Skip to main content

Home/ authoritarianism in MENA/ Group items tagged torture

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Ed Webb

"The Battle of Algiers" at 50: From 1960s Radicalism to the Classrooms of West Point - ... - 0 views

lareviewofbooks.org/...dicalism-classrooms-west-point

Algeria film terrorism torture insurgency COIN military colonialism

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • The Battle of Algiers continues to be taught and analyzed in military classrooms and government think tanks. To understand why a film that celebrates the overthrow of a colonial regime also appeals to those charged with containing insurgencies, I reached out to a group of military educators and security analysts who have either taught or lectured on the film.
  • in the early 1960s, the tactics used by the two sides were translated into a systematic theory of modern warfare that continues to influence military strategists
  • a few core ideas: insurgencies are hard to manage; to control them requires a combination of vigorous intelligence-gathering and a viable political response. And to defeat an armed uprising requires, above all, winning the “war of values and ideas.”
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Organized by SOLIC (the division of Special Operations/Low Intensity Conflict), the principal civilian advisor to the Secretary of Defense, the screening’s purpose was to cast doubt on the over-confident nation-building rhetoric of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration. The flier publicizing the screening warned that you can “win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas.” It gestured to disconcerting similarities between Algeria and events beginning to unfold in Iraq: “Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?” Barely three months after Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq, SOLIC was presenting a different scenario shaped by the tenets of counterinsurgency
  • After the film’s high-profile screenings at the Pentagon and the Council on Foreign Relations, it was rereleased by the Criterion Collection in a special three-disc edition. The bonus materials included a conversation with Richard A. Clarke, former chief counterterrorism advisor on the National Security Council and an outspoken critic of the Bush administration, and Michael Sheehan, who led SOLIC from 2011 to 2013 and who currently holds a distinguished Chair at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point — one of the Professional Military Education institutions where The Battle of Algiers is regularly taught. Both Clarke and Sheehan use the film to make the case that defeating an insurgency requires winning the “war of values and ideas.” With one eye trained on Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, they emphasize that having recourse to practices such as torture inevitably undermines any attempt at a political solution.
  • All of the defense professionals whom I spoke with tied their interest in the film to their advocacy of counterinsurgency strategies that emphasize political solutions and reject tactics such as torture
  • the inescapable lesson of The Battle of Algiers is that if you act as the French did in Algeria, you’re going to lose
  • To hold that it’s better to win people over with values and ideas rather than by force is good in principle, but it assumes that there are social and political principles that could unite all parties. This seems highly questionable in a situation such as Iraq, where the objectives of the US presence have been far less straightforward than those of the French in Algeria, and where “insurgency” has become increasingly protean.
  • The film seems to be taught in military colleges as a mirror of history, while history is approached as a reservoir of examples from which lessons can be drawn. Ben Nickels, an associate professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, observed that this approach is somewhat symptomatic of the field of military history as a whole. Over the last 30 years, military history has all but vanished from the academic mainstream, flourishing only in professional military education, where it has been sheltered from historiographical practices that focus on primary documents as contingent representations.
  • important to acknowledge the selective, largely symbolic ways in which it frames the war. Consider, for example, its famous treatment of the issue of torture. Though the film examines torture as a moral and political problem, it nonetheless approaches it in the same way that counterinsurgency theory does — as a form of muscular interrogation whose purpose is to obtain actionable intelligence. Yet as Raphaëlle Branche, the leading authority on the question, has shown, torture was used in Algeria not only to extract information but also — as in Latin America and more recently Iraq — as a mode of psychological warfare. Practiced on women as well as men, and often taking the form of rape, it became, above all, a way of inflicting humiliation.
  • In one of the film’s most famous scenes, women who are about to set off bombs in the European quarter are shown unveiling and changing their appearance in order to look more French. In reality, the women responsible for setting bombs were mostly students who already dressed in European style. Though the film shows them acting under the tutelage of Saadi Yacef, they were often better educated than their male colleagues. Since gender remains a focal point of American foreign policy in the Middle East, it’s important to recognize that depictions of Muslim societies frequently distort or oversimplify the nature of their gender relations.
  • A half century after the film’s making, the film inspires more left-wing nostalgia than genuine revolutionary fervor
Ed Webb

