The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it
►https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/28/the-u-s-is-wrong-about-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-arab-world-is-suffering-for-it/?noredirect=on
Texte intégral de l’article:
By Jamal Khashoggi
August 28, 2018
During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement.
That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent book “Into the Hands of the Soldiers,” which was released this month. A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Kirkpatrick gives a sad account of Egypt’s 2013 coup that led to the loss of a great opportunity to reform the entire Arab world and allow a historic change that might have freed the region from a thousand years of tyranny.
The United States’s aversion to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is more apparent in the current Trump administration, is the root of a predicament across the entire Arab world. The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes. In turn, this will mean the continuation of the causes behind revolution, extremism and refugees — all of which have affected the security of Europe and the rest of the world. Terrorism and the refugee crisis have changed the political mood in the West and brought the extreme right to prominence there.
There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it. A significant number of citizens in any given Arab country will give their vote to Islamic political parties if some form of democracy is allowed. It seems clear then that the only way to prevent political Islam from playing a role in Arab politics is to abolish democracy, which essentially deprives citizens of their basic right to choose their political representatives.
Shafeeq Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, explains the problem in this way: “The Arab regimes’ war on the Brotherhood does not target the movement alone, but rather targets those who practice politics, who demand freedom and accountability, and all who have a popular base in society.” A quick look at the political degradation that has taken place in Egypt since the military’s return to power confirms what Ghabra says. President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s regime has cracked down on the Islamists and arrested some 60,000 of them. Now it has extended its heavy hand against both secular and military figures, even those who supported him in the coup. In today’s Egypt, political life is totally dead.
It is wrong to dwell on political Islam, conservatism and identity issues when the choice is between having a free society tolerant of all viewpoints and having an oppressive regime. Five years of Sissi’s rule in Egypt makes this point clear.
There are efforts here in Washington, encouraged by some Arab states that do not support freedom and democracy, to persuade Congress to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. If they succeed, the designation will weaken the fragile steps toward democracy and political reform that have already been curbed in the Arab world. It will also push backward the Arab countries that have made progress in creating a tolerant environment and allowing political participation by various components of society, including the Islamists.
Islamists today participate in the parliaments of various Arab countries such as Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia and Morocco. This has led to the emergence of Islamic democracy, such as the Ennahda movement in Tunisia, and the maturing of democratic transformation in the other countries.
The coup in Egypt led to the loss of a precious opportunity for Egypt and the entire Arab world. If the democratic process had continued there, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political practices could have matured and become more inclusive, and the unimaginable peaceful rotation of power could have become a reality and a precedent to be followed.
The Trump administration always says it wants to correct Obama’s mistakes. It should add his mishandling of Arab democracy to its list. Obama erred when he wasted the precious opportunity that could have changed the history of the Arab world, and when he caved to pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as from members of his own administration. They all missed the big picture and were governed by their intolerant hatred for any form of political Islam, a hatred that has destroyed Arabs’ choice for democracy and good governance.
#démocratie #Islam #pays-arabes #Egypte #Sissi #Morsi #Révolutions-arabes #Trump #Etats-Unis #coup-d'état
]]>Un prix important pour l’écrivaine égyptienne Ahdaf Soueif, défenseure inlassable de la démocratie attribué par la fondation pour la culture européenne
ECF Princess Margriet Award 2019 - European Cultural Foundation
▻https://www.culturalfoundation.eu/pma-2019
Ahdaf Soueif (1950) is a writer and cultural activist working in London and Cairo.
In the last 20 years she has courageously merged literature and activism, building a body of fiction and committed journalism that responds to the legacies of European intervention in conflicts outside of the continent’s immediate territorial boundaries.
The Palestine Festival of Literature (2008–present), of which she is founding chair, created a new form of international cultural cooperation.
Soueif’’s consistent opposition to both authoritarianism and colonialism has marked her as a cultural figure of international importance inspiring new generations of critical voices throughout Europe and its neighbouring regions.
Throughout her career, Soueif has been a tireless mediator between the supposed opposition of east and west, working to find common ground for a more democratic future.
