‘FREE the 15 Alexandria dockworkers from jail and drop all charges’ demanded trade unionists in a letter to the Egyptian Minister and migration last Friday.
The Spanish trade union Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) letter, dated 29 September 2016, stated:
‘Re: Detention of naval dockyard employees
‘We have been informed that fifteen employees of the Alexandria naval dockyards have been held in custody for more than four months. The “crime” of which they are accused is that of having perpetrated acts which are in conformity with current international conventions on workers’ rights, and to which Egypt is a signatory.
‘They are indeed accused of “having incited workers in various divisions of the enterprise to stop work as well as of calling meetings, and of organising a mobilisation inside the enterprise, with the aim of stopping production and of sowing disorder”.
‘After several delays, on 18th October the military tribunal will deliver its judgement on the fifteen detained employees. For more than four months, their families no longer have anything to live on, because the payment of their wages has been suspended. Furthermore, proceedings have been initiated for the same reasons against eleven of their colleagues.
‘Together with the Egyptian organisations who are supporting them, CCOO Spain requests the halting of all proceedings which have been initiated and the inmediate freeing of the detained workers.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘On behalf of CCOO Spain,
‘Cristina Faciaben Lacorte ‘International and Cooperation Secretary.’
Meanwhile, Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) is scheduled to issue its ruling regarding the constitutionality of articles 7 and 19 of the draconian anti-protest law on December 3rd. The articles under appeal include article 8 which sets a time limit of 15 days at the most for notifying the authorities of a future protest, and article 10 that gives the interior minister the power to cancel protests ahead of their scheduled date.
Meanwhile, articles 7 and 19 address actions that are already penalised by the Penal Code and the Arms and Ammunition Act including the possession of arms and disrupting transportation, according to the Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR).
The widely criticised protest law was issued in November 2013 by then Interim President Adly Mansour amid a tense political environment characterised by recurrent protests. Since its adoption, hundreds have been handed down prison sentences and/or hefty fines for violating the law and protesting without obtaining prior approval from the interior ministry.
Rights groups repeatedly condemned the law, describing it as an encroachment on the right of assembly, and the freedom of expression. Upon the adoption of the law, Amnesty International described it as ‘placing broad restrictions on protests in Egypt,’ and ‘a serious setback that poses a grave threat to freedom of assembly and gives security forces a free rein to use excessive force, including lethal force, against demonstrators.’
In September 2014, the ECESR filed one of the lawsuits mentioned above, appealing articles 8 and 10 of the protest law, and suggested several amendments to the law in its current format. Suggested amendments include handing the governor the authority to issue executive decisions regarding protests instead of the interior minister, and giving the administrative court supervisory authority over the governors’ decisions.
ECESR also stated that breaking up gatherings should be ‘gradual and without using legal force’.
Article 73 of Egypt’s constitution states that ‘citizens shall have the right to organise public meetings, marches, demonstrations and all forms of peaceful protests, without carrying arms of any kind, by serving a notification as regulated by Law. The right to peaceful and private assembly is guaranteed without need for prior notification. Security forces may not attend, monitor or eavesdrop on such meetings.’
• Egyptian police detained three opposition journalists who were conducting street interviews in downtown Cairo about President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi’s request for small donations of spare change to fund development programmes, security officials said Saturday.
They report that the three – Hamdy Mokhtar, Mohammed Hassan, and Osama al-Bishbishi – were arrested on September 26th and face charges of publishing false news and belonging to a banned organisation, Egyptian parlance for the Muslim Brotherhood group.
The three were remanded into police custody for three days pending further investigation. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, said one of the three, Mokhtar, was arrested in July 2015 at the state morgue where he was covering the arrival of the bodies of Brotherhood leaders killed by security forces.
It did not elaborate, but security forces in July last year raided what they called ‘a Brotherhood hideout’ in a suburban apartment, killing nine of the group’s leaders. The Brotherhood at the time said they were killed in cold blood.
Mokhtar was released on bail two months later but sentenced in absentia to three years in prison in January 2016 for publishing false news, according to CPJ. A fourth journalist, Noura Nasser, was arrested on September 27th as she interviewed Egyptians with postgraduate degrees protesting outside the Cabinet’s office to demand jobs.
Nasser, who was released two days later, also reports for an opposition news website. The CPJ said she also faced charges of publishing false news. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.
In a statement issued last Friday, CPJ called on the Egyptian government to immediately drop all charges against the four reporters.
‘The delusion that jailing journalists on charges of reporting “false news”, interviewing people on the street or photographing a protest will change reality, is a false hope,’ said Joel Simon, the group’s executive director. Authorities have cracked down on dissent since the 2013 military ousting of an elected Islamist president, Mohamed Mursi.
Mursi took office on 30 June 2012, after being elected by the presidential poll held on 23–24 May and 16–17 June 2012. He was deposed by the Egyptian Armed Forces led by el-Sisi in a coup d’état on 3rd July 2013, following massive protests calling for his resignation. Since then, the police have shown little tolerance for journalists filming or interviewing people in public, unless it is done at government-sanctioned events or by pro-government media outlets. CPJ says 23 journalists were imprisoned in Egypt in 2015. The government denies jailing anyone because of their reporting.
• Journalists’ unions have condemned the killing of a Dutch photojournalist in Egypt’s neighbour, Libya. The International and European Federation of Journalists, (IFJ) and (EFJ), on Monday backed their affiliate, the Nederlandse Vereniging Van Journalisten (NVJ), in condemning the killing of the Dutch photojournalist while he was covering clashes in the Libyan city of Sirte.
The IFJ and EFJ also sent condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. On 2nd October, Dutch journalist Jeroen Oerlemans (45) was killed by sniper fire as Western-recognised government forces battled Islamic State group holdouts in the coastal city of Sirte, a jihadist stronghold 450 kilometres east of the capital Tripoli.
Forces allied with Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord are trying to take the city back from jihadists in an offensive that started in May and which also resulted in the killing of Libyan journalist Abdelqadir Fassouk in July.
Reports said that Oerlemans was shot in the chest by a sniper while he was out with a mine-clearance team, and transferred to the Misrata city hospital, where pro-government fighters are also treated. The photojournalist was working in Libya for numerous publications including the Belgian weekly Knack magazine, which confirmed his death.
Oerlemans had previously covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. He was abducted and wounded in Syria in 2012 with British photographer John Cantlie, but freed a week later thanks to the assistance of the NVJ. The photojournalist is survived by a wife and three small children.