Tortured and killed: Hamza al-Khateeb, age 13 - Features - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

english.aljazeera.net/...201153185927813389.html

torture Syria protests

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • "This is a campaign of mass terrorism and intimidation: Horribly tortured people sent back to communities by a regime not trying to cover up its crimes, but to advertise them."
  • A week after his body was returned, a Facebook page dedicated to Hamza had more than 60,000 followers, under the title, "We are all Hamza al-Khateeb", a deliberate echo of the online campaign on behalf of Khaled Saeed, the young Egyptian whose death in police custody last year proved a trigger for the revolution in Cairo.
  • Rezan Mustapha, spokesman of the opposition Kurdish Future Movement said he and others had also seen the horrifying footage. "This video moved not only every single Syrian, but people worldwide. It is unacceptable and inexcusable. The horrible torture was done to terrify demonstrators and make them stop calling for their demands." But, said Khateeb, protestors would only be spurred on by such barbarity. "More people will now go to the street. We hold the Syrian secret police fully responsible for the torturing and killing of this child, even if they deny it."
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman denies ordering Jamal Khashoggi murder, b... - 0 views

www.cbsnews.com/...y-for-it-60-minutes-2019-09-29

KSA Saudi Iran Yemen houthis journalist torture murder rights MBS interview

shared by Ed Webb on 30 Sep 19 - Cached
  • Norah O'Donnell: Did you order the murder of Jamal Khashoggi?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Absolutely not. This was a heinous crime. But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.Norah O'Donnell: What does that mean that you take responsibility?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): When a crime is committed against a Saudi citizen by officials, working for the Saudi government, as a leader I must take responsibility. This was a mistake. And I must take all actions to avoid such a thing in the future.
  • Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven't seen in our lifetimes.Norah O'Donnell: Does it have to be a military response?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): I hope not.Norah O'Donnell: Why not?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Because the political and peaceful solution is much better than the military one.
  • One of the most prominent female activists who fought for the right to drive is Loujain al-Hathloul. She has been held in a Saudi prison for over a year.Norah O'Donnell: Is it time to let her go?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): This decision is not up to me. It's up to the public prosecutor, and it's an independent public prosecutor.Norah O'Donnell: Her family says that she has been tortured in prison. Is that right?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): If this is correct, it is very heinous. Islam forbids torture. The Saudi laws forbid torture. Human conscience forbids torture. And I will personally follow up on this matter.Norah O'Donnell: You will personally follow up on it?Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (Translation): Without a doubt.
Ed Webb

Tunisia's Truth-Telling Renews a Revolution's Promise, Painfully - The New York Times - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...lutions-promise-painfully.html

Tunisia authoritarianism torture prison policing police memory history politics transition

shared by Ed Webb on 23 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • In eight hearings over five months, the commission has opened a Pandora’s box of emotions for Tunisians. After long averting their gaze from past horrors, Tunisians are now digging deep into the dirt. Even former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali has been watching the proceedings from exile in Saudi Arabia, according to his lawyer.
  • The commission’s effort to confront past horrors and bring some perpetrators to justice, even while pushing reconciliation, has been painful in more ways than one. Opponents have been vociferous and have undermined public confidence in the process.Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands remain transfixed by the hearings, and the victims’ humanity is winning through, quelling some of the loudest critics. And there are the first signs that the truth-telling is changing attitudes and opening a path to reconciliation. If nothing else it has opened a national debate.
  • victims have continued to talk long into the night, describing a litany of killings, forced disappearances, torture and oppression from the nearly 60 years of authoritarian rule. Their testimony has shredded long-accepted official narratives and has exposed abuse, a topic that was taboo until the country’s 2010-11 revolution ousted Mr. Ben Ali.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • he did not expect the wider ripples, such as when a police official stood up at a conference and apologized to him for the harm done. And the process has healed a decades-long rift in his family, who were driven apart under the strain of the oppression and opposed his testifying in public
  • Mr. Brahim says if they tell the truth he is prepared to forgive them. “I am not denouncing people but the system,” he said. “I want them to unveil the truth and unveil this system of torturers.”
  • the commission can also pass cases for prosecution to special chambers for transitional justice, and may do so for about 100 of the most egregious or symbolic cases of the 65,000 lodged.
  • Drawing on the experiences of transitional justice processes in South Africa, Latin America, Poland and other places, the commission decided against bringing victims face to face with their former torturers, since it can make them relive their trauma.
  • exposing the mechanics of authoritarianism
  • President Béji Caïd Essebsi, who served in prominent positions under both dictatorships, and his government’s officials have declined to attend the hearings.
  • Officials who worked for the previous governments complain that the hearings are one-sided and have given voice only to the victims. “That gives the idea of injustice and lack of transparency,” said Mohamed Ghariani, who was the head of the R.C.D. ruling party under President Ben Ali and who spent 28 months in prison after the revolution.
  • many former officials still feel threatened by the process and continue to intimidate their victims, commissioners say. Victims remain scared to come forward, said Leyla Rabbi, president of the commission’s regional office in the marginalized northwestern town of Kasserine. No perpetrators there had come forward, either.
  • “There is a kind of shivering, an explosion within society.”
  • In March, she was invited to a mainstream television talk show — unheard-of just a few months ago for a veiled Islamist activist — and found a new television audience, mainly young viewers, writing to her.The biggest change was when she went to renew her identity papers at her local police station several weeks ago. The chief recognized her and invited her to his office. She feared a reprimand after her accusations about torture.Instead, he only wanted to assure her of his readiness to assist.“That was a surprise,” Ms. Ajengui said, flashing the smile that has endeared her to many across the country. “I thought he was going to be angry.”
  • Ed Webb on 23 Apr 17
     