Visit Ahdaf Soueif’s website
Follow Soueif on Twitter
Visit the PalFest Website
]]>Rumours grow of rift between Saudi king and crown prince | World news | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/05/fears-grow-of-rift-between-saudi-king-salman-and-crown-prince-mohammed-
There are growing signs of a potentially destabilising rift between the king of Saudi Arabia and his heir, the Guardian has been told.
King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are understood to have disagreed over a number of important policy issues in recent weeks, including the war in Yemen.
Cet article du Guardian qui met l’accent sur les rivalités entre le roi saoudien et son fils hériter du trône n’est, selon Mujtahid (▻https://twitter.com/mujtahidd/status/1103050802967531521), qu’un leurre, monté par MBS,pour effacer la triste impression laissé par le roi totalement incapable de réciter son texte lors de la dernière conférence à Sharm el-cheikh.
]]>Egypt. Judicial officials: Constitutional amendments final battleground in struggle for judicial independence | MadaMasr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2019/02/21/feature/politics/judicial-officials-constitutional-amendments-final-battleground-in-struggl
In a meeting with Middle Eastern and North African general prosecutors in Cairo on Wednesday, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi once again stressed the importance of judicial independence, asserting that “no one can interfere with the work of the judiciary.”
Yet critics say a set of constitutional amendments making its way through Egypt’s Parliament does precisely that.
Last week, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to advance the amendments, the primary focus of which have been changes that would allow Sisi to extend his term in office until 2034. But the proposed amendments also include a number of other controversial changes, not least of which are revisions to articles that could further undermine judicial independence and erode the separation of powers by giving the president tighter control over the judiciary.
]]>Driving out demons in Mosul
▻https://m.dw.com/en/mosul-where-demons-women-and-islamic-state-met/a-47319908
During the IS occupation of Iraq’s Mosul, secret sessions were held for women to exorcise demons — despite the IS deeming them black magic and banning any alternative religious practices. DW’s Judit Neurink reports.
“Women still come asking for the exorcism sessions,” says Othman, the muezzin who, five times a day, calls the faithful to pray at the Haiba Khatoon Mosque in the center of Mosul. He did the same during the three years Iraq’s second city was occupied by IS and recalls how women would flock to the mosque for the sessions held especially for them to evict djinns, as the Quran calls demons or supernatural creatures.
Othman is sitting in the mosque’s gardens, where men are performing their prayers. This busy mosque near the University of Mosul is used a lot by traders, students and travelers who miss one of the set prayer times.
It seems too busy a place for demon eviction sessions to have been held there, which hardly anyone knew about. Imams who returned to their mosques after IS left deny any knowledge of the practice anywhere during the occupation. “Most people in Mosul had no idea what was going on here,” Othman told DW. “Perhaps only those who regularly came to this mosque to pray.” The sessions were held between the midday and 3 p.m. prayer sessions, and only in the women’s section. “And the women only used the side entrance.”
Secret sessions are said to have been held at the Haiba Khatoon Mosque
As a muezzin during the IS period, and fearing repercussions, Othman is reluctant to provide his family name. But since he had to enter it five time a day for the call, he had a key to the mosque and saw dozens of foreign and local women who turned up regularly for the sessions.
One of the documented cases was that of a young Dutch woman who lived with her IS husband and two children just around the corner in a house they shared with another IS couple. The house is still standing, and its original owners have returned.
Exorcising the demons
Laura H. (whose last name is protected under Dutch law), spoke to Dutch writer Thomas Rueb about the experience. Rueb went on to write a book about it, which was published last year. She went to the sessions, known as rukyah in Islam, because she said her husband had molested her, and she sought the cause for his behavior within herself. Djinns were blocking her faith, which is why she was making mistakes, she was told.
She said she saw women take off their gloves and sit in a small room with their palms upturned. She witnessed how they would all close their eyes and the man leading the session would start to chant texts from the Quran in a strange, high-pitched voice, gradually getting louder and louder. How he would hit the women on the palms of their hands — a scandal according to IS rules prohibiting all physical contact between men and women who are not married or related.
