of police forces, the Central Security Forces, the General Investigations Police and the once disbanded State Security Investigations, now known as the National Security Investigations.
The report indicated that there was a ‘longstanding pattern of torture of detainees’ by police coupled with a ‘brazen disregard of the rule of law’.
The report highlights that the police have responded to peaceful protests with excessive and lethal force, inordinate use of tear gas, beatings and arbitrary arrest. They have also used shotgun pellets, rubber bullets and live ammunition on protesters.
Tear gas and shotgun ammunition have been supplied to Egypt by companies based in the United States before and after the uprising, which has prompted Amnesty to call for a halt of weapons shipments until there are guarantees that they were not be used to carry out human rights abuses, including the use of excessive force against demonstrators.
The other report on the military paints a similar picture, with Amnesty documenting unlawful killings and massive ill treatment of protesters by the military, which included beatings, electric shocks and sexual abuse.
Victims were not granted redress when their persecutors were tried by military courts, while civilian courts were ‘unable or unwilling’ to indict any military personnel. Thousands were subjected to military trials that the group described as ‘unfair’.
To add to all this, large swathes of the Egyptian media then ‘distorted the image of the victims’ to allow the military to escape any accountability said Amnesty’s Egypt researcher Mohamed Lotfy.
Meanwhile, nearly 35,000 doctors from 540 government-run hospitals started a partial, open-ended strike on Monday demanding better pay, a plan to raise the health budget by 15 per cent over the next three years, and improved security.
The Doctors Syndicate general assembly said the strike would not extend to emergency rooms, intensive care units, incubators and the cardiology and oncology sectors, as well as police and army hospitals and private clinics.
Health Ministry hospitals provide 40 per cent of all medical services. Emergencies make up only 30 per cent of cases received at government hospitals.
Rafiq Khalil, chairman of the Doctors Syndicate’s Alexandria office, said the strike had a 90 per cent participation rate, and that it would resume until the presidency yields to the demands.
In Assiut, doctors entered an open-ended, partial strike in all of the governorate’s 19 government outpatient clinics.
In Ismailia, all activities at the central hospital have been brought to a halt. No cases have been received at the emergency units or outpatient clinics. Ismailia University Hospital has only been receiving emergencies and closed the rest of its units.
• Egypt’s first labour union for domestic maids was established early this month and already claims a membership of some 300 such workers in four governorates across the country.
Domestic workers, overwhelmingly women, are denied rights under the country’s labour law, and before the rise of the independent trade union movement last year were not permitted to establish an official union.
The many non-Egyptian domestic workers, even now, are not able to join the new union.
Abdel Moneim Mansour, lawyer for the Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement, pointed out that the state-controlled Egyptian Trade Union Federation does not recognise the establishment of housemaids’ unions.
Moreover, he said, Law 12/2003 (the Unified Labour Law) ‘does not provide any legal protection for housemaids, seasonally-employed workers or other forms of precarious labour. Legislators had actively sought to deprive these categories of legal protection.’
Indeed, Article 4(b) of the Unified Labour Law clearly stipulates: ‘The provisions of the present law shall not apply to domestic service workers and the like.’
Mansour explained that his organisation was involved in both establishing this independent housemaids’ union, and in drafting a new labour law to replace the restrictive provisions against housemaids and other precarious occupations.
‘We’ll present our draft law to Parliament as soon as it is (elected, and then) sworn in,’ he said.
Although the founding members of this new union had sought to name it the ‘Independent Union of Housemaids’ or ‘Independent Union for Female Domestic Workers,’ the Manpower Ministry rejected these titles.
Mansour pointed out that, ‘the ministry insisted that we choose from among three titles — “Female Workers with” either “Daily, Weekly or Monthly Incomes”.’
He said ministry officials did not provide them with a reasonable explanation behind the ‘daily, weekly or monthly’ part of the title.
‘Such titles do not specify what kind, or nature, of labour is involved in this union,’ Mansour said.
Given their options, organisers settled for the awkward title of Independent Union of Female Workers with Monthly Incomes, which was formally established on 3rd September.
Hanaa Abdel Hakim, president of the new union, said: ‘Across the country, maids are subjected to numerous health hazards, poor working conditions, long working hours and very low wages.
‘Maids are also subjected to punitive measures on the part of employers and tenants.’
She added that these include ‘non-payment of wages, verbal and physical abuse, being locked up in subhuman conditions, and sexual harassment or assault.’
The union president explained that Egyptian maids are typically paid an average of LE15 per day for a full day’s work, or between only LE100 to LE250 for a whole month of domestic labour.
She said her union seeks ‘to improve working conditions, raise incomes, raise awareness regarding domestic workers’ rights, confront employers’ violations and strive for contracted labour when possible.’
The union plans to seek to establish nurseries and daycare centres for maids’ infants while they are working, Abdel Hakim added.
She said her union now includes over 280 maids from four governorates — Cairo, Alexandria, Beheira and Kafr al-Sheikh.
‘The numbers of our members are steadily increasing. If we keep growing at this rate, then we will soon have thousands of maids join us from every corner of the country,’ she said.
There are perhaps hundreds of thousands of women employed, either full-time or part-time, as maids and domestic workers nationwide.
Although there are an untold number of Asian and sub-Saharan African women employed in this profession in Egypt, Mansour explained that this union is open only to Egyptian female domestic workers. No men or foreign maids are allowed membership in this particular union.
Jenny, a Sri Lankan housemaid who has worked in Egypt for the past 20 years and asked that her last name not be used, disagreed with Mansour’s claim that foreign maids are better off than their Egyptian counterparts.
‘Very few have signed contracts with their employers,’ she said. ‘Most foreign maids that I know of here do not have any kind of contract for part-time or full-time work. Contracts are not at all common, except in some cases where you are working as a full-time resident. No embassy does anything for maids here.’
Fatma Ramadan, board member of the Egyptian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, said Egypt should allow foreigners to organise and unionise, as is allowed for in other countries of the world.
‘Yet our laws do not mention anything regarding foreign workers’ rights. This is a legislative shortcoming that we unionists should take note of, and also address,’ she said.