    Noteworthy that, as with the constitution-drafting process, Tunisians have carefully studied other countries' experience in deciding how to address this very sensitive part of the transition process.
Ed Webb

Abu Dhabi crown prince targeted by French torture probe: sources - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/h-torture-probe-165601158.html

torture France Yemen UAE KSA Saudi law rights

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jul 20 - Cached
  • French authorities are opening an investigation into accusations of complicity in acts of torture against the powerful crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan
  • Six Yemenis had filed a complaint with a judge specialising in crimes against humanity
  • Their complaint focuses on alleged acts of torture committed in UAE-controlled detention centres on Yemeni territory.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Such accusations can be tried in France on the basis of universal jurisdiction which allows the courts to take on cases, even if the alleged crimes took place on foreign territory.
Ed Webb

Egypt: What doesn't Morsi understand about police reform? - Opinion - Ahram Online - 0 views

english.ahram.org.eg/...nderstand-about-police-re.aspx

Egypt police policing reform history opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 12 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • torture was repealed from the Egyptian criminal code in the 19th Century because of a decision from within the state apparatus itself, specifically the police which reached an advanced degree of professionalism. It was also a reflection of a high degree of centralisation, strength and self-confidence of the state’s administrative apparatus, at the heart of which is the police.
  • It is disappointing to watch the serious regression of the Egyptian state over the past 30 years; a regression back to torture practices at police stations and locations of detention in Egypt. Even more upsetting is that those in power today do not recognise the dangers of continuing to ignore this explosive issue, especially after a revolution which – in my opinion – primarily occurred to end torture and other systematic abuses by police against citizens.
  • Egypt’s police today, unlike in the 19th Century, cannot reform itself from within because the state’s administrative apparatus – the judiciary and forensic science – which aided the police in this difficult task in the past, has collapsed. Meanwhile, torture has become systematic and routine which makes it impossible to expect police officers and commanders to accept this mission voluntarily.
Ed Webb

Tunisia's War on Islam | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...tunisias-war-on-islam

Tunisia politics transition extremism terrorism policing police torture repression conservatism laicite

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 17 - Cached
  • Ayari had no ties to terrorist groups. But it soon became clear that his appearance had turned him into a suspect in his own right. He was charged with terrorism, detained for several days, and savagely beaten. “The police officer spat in my face and beat me,” the 29-year-old Ayari told me later. “My face was bruised, my mouth was bleeding. A beard and traditional clothing mean ‘terrorism’ for security forces in Tunisia. That’s the bitter reality.”
  • “Today there’s a sort of trivialization of torture, especially in terrorism cases,” said Amna Guellali, the Tunisia director of Human Rights Watch. “When we speak up about the torture of terror suspects, we risk being considered traitors in the holy war against terrorism — and if we denounce torture, we’re considered pro-terrorist.”
  • Inclusion in the terrorism list also prevents people from obtaining copies of their criminal records. Since these have to be included with job applications, this amounts to an employment blacklist as well. This procedure means that hundreds, if not thousands, of Tunisians, most of whom are already from the most vulnerable segments of society, are subject to economic discrimination.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • a sort of social persecution of men and women who look religious — something that could further exacerbate Tunisia’s terrorism problem. Alienation pushes these people to the margins of society, making them psychologically fragile and more receptive to radical discourse targeted against the state. “How do you expect people to feel when they’ve been subjected to this sort of treatment?” said Ghaki. “They’ll feel hatred and a desire for vengeance.”
  • experiences frequent harassment by police and security personnel because she wears a face veil, the niqab. She said she once had to wait 45 minutes before she was allowed into a hospital. Though she offered to show her face and allow the security personnel to check her identity, she said they made sure to humiliate her before letting her go inside to visit her ailing relative.
  • While people have gotten used to seeing women wearing the hijab in Tunisia’s streets, niqabi women and bearded men are the country’s new scapegoats. Chaima said that she was once called a terrorist by a group of people in a passing car. “It’s not easy to be who we are in Tunisia,” she said. “Some people want to let us know that we have no place here.”
  • a group of lawmakers tried to exploit the rising fear of terrorism by proposing a law that would make it illegal for women to cover their faces in public. The draft law drew comparisons to a controversial 2010 law passed in France under president Nicolas Sarkozy. This is no coincidence. France is Tunisia’s former colonial power, and French law, culture, and values have had a profound impact on modern Tunisian society, particularly among the upper classes.
  • Decades of forced secularization under the Bourguiba and Ben Ali regimes made people less accustomed to the sight of traditional clothing and long beards. Displays of conservative religiosity are less common than in other countries in the region, and thus tend to draw scrutiny.
  • This kind of treatment inevitably contributes to the alienation and sense of exclusion felt by many of Tunisia’s most vulnerable people. It should be no surprise if some of them actually end up joining the terrorists who society has already classed them with. Sometimes it seems that the security forces aren’t even trying. Ahmed Sellimi, another of Mona and Tarek’s brothers, went to a police station one day to try to convince them to stop the harassment. “Why are you here?” asked the agent he addressed. “Why don’t you just go the mountains with the rest of the terrorists?”
Ed Webb