She recounts how a young woman fell into a trance and pulled off her scarf — another taboo. Then how the women would start to vomit and fall to the floor as if they had lost control of their muscles. How they screamed, cried and laughed. When the session ended after some 20 minutes, the women rearranged their clothes and went outside in silence.
The man who led the sessions was Abu Younis, a 55-year-old tailor with no Islamic education, Othman says. Younis had no ties to IS either, but because of his popularity, the terror group allowed him to conduct the rukyah in the mosque. This is quite extraordinary, as the group had deemed many other religious practices as shirk, or idolatry. It had forbidden the sales of amulets with Quranic texts and even executed those who offered services of this kind for using black magic.
Did IS turn a blind eye?
Before IS, these had been common practices for Sunnis in Mosul and elsewhere in Iraq. For women who desperately wanted a son, or others with illnesses that would not clear up, a visit to an imam or holy man for an amulet and a prayer would be called for. Others would pray at the graves of saints. According to witnesses in Mosul, exorcising sessions for djinns were also common, especially among Sufis. But Sufism, a branch of Sunni Islam that is more open to the occult, was forbidden by IS, as were all other faiths and customs that were not in line with the terror group’s Salafi interpretation of Islam.
And yet the exorcism of djinns was accepted. That is because they are part of the Quran, says Jamal Hussen, an expert and writer on Salafi Islam from Iraqi Kurdistan. “According to the Salafi doctrine, women are more susceptible to a devilish djinn, because their perceived weakness and lack of intelligence are an invitation for the devil.” Perhaps that is why the eviction sessions only seem to have been attended by women; there is no mention anywhere of sessions being held for men during the occupation.
In the Quran, djinns are a third kind of being, along with humans and angels. The latter are God’s messengers and created from light. Djinns are spirits created from a flame, Hussen says, and disguised from human senses. They can be both good and evil, and share some habits with humans, like getting married and having children. “There is a complete Sura in the Quran about djinns,” he says, and that is why they are part of the faith of Salafi groups like IS. During the war in Syria, the terror group repeatedly stated that they had angels and djinns fighting on their side against the unbelievers.
The djinn method
Conventional medicine would probably diagnose the symptoms of someone who is said to have been taken over by djinns as a psychological illness. But in place of medical treatment, Salafists subject the patient to sessions in which verses of the Quran are read and the djinn is ordered to leave the body. “Often, the patient will hallucinate or may suffer epileptic fits that can sometimes even lead to death. But then it is said that this is because the djinn refused to leave the body.”
The exorcism should be conducted by a man, preferably old and known for his faith, Hussein says, but he admits it is strange that, in societies in which the male and female worlds are as strictly separated as they were under IS, a man should have led the sessions for women at the Haiba Khatoon Mosque. “It is known for men to have abused the situation and harassed the women,” he says. That is why some of the elders of Al-Azhar, the most influential religious university for Sunni Islam in Cairo, have said “this method is nothing but trickery and corrupt.”
After IS left, Abu Younis was picked up by the Iraqi army, Othman says initially, only to contradict himself saying the man cannot be contacted as he has gone underground. Over a year after IS fighters were driven out of Mosul, there are still requests from women for exorcism sessions which would imply that Salafi women are still present in the city. But the Haiba Khatoon Mosque will not be providing them with what they want anytime soon.
]]>On a mission from God : Pompeo messages evangelicals from the Middle East - Asia Times
▻http://www.atimes.com/article/on-a-mission-from-god-pompeo-messages-evangelicals-from-the-middle-east
Commentaire ironique d’Elijah Magnier sur Twitter (▻https://twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1085258903045238784) : Al-Baghdadi a également une « mission divine » et Dieu doit vraiment s’intéresser au Moyen-Orient pour y envoyer autant d’envoyés !
“This trip is especially meaningful for me as an evangelical Christian, coming so soon after the Coptic Church’s Christmas celebrations. This is an important time. We’re all children of Abraham: Christians, Muslims, Jews. In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth.”
He added that he was in Cairo to herald another truth, that America was a “force for good” in the Middle East.
Pompeo then proceeded to rip into former president Barack Obama, who some fringe evangelists have accused of being a secret Muslim and even the Antichrist. The secretary of state used his speech to air domestic grievances, blaming Obama for the rise of Islamic State (ISIS) and the empowerment of Iran.
“Remember: It was here, here in this city, that another American stood before you. He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from an ideology. He told you that 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East.
“The results of these misjudgments have been dire,” Pompeo told an assembled group of blank-faced students, eliciting little palpable reaction.
“We grossly underestimated the tenacity and viciousness of radical Islamism, a debauched strain of the faith that seeks to upend every other form of worship or governance. ISIS drove to the outskirts of Baghdad as America hesitated. They raped and pillaged and murdered tens of thousands of innocents. They birthed a caliphate across Syria and Iraq and launched terror attacks that killed all across continents,” he said.
]]>En 2011, « Le Monde » écrivait :
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/06/16/syrie-la-derniere-carte-de-bachar-al-assad_1536986_3232.html
Sans l’Iran, le régime syrien revient dans le #giron_arabe traditionnel.
En 2019 l’objectif resterait le même, malgré l’Iran
▻https://www.france24.com/fr/20190103-syrie-bachar-assad-diplomatie-retour-ligue-arabe
Interrogé par France 24, Mohammad al-Hammadi, politologue basée à Dubaï, estime de son côté [...] : « J’estime que les Arabes ont beaucoup perdu en coupant les ponts avec les Syriens, je parle du pays, et non pas du régime ou de Bachar al-Assad. Le boycott arabe a eu des conséquences directes sur le sort de la population, il faut donc que la Ligue arabe prenne une décision claire, pour que la #Syrie retourne dans le giron arabe ».
]]>The roundabout revolutions
The history of these banal, utilitarian instruments of traffic management has become entangled with that of political uprising, #Eyal_Weizman argues in his latest book
This project started with a photograph. It was one of the most arresting images depicting the May 1980 #Gwangju uprising, recognised now as the first step in the eventual overthrow of the military dictatorship in South Korea. The photograph (above) depicts a large crowd of people occupying a roundabout in the city center. Atop a disused fountain in the middle of the roundabout a few protestors have unfurled a South Korean flag. The roundabout organised the protest in concentric circles, a geometric order that exposed the crowd to itself, helping a political collective in becoming.
It had an uncanny resonance with events that had just unfolded: in the previous year a series of popular uprisings spread through Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, #Oman, Yemen, Libya, and Syria. These events shared with Gwangju not only the historical circumstances – they too were popular protests against military dictatorships – but, remarkably, an urban-architectural setting: many of them similarly erupted on roundabouts in downtown areas. The history of these roundabouts is entangled with the revolutions that rose from them.
The photograph of the roundabout—now the symbol of the “liberated republic” – was taken by #Na_Kyung-taek from the roof of the occupied Provincial Hall, looking toward Geumnam-ro, only a few hours before the fall of the “#Gwangju_Republic”. In the early morning hours of the following day, the Gwangju uprising was overwhelmed by military force employing tanks and other armed vehicles. The last stand took place at the roundabout.
The scene immediately resonates with the well-known photographs of people gathering in #Tahrir_Square in early 2011. Taken from different high-rise buildings around the square, a distinct feature in these images is the traffic circle visible by the way it organises bodies and objects in space. These images became the symbol of the revolution that led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011 – an event described by urban historian Nezar AlSayyad as “Cairo’s roundabout revolution”. But the Gwangju photograph also connects to images of other roundabouts that erupted in dissent in fast succession throughout the Middle East. Before Tahrir, as Jonathan Liu noted in his essay Roundabouts and Revolutions, it was the main roundabout in the capital of Tunisia – subsequently renamed Place du 14 Janvier 2011 after the date on which President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was forced to flee the country. Thousands of protesters gathered at the roundabout in Tunis and filled the city’s main boulevard.