Opinion | Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen Saad Ibrahim Almadi to 16 years in prison... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-sentenced-tweets-saudi-arabia

Saudi KSA MBS twitter repression US USA expression speech

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Oct 22 - Cached
  • The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case.
  • while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure the release of high-profile Americans from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, it has been less public and less successful in securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Saudi Arabia. In fact, despite that Saudi Arabia is supposedly a U.S. ally, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is dealing with its U.S.-citizen critics more harshly than ever.
  • On Oct. 3, Almadi was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He also received a 16-year travel ban on top of that. If he serves his whole sentence, he will leave prison at age 87 — and would have to live to 104 before he could return to the United States.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Almadi was charged with harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism.
  • Almadi has been tortured in prison, forced to live in squalor and confined with actual terrorists — all while his family was threatened by the Saudi government that they would lose everything if they didn’t keep quiet
  • Nobody from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh visited Almadi until May, six months after his arrest. At that meeting, Almadi declined to ask the U.S. government to intervene. Ibrahim said that Saudi jailers threaten to torture prisoners who involve foreign governments in their cases. In a second consular meeting in August, Almadi did ask for the State Department’s assistance in his case. He was then tortured, Ibrahim said.
Ed Webb

Torture and Tunisia: Survivors accuse persecutors on live TV | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...ps-speak-their-pain-1664945889

Tunisia transition crime torture corruption justice dictatorship authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • the Truth and Dignity Authority (Instance Vérité et Dignié or IVD), a body created at the end of 2013 to highlight abuses suffered by thousands of people, mostly before the 2011 revolution that toppled long-term president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali
  • More than 62,000 people and communities have filed cases with the IVD, a figure that includes those claiming to be victims as well as repentant perpetrators.
  • The alleged incident must have taken place between 1 July 1955, when Tunisia became independent, and 31 December 2013, when the country's new Transitional Justice Law came into force. The accused perpetrator must be the state or persons acting on its behalf or under its protection. Finally, crimes should be considered serious or systematic.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • 13,752 complaints of arbitrary arrest have been filed, as well as 6,367 allegations of unfair trials
  • mapping has highlighted the appearance of the so-called "roast chicken" torture method since the 1960s, and has proved that sexual violence was almost systematic in the Cap Bon region at the north-eastern tip of Tunisia
  • “We are not targeting the executioner, but the executives. Those people are sometimes dead, retired or still in office."
  • no one has confessed to the most serious crimes, which would lead to a special trial
  • "There is a huge disagreement between the state and the IVD," Boughattas told MEE - he highlighted the economic reconciliation bill wanted by President Beji Caid Essebsi, which would mean that corruption cases aren't heard by the IVD in the first place.
  • The IVD says it is still in the process of setting up a consultation service to deal with compensation claims.Its leadership says it wants to set up a consultation service to "use reparations according to a development approach". The objective will be to ensure that money that is given back is used not as a compensation fund but as a sustainable resource.
sean lyness

Libya's regime at 40: a state of kleptocracy | openDemocracy - 2 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...e-at-40-a-state-of-kleptocracy