A main roundabout in Bahrain’s capital Manama erupted in protests shortly after the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt. Its central traffic island became the site of popular protests against the government and the first decisive act of military repression: the protests were violently broken up and the roundabout itself destroyed and replaced with a traffic intersection. In solidarity with the Tahrir protests, the roundabouts in the small al-Manara Square in Ramallah and the immense Azadi Square in Tehran also filled with protesters. These events, too, were violently suppressed.
The roundabouts in Tehran and Ramallah had also been the scenes of previous revolts. In 2009 the Azadi roundabout in Iran’s capital was the site of the main protests of the Green Movement contesting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s reelection. Hamid Dabashi, a literature professor at Columbia University and one of the most outspoken public intellectuals on these revolutions, claims that the Green Movement was inspirational for the subsequent revolutionary wave in the Arab world. In Palestine, revolt was a permanent consequence of life under occupation, and the al-Manara roundabout was a frequent site of clashes between Palestinian youth and the Israeli military. The sequence of roundabout revolutions evolved as acts of imitation, each building on its predecessor, each helping propel the next.
Roundabouts were of course not only exhilarating sites of protest and experiments in popular democracy, but moreover they were places where people gathered and risked their life. The Gwangju uprising is, thus, the first of the roundabout revolutions. Liu wrote: “In all these cases, the symbolism is almost jokingly obvious: what better place to stage a revolution, after all, then one built for turning around?” What better way to show solidarity across national borders than to stage protests in analogous places?
Why roundabouts? After all, they are banal, utilitarian instruments of traffic management, certainly not prone to induce revolutionary feeling. Other kinds of sites – squares, boulevards, favelas, refugee camps – have served throughout history as the setting for political protest and revolt. Each alignment of a roundabout and a revolution has a specific context and diverse causes, but the curious repetition of this phenomenon might give rise to several speculations. Urban roundabouts are the intersection points of large axes, which also puts them at the start or end of processions.
Occupying a roundabout demonstrates the power of tactical acupuncture: it blocks off all routes going in and out. Congestion moves outward like a wave, flowing down avenues and streets through large parts of the city. By pressuring a single pivotal point within a networked infrastructure, an entire city can be put under siege (a contemporary contradistinction to the medieval technique of surrounding the entire perimeter of a city wall). Unlike public squares, which are designed as sites for people to gather (therefore not interrupting the flow of vehicular traffic) and are usually monitored and policed, roundabout islands are designed to keep people away. The continuous flow of traffic around them creates a wall of speeding vehicles that prohibits access. While providing open spaces (in some cities the only available open spaces) these islands are meant to be seen but not used.
Another possible explanation is their symbolic power: they often contain monuments that represent the existing regime. The roundabouts of recent revolutions had emblematic names – Place du 7 Novembre 1987, the date the previous regime took power in Tunisia; “Liberty” (Azadi), referring to the 1979 Iranian Revolution; or “Liberation” (Tahrir), referring to the 1952 revolutions in Egypt. Roundabout islands often had statues, both figurative and abstract, representing the symbolic order of regimes. Leaders might have wished to believe that circular movement around their monuments was akin to a form of worship or consent. While roundabouts exercise a centripetal force, pulling protestors into the city center, the police seek to generate movement in the opposite direction, out and away from the center, and to break a collective into controllable individuals that can be handled and dispersed.
The most common of all centrifugal forces of urban disorganisation during protests is tear gas, a formless cloud that drifts through space to disperse crowds. From Gwangju to Cairo, Manama to Ramallah, hundreds of tear-gas canisters were used largely exceeding permitted levels in an attempt to evict protesters from public spaces. The bodily sensation of the gas forms part of the affective dimension of the roundabout revolution. When tear gas is inhaled, the pain is abrupt, sharp, and isolating. The eyes shut involuntary, generating a sense of disorientation and disempowerment.
Protestors have found ways to mitigate the toxic effects of this weapon. Online advice is shared between activists from Palestine through Cairo to Ferguson. The best protection is offered by proper gas masks. Improvised masks made of mineral water bottles cut in half and equipped with a filter of wet towels also work, according to online manuals. Some activists wear swim goggles and place wet bandanas or kaffiyehs over their mouths. To mitigate some of the adverse effects, these improvised filters can be soaked in water, lemon juice, vinegar, toothpaste, or wrapped around an onion. When nothing else is at hand, breathe the air from inside your shirt and run upwind onto higher ground. When you have a chance, blow your nose, rinse your mouth, cough, and spit.
Du coup : #gilets_jaunes ?
@albertocampiphoto & @philippe_de_jonckheere
This project started with a photograph. It was one of the most arresting images depicting the May 1980 #Gwangju uprising, recognised now as the first step in the eventual overthrow of the military dictatorship in South Korea. The photograph (above) depicts a large crowd of people occupying a roundabout in the city center. Atop a disused fountain in the middle of the roundabout a few protestors have unfurled a South Korean flag. The roundabout organised the protest in concentric circles, a geometric order that exposed the crowd to itself, helping a political collective in becoming.
–-> le pouvoir d’une #photographie...
signalé par @isskein
ping @reka
Khaled Beydoun sur Twitter : “The earliest image of #Jesus in the Coptic museum in Egypt H/t HalDockin” / Twitter
▻https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun/status/1077365451301285888
Egypt. Regeni lawyer discloses names of Egyptian suspects in murder case | MadaMasr
►https://madamasr.com/en/2018/12/06/feature/politics/regeni-lawyer-discloses-names-of-egyptian-suspects-in-murder-case
The lawyer representing the family of Giulio Regeni says she has compiled a list of at least 20 people suspected of involvement in the death of the Italian PhD student, who was tortured and killed in Egypt nearly three years ago.
Alessandra Ballerini made the comments at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday alongside Regeni’s parents and their supporters. She said the list was based on an extensive investigation with a legal team in Egypt, and that most of the suspects were generals and colonels in the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency (NSA).
“It is very unlikely that President [Abdel Fattah al-]Sisi was unaware of what was going on,” Ballerini said.
Regeni, a PhD candidate who was researching independent trade unions in Egypt, disappeared from a metro station on January 25, 2016 — the fifth anniversary of the 2011 revolution — while on his way to meet a friend in downtown Cairo. His body was found several days later, bearing marks of severe torture, on the side of a highway on the outskirts of the city.
Among the names Ballerini identified were the five Egyptian security officials Rome prosecutors placed under official investigation on Tuesday. They include Major General Tarek Saber, a senior official at the NSA at the time of Regeni’s death, who retired in 2017; Major Sherif Magdy, who also served at the NSA where he was in charge of the team that placed Regini under surveillance; Colonel Hesham Helmy, who served at a security center in charge of policing the Cairo district where Regeni lived; Colonel Asser Kamal, who was the head of a police department in charge of street works and discipline; and junior police officer Mahmoud Negm, according to the Associated Press.
“These people should fear being arrested when they travel abroad because they murdered an Italian citizen,” Ballerini said.
]]>Egypt. Regeni lawyer discloses names of Egyptian suspects in murder case | MadaMasr
►https://madamasr.com/en/2018/12/06/feature/politics/regeni-lawyer-discloses-names-of-egyptian-suspects-in-murder-case
The lawyer representing the family of Giulio Regeni says she has compiled a list of at least 20 people suspected of involvement in the death of the Italian PhD student, who was tortured and killed in Egypt nearly three years ago.
Alessandra Ballerini made the comments at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday alongside Regeni’s parents and their supporters. She said the list was based on an extensive investigation with a legal team in Egypt, and that most of the suspects were generals and colonels in the Interior Ministry’s National Security Agency (NSA).
“It is very unlikely that President [Abdel Fattah al-]Sisi was unaware of what was going on,” Ballerini said.