Libya state terror

shared by sean lyness on 27 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Tripoli the "Green House", until its English gardening connotations were pointed out.  More reminiscent of other revolutionary trajectories was his renaming of the months of the year (the Roman words being too reminiscent of the Italian imperial yoke), and his attempt to replace all English words by Arabic (even such good friends of the people as "Johnny Walker" [Hanah Mashi] and "7 Up" [Saba'a Fauq].
  • after 9/11, when Libya took a strong rhetorical stand away from its earlier use and endorsement of state terrorism;
  • Since the early 2000s it has become common to argue that Libya is changing. Libya has for sure altered its foreign-and defence-policy course: many countries do in the course even of a long period of rule by a single leader - even Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union or Kim Jong-il's North Korea, for example. But at home, and the regime's heart, the changes are cosmetic.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Arbitrary arrest, detention, torture, and disappearance still take place
  • no constitutional system
  • Moreover, it is clear is that for all the rhetoric about "revolution" and the "state of the masses" the Libyan leadership has squandered much of the country's wealth twice over: on foolish projects at home and costly adventures abroad.
  • Libya, with a per capita oil output roughly equal to that of Saudi Arabia, boasts few of the advances - the urban and transport development,  educational and health facilities - that the oil-endowed Gulf states can claim
  • Libya has not introduced significant changes to its political system, and especially not with regard to human rights or governance. The Jamahiriyah remains in 2009 one of the most dictatorial as well as opaque of Arab regimes. Its 6 million people enjoy no significant freedoms
  • The improvement in Libya's international profile in recent years reflects the abandonment of the regime's nuclear-weapons programme and its policy of hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder).
  • For Libya's reputation among other Arab states and peoples is abysmal, if the state is not actually an object of contempt.
  • Libya is far from the most brutal regime in the world, or even the region: it has less blood on its hands than (for example) Sudan, Iraq, and Syria
  • ruled for forty years with no attempt to secure popular legitimation.
  • The Libyan people have for far too long been denied the right to choose their own leaders and political system - and to benefit from their country's wealth via oil-and-gas deals of the kind the west is now so keen to promote. 
  • sean lyness on 27 Apr 10
     
     despite a reputation for random arrests and tortures and a public denied the benefits of its country's oil wealth, Libya maintains permissible international image through "cosmetic changes" (?), dropping their nuclear weapons program, and abandoning its policy of "hunting down Libyan dissidents living abroad (including their kidnap and murder)."
Ed Webb

How a man setting fire to himself sparked an uprising in Tunisia | Brian Whitaker | Com... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...tunisia-ben-ali

Tunisia riots demonstration revolution dictatorship media censorship analysis opinion

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Reporting of these events has been sparse, to say the least. The Tunisian press, of course, is strictly controlled and international news organisations have shown little interest: the "not many dead" syndrome, perhaps. But in the context of Tunisia they are momentous events. It's a police state, after all, where riots and demonstrations don't normally happen – and certainly not simultaneously in towns and cities up and down the country.So, what we are seeing, firstly, is the failure of a system constructed by the regime over many years to prevent people from organising, communicating and agitating.Secondly, we are seeing relatively large numbers of people casting off their fear of the regime. Despite the very real risk of arrest and torture, they are refusing to be intimidated.
  • Ben Ali may try to cling on, but his regime now has a fin de siècle air about it. He came to power in 1987 by declaring President Bourguiba unfit for office. It's probably just a matter of time before someone else delivers that same message to Ben Ali.
  • international news organisations have shown little interest: the "not many dead" syndrome, No, that's not the reason. The reason is that this SOB is one of our SOBs. We must be absolutely sure that we don't risk letting let any nasty Islamists or not-compliant folk near the levers of power before we start to fan the flames of democracy.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Tunisia could be the most "laique" eligible country , more than many other arab and some european countries. Women emancipation and civil family laws are an example. Education rate is very high, and the gdp per capita is good.What's missing : transparency, freedom and real democraty.Please don't think that the regime of Ben Ali is the bastion againt extremists .. the unique bastion against all extremists are education , freedom , respect and well being. Fighting extremists by guns , fire and jail is a complete failure. Please note that the modern governments in maghreb countries have destroyed the islamic in-country traditional institutions known by their moderation and their knowledge of the religion whick maked the influence of "eastern islamic schools" like wahabism from saudi be predominant on the new era of staellite channels .. which is not very good news for all of us ..
Ed Webb

Bahrain's arrests of opponents show unsettling pattern of abuse | McClatchy - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...ains-arrests-of-opponents.html

Bahrain rights abuses authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 26 May 11 - No Cached
  • A detailed examination of Bahrain's arrest and treatment of the dissidents shows widespread and systematic abuse that raises questions about whether the country's Sunni Muslim government has crossed a line beyond which it can't restore social peace in the predominantly Shiite Muslim country.
  • dramatic and humiliating middle-of-the-night raids by 30 to 40 masked gunmen, followed by weeks of beatings and abuse in custody. None of the men has been charged with a crime.
  • anti-Shiite slurs
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • "Stop screaming or we'll take your kid,"
  • In a videotaped confession that was played during the trial, defendant Ali Isa Saqer said that Mattar had encouraged the protesters to run over police. Saqer's "confession," which later was aired on Bahrain's government-controlled television, was delivered in a flat monotone, and he appeared to be under duress. Saqer died April 9 while in detention, one of four detainees who've died while incarcerated. A video of his corpse at the ritual washing ceremony showed signs of severe beatings. The Bahraini government has acknowledged that he died of torture.
  • It was a full week before he was allowed to contact his wife, and the call was cut seconds after it began. Later the family learned that he'd suffered continuous and severe beatings during the first two weeks he was held, and had lost 45 pounds. On May 2, Sharif's wife issued a cry for help, saying he'd spent 47 days "in a notorious prison, suffering under brutal and continuous torture." She said he'd been taken to the military hospital twice, but that his family hadn't been allowed to see him. "We do not know whether he will be able to further tolerate daily beatings and torture and pray he survives this unspeakable treatment," she said. Between May 8 and May 22, Sharif had four hearings before a military tribunal, but his lawyer was able to attend only one session. He's been charged with conspiring to overthrow the monarchy.
  • Fairooz, Mattar and Sharif are all known as moderate reformers who advocate a constitutional monarchy with an elected government in place of the royal regime.
Ed Webb