Regeni, a PhD candidate who was researching independent trade unions in Egypt, disappeared from a metro station on January 25, 2016 — the fifth anniversary of the 2011 revolution — while on his way to meet a friend in downtown Cairo. His body was found several days later, bearing marks of severe torture, on the side of a highway on the outskirts of the city.
Among the names Ballerini identified were the five Egyptian security officials Rome prosecutors placed under official investigation on Tuesday. They include Major General Tarek Saber, a senior official at the NSA at the time of Regeni’s death, who retired in 2017; Major Sherif Magdy, who also served at the NSA where he was in charge of the team that placed Regini under surveillance; Colonel Hesham Helmy, who served at a security center in charge of policing the Cairo district where Regeni lived; Colonel Asser Kamal, who was the head of a police department in charge of street works and discipline; and junior police officer Mahmoud Negm, according to the Associated Press.
“These people should fear being arrested when they travel abroad because they murdered an Italian citizen,” Ballerini said.
]]>Detainees Evacuated out of Libya but Resettlement Capacity Remains Inadequate
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (#UNHCR) 262 migrants detained in Libya were evacuated to Niger on November 12- the largest evacuation from Libya carried out to date. In addition to a successful airlift of 135 people in October this year, this brings the total number of people evacuated to more than 2000 since December 2017. However Amnesty International describes the resettlement process from Niger as slow and the number of pledges inadequate.
The evacuations in October and November were the first since June when the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) centre in Niger reached its full capacity of 1,536 people, which according to Amnesty was a result of a large number of people “still waiting for their permanent resettlement to a third country.”
57,483 refugees and asylum seekers are registered by UNHCR in Libya; as of October 2018 14,349 had agreed to Voluntary Humanitarian Return. Currently 3,886 resettlement pledges have been made by 12 states, but only 1,140 have been resettled.
14,595 people have been intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and taken back to Libya, however it has been well documented that their return is being met by detention, abuse, violence and torture. UNHCR recently declared Libya unsafe for returns amid increased violence in the capital, while Amnesty International has said that “thousands of men, women and children are trapped in Libya facing horrific abuses with no way out”.
In this context, refugees and migrants are currently refusing to disembark in Misrata after being rescued by a cargo ship on November 12, reportedly saying “they would rather die than be returned to land”. Reuters cited one Sudanese teenager on board who stated “We agree to go to any place but not Libya.”
UNHCR estimates that 5,413 refugees and migrants remain detained in #Directorate_for_Combatting_Illegal_Migration (#DCIM) centres and the UN Refugee Agency have repetedly called for additional resettlement opportunities for vulnerable persons of concern in Libya.
▻https://www.ecre.org/detainees-evacuated-out-of-libya-but-resettlement-capacity-remains-inadequate
#réinstallation #Niger #Libye #évacuation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #HCR #détention #centres_de_détention #Emergency_Transit_Mechanism (#ETM)
Egypt : ‘We will kill the men and children and leave you to live the rest of your lives in misery’ | MadaMasr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2018/11/06/feature/politics/we-will-kill-the-men-and-children-and-leave-you-to-live-the-rest-of-your-l
Safwat Shehata, a man in his 40s from Upper Egypt’s Minya Governorate, stands outside the entrance of the emergency room at the Sheikh Zayed Hospital on the outskirts of Cairo. Inside, four of his relatives are receiving treatment for injuries sustained in Friday’s militant attack, in which gunmen ambushed Coptic Christians returning from a trip to the St. Samuel Monastery in Minya.
The assailants injured at least 20 people in the attack and killed seven more. Six of those killed were Shehata’s relatives, ranging in age from 12 to 55 years old.
At first, Safwat was unaware that his relatives were killed and injured in the attack — he did not even know they were visiting the monastery that day. “I saw news of the attack on the internet and I scrolled through the pictures on social media. I thought that the casualties were from [the governorate of] Sohag. I didn’t know that my cousins and their families were going on that day,” he says.
Seeing images of bodies covered in blood, Safwat asked God to have mercy on their souls. He kept monitoring news of the attack on Facebook until he received a call from a relative informing him that his cousin-in-law, Youssef Shehata, and five members of his family were dead.