Torture in Bahrain Becomes Routine With Help From Nokia Siemens - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...-nokia-siemens-networking.html

Bahrain surveillance

shared by Ed Webb on 24 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Western-produced surveillance technology sold to one authoritarian government became an investigative tool of choice to gather information about political dissidents -- and silence them
  • “The technology is becoming very sophisticated, and the only thing limiting it is how deeply governments want to snoop into lives,” says Rob Faris, research director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “Surveillance is typically a state secret, and we only get bits and pieces that leak out.” Some industry insiders now say their own products have become dangerous in the hands of regimes where law enforcement crosses the line to repression.
  • Across the Middle East in recent years, sales teams at Siemens, Nokia Siemens, Munich-based Trovicor and other companies have worked their connections among spy masters, police chiefs and military officers to provide country after country with monitoring gear, industry executives say. Their story is a window into a secretive world of surveillance businesses that is transforming the political and social fabric of countries from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. Monitoring centers, as the systems are called, are sold around the globe by these companies and their competitors, such as Israel-based Nice Systems Ltd. (NICE), and Verint Systems Inc. (VRNT), headquartered in Melville, New York. They form the heart of so- called lawful interception surveillance systems. The equipment is marketed largely to law enforcement agencies tracking terrorists and other criminals. The toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “We are very aware that communications technology can be used for good and ill,” NSN spokesman Roome says. The elevated risk of human rights abuses was a major reason for NSN’s exiting the monitoring-center business, and the company has since established a human rights policy and due diligence program, he says. “Ultimately people who use this technology to infringe human rights are responsible for their actions,” he says.
  • Besides Bahrain, several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year -- including Egypt, Syria and Yemen -- also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor. Trovicor equipment plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations.
  • Uprisings from Tunisia to Bahrain have drawn strength from technologies such as social-networking sites and mobile-phone videos. Yet, the flip side of the technology that played a part in this year’s “Facebook revolutions” may be far more forceful. Rulers fought back, exploiting their citizens’ digital connections with increasingly intrusive tools. They’ve tapped a market that’s worth more than $3 billion a year, according to Jerry Lucas, president of McLean, Virginia- based TeleStrategies Inc., organizer of the ISS World trade shows for intelligence and lawful interception businesses. He derives that estimate by applying per-employee revenue figures from publicly traded Verint’s lawful intercept business across the mostly privately held industry.
  • The Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and other human rights activists have blamed Nokia Siemens for aiding government repression. In 2009, the company disclosed that it sold a monitoring center to Iran, prompting hearings in the European Parliament, proposals for tighter restrictions on U.S. trade with Iran, and an international “No to Nokia” boycott campaign. While there have been credible reports the gear may have been used to crack down on Iranian dissidents, those claims have never been substantiated, NSN spokesman Roome says. In Bahrain, officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. He says he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members.
  • During the Arab spring, it was easy to spot the company’s fingerprints, says Gyamlani. Tuning in to Germany’s N24 news channel at his home in Munich, he immediately suspected that governments were abusing systems he’d installed. Failed uprisings stood out to him because of the way the authorities quashed unrest before it spread
  • Schaake says surveillance systems involving information and communications technology should join military items such as missile parts on lists of restricted exports. Schaake helped to sponsor a parliamentary resolution in February 2010 that called for the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, to ban exports of such technology to regimes that could abuse it. The commission hasn’t implemented the nonbinding resolution. The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2010 barring federal contracts with any businesses that sold monitoring gear to Iran. An investigation ordered by Congress and completed in June by the Government Accountability Office was unable to identify any companies supplying the technology to Iran, partly because the business is so secretive, the agency reported.
Ed Webb

Giulio Regeni: Scattered Facts - 0 views

www.jadaliyya.com/...giulio-regeni_scattered-facts

Egypt academia torture police policing crime labor labour workers unions

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Giulio’s first stay in Egypt in 2012 ended after the hysteria about foreign spies. Government television aired public service announcements warning of foreign spies, and as news spread of citizens detaining foreigners they suspected of being spies, “leaving Egypt seemed the most logical next step,”
  • the first time he became nervous during his second stay in Egypt was after his photo was taken at the independent union meeting on 11 December 2015
  • A week before the anniversary of the revolution, he told me he would not leave his house for a week starting on January 18, except for necessities…He understood that the security situation on the anniversary of the revolution was not good
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “From the first moment, I knew that his disappearance was not voluntary,”
  • “Everything pointed to that—the state’s hysteria about everything it does not know, the forced disappearances, the anniversary of the revolution with all the regime’s panic, his turned-off telephone. They were all clear signs. The disappearance was not an accident. We had to move fast.”
  • nside the morgue, confusion reigned. Two doctors with the Forensic Medicine Authority were about to begin the autopsy after conducting a half-hour preliminary examination. But then they received orders to stop, according to a source inside the morgue who preferred to remain anonymous. They were told to wait for Dr. Hisham Adel-Hamid, the head of the authority, to supervise the drafting of the final report.
  • “The young man was tortured for five separate, not continuous days…The torture was not ongoing. On some days of his 10-day disappearance, he was not assaulted.”
Ed Webb

Egypt: Forcibly disappeared transgender woman at risk of sexual violence and torture | ... - 0 views

www.amnesty.org/...of-sexual-violence-and-torture

Egypt LGBT LGBTQ policing police rights abuse abuses authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 08 Mar 19 - No Cached
  • Fears are growing for the safety and wellbeing of Malak al-Kashef, a transgender woman seized during a police raid from her home in Giza in the early hours of 6 March and who has not been heard from since, Amnesty International said. Malak al-Kashef was taken by police to an undisclosed location. Her lawyers have not been able to locate her and police stations have denied she is in their custody.
  • Egyptian authorities have a horrific track record of persecuting people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity
  • Amnesty International believes that Malak’s arrest relates to her calls for peaceful protests following a major train crash in Cairo’s central train station on 27 February that killed at least 25 people. “Malak al-Kashef appears to have been detained solely for peacefully exercising her rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Due to her gender identity, Malak is at increased risk of torture by the police, including rape and sexual violence, as well as assault by other detainees
  • Malak al-Kashef is a transgender woman who is undergoing gender affirming surgery. However, she has not yet managed to have her gender identity officially recognized and is therefore registered as male in official documents
Ed Webb

Tunisia's Authoritarians Learn to Love Liberalism - Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...rians-learn-to-love-liberalism

Tunisia police policing unions truthandreconciliation democratization

shared by Ed Webb on 26 Jun 19 - Cached
  • Despite Tunisia’s history of worker militancy under the more than 70-year-old Tunisian General Labor Union, Interior Ministry laws from prerevolution Tunisia read that police and other internal security services—which fall under the authority of the Interior Ministry—are not allowed to form professional unions, nor to strike. So as the post-Ben Ali era witnessed a blossoming of civil society, the creation of countless nongovernmental organizations, and the spread of public debate, internal security employees took advantage of the newfound opening to create unions
  • “The regimes [prior to and after the revolution] used us. They want to put all the blame for abuses on us,” he said. “Before, it was oppression. Anyone of us could be fired for any reason. The station chief could say, ‘Hand me your badge and pistol and get out.’ So we demanded union rights, and we demanded that our colleagues who’d been dismissed for technical reasons—of course not those who stole or kidnapped—are brought back.”
  • Many Tunisians, from ordinary citizens to politicians to human rights workers, say that the security unions often protect the interests of the security state embodied in the Interior Ministry and protect their members from accountability for past and ongoing abuses, including murder. The portrait that emerges is of a security sector that has managed to precisely use Tunisia’s newfound liberal freedoms to entrench its own authoritarian power—to turn the power of the Tunisian revolution against itself.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • the unions’ most dangerous intervention has been their advocacy for the “Prosecution of Abuses Against the Armed Forces” draft law. In 2015, after the passage of a counterterrorism law, police unions began pushing for the Ministry of the Interior-drafted bill, which would, according to an Amnesty International report, “authorize security forces to use lethal force to protect property even when it is not strictly necessary to protect life, contrary to international standards.” It would also outlaw the “denigration” of the security forces and criminalize the unauthorized publication of “national security” information—a vague law posing an obvious threat to journalists.
  • Yassine Ayari, a rebellious Tunisian MP, is one of the country’s youngest, at 37. He’s also the only MP to have called for the dissolution of a security union. In a clamorous cafe in the basement of Tunisia’s parliament, he said that at several critical junctures since the revolution, the unions have intervened to protect those in the security apparatuses caught up in cases of torture or murder—citing the unions’ 2011 besieging of a military court that was trying officers accused of killing protesters, their call for members not to attend hearings by Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, and their storming of a courthouse to stop a trial and release five colleagues accused of torture
  • When police units have been accused of torture, they have responded with vicious defensiveness
  • the police unions aren’t just hostile to individuals claiming police abuse. They also oppose post-revolutionary institutions aimed at reckoning with the past and achieving a semblance of accountability. Hammami said, “Police unions have also been very hostile to the IVD (the French acronym used for Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, charged with carrying out investigations of almost 60 years of abuses, whose mandate ended in December of last year). The IVD summons officers that might be involved in cases they’re investigating. [The unions] have encouraged their members not to cooperate. They issue statements publicly on Facebook. They put out the message to their members that they don’t have to cooperate with the IVD. Sometimes it’s even more aggressive, saying, ‘Don’t go.’”
  • Truth and Dignity Commission President Sihem Bensedrine said that she believes the security unions are one of the parties most responsible for the undermining of transitional justice in Tunisia. “One of the strongest anti-justice groups are the police unions,” she said. “We have in our final report published their communiqués where they call for police not to testify before the IVD, and where they say they will not assure the security of the courts judging the police officers.”
  • the old regime elements in government need the security forces if they want to maintain power and return Tunisia to the way it was before the revolution. “The old powers want to come back,” she said. “They’re trying to use the police unions to do this. They’re organizing themselves to repress our free voices and protect themselves from accountability,”
Ed Webb