“You must go and save the wounded in Cairo,” the relative told Safwat between cries. “The bodies are being buried here.”
]]>This Is Not an Atlas. A Global Collection of Counter-Cartographies
This Is Not an Atlas gathers more than 40 counter-cartographies from all over the world. This collection shows how maps are created and transformed as a part of political struggle, for critical research or in art and education: from indigenous territories in the Amazon to the anti-eviction movement in San Francisco; from defending commons in Mexico to mapping refugee camps with balloons in Lebanon; from slums in Nairobi to squats in Berlin; from supporting communities in the Philippines to reporting sexual harassment in Cairo. This Is Not an Atlas seeks to inspire, to document the underrepresented, and to be a useful companion when becoming a counter-cartographer yourself.
#atlas (ou pas) #livre #cartographie #contre-cartographie
cc @reka @fil
L’Afrique, du #Sahel et du #Sahara à la #Méditerranée : intégrations, #circulations et #fragmentations
Catherine Fournet-Guérin et Géraud Magrin
L’Afrique, du Sahel et du Sahara à la Méditerranée : intégrations, circulations et fragmentations [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
Africa, from the Sahel and the Sahara to the Mediterranean Sea. Integrations, circulations and fragmentations
Alexis Gonin
Le #foncier_pastoral au Sahel, des #mobilités fragilisées [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
Pastoral land tenure in Sahel : jeopardized mobilities)
#pastoralisme
Ronan Mugelé
La #Grande_muraille_verte au Sahel : entre ambitions globales et ancrage local [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
The great green wall in Sahel : from global to local ambitions
Géraud Magrin et Christine Raimond
La région du lac #Tchad face à la crise #Boko_Haram : interdépendances et vulnérabilités d’une charnière sahélienne [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
The Lake Chad region and Boko Haram crisis : links and vulnerability of a sahelian hinge
Anne Bouhali
Les places marchandes du #made_in_China au #Caire et à# Oran : #mondialisation et transformations des espaces et des pratiques de consommation [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
The marketplaces of made-in-China goods in Cairo and Oran : globalization and transformations of consumption spaces and practices
Nora Mareï et Olivier Ninot
#Chine #Chinafrique
Entre Afrique du Nord et de l’Ouest, les #relations_transsahariennes à un moment charnière [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
Between north Africa and west Africa : trans-Saharan relations at a key moment
Alice Franck
L’échec de la partition d’un État à la charnière entre monde arabe et Afrique subsaharienne : le cas du #Soudan [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
The failure of the partition of a pivotal State between the arab world and sub-saharan Africa : the case of Sudan
Raphaëlle Chevrillon-Guibert et Géraud Magrin
Ruées vers l’#or au #Soudan, au #Tchad et au Sahel : logiques étatiques, mobilités et contrôle territorial [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
Gold rushes in Sudan, Chad and the Sahel : state logic, mobility, territorial control
Laurent Gagnol
#extractivisme #mines_d'or #mines
Marginalité, spécificités et instabilité du #tourisme saharien [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
Marginality, specificities and instability of Saharan tourism
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
Du #kif au #haschich : évolution de l’industrie du #cannabis au #Maroc [Texte intégral disponible en juillet 2019]
From kif to hashish. the evolution of the cannabis industry in Morocco
Egypt backs out of verbal agreement on 4-7 year timeframe to fill Ethiopian Renaissance Dam reservoir | MadaMasr
▻https://madamasr.com/en/2018/09/27/feature/politics/egypt-backs-out-of-verbal-agreement-on-4-7-year-timeframe-to-fill-ethiopia
The irrigation ministers of Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan met on Tuesday in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to be briefed on the latest recommendations on the timeframe to fill the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam’s reservoir, a contentious issue that has long driven a wedge between the parties amid fears of the impact on downstream water supply.
A 15-member scientific study group, comprised of five scientists and researchers from each country, presented its findings on Tuesday to Ethiopia’s Minister