Egypt's rainbow raids - @3arabawy : @3arabawy - 0 views

arabawy.org/111177/Egypt%u2019s_rainbow_raids

Egypt LGBTQ LGBT sexuality homosexuality repression authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 16 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Homosexuality is not officially outlawed, but the country’s “Morality Police” have long fabricated charges using vague legal clauses against “debauchery” and “prostitution” when targeting gay people.
  • Some of the detainees were referred swiftly to court and given prison sentences, while others are still in custody undergoing interrogation. Among them, Sarah Hegazy, a prominent leftist activist who advocated for LGBTQ rights. Her defense lawyers said she was beaten up and sexually abused by inmates after being incited by a police officer. Other detainees faced similar ill-treatment and torture, including humiliating anal examinations.
  • the current campaign is not the first of its kind. Under Hosni Mubarak, the Morality Police and State Security Police rounded up dozens and referred 52 to court on charges of debauchery, in what became known as the infamous Queen Boat Case in 2001. The detainees were tortured and raped, before an international outcry forced the government to halt temporarily the crackdown
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Before the 2011 revolution, the spread of internet access and the rise of blogs and social media allowed Egypt’s LGBTQ citizens a degree of breathing space. Some used blogs and social media to campaign for their rights, while others saw it primarily as a medium via which they could meet and date. Some of the leading human rights activists and anti-Mubarak dissidents were members of the LGBTQ community. But neither LGBTQ movement evolved on the ground nor was gay liberation a cause on the agenda of any political party. The situation did not change much after the outbreak of the 25 January Revolution, though a relatively healthier atmosphere existed briefly from 2011 to 2013, during which some gender taboo issues could be discussed and raised in mainstream circles. The July 2013 military coup, led by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, ended all that. The EIPR has recorded the arrest of at least 232 “LGBTQ suspects” between the last quarter of 2013 and March 2017.
  • The only political group, as of this writing, to take a clear public position against the crackdown and homophobia is the Revolutionary Socialists. The liberal Ad-Dustour Party’s spokesperson Khaled Dawoud condemned the arrests, but according to a source in the party this sparked an internal controversy, and it was decided in the end that his statement was solely his and not the party’s.
  • Ironically, amid an ongoing domestic anti-LGBTQ campaign, Egypt had the audacity to condemn the Orlando gay nightclub shooting in June 2016 in the US. Yet Sisi’s homophobic crusade had already gone international, with his diplomats boycotting the UN’s monitor on anti-gay violence, then later voting (together with the US, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) against a UN resolution condemning the death penalty for LGBTQ people and other groups.
  • in times of defeats and counterrevolutions, reactionary ideas flourish
  • Sensationalist crackdowns on “queers”, “Satanists”, “wife swappers” etc. is a classic tactic by any dictatorship to divert public attention away from its political and economic failures. And Sisi needs such diversion, as the economy is going down the drain.
  • Sarah Hegazi, herself, reportedly resigned from the left-leaning Bread and Freedom Party shortly before her arrest because the party refused to take a stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community. With her arrest, the party issued a brief, weak statement denouncing the arrest, but did not dare take a clear stand against homophobia.
  • Not a single Western embassy in Cairo has issued a condemnation up till now, amid hypersales of arms to Egypt and the signing of security cooperation agreements against “terrorism” and “illegal migration”.
1 - 20 of 77 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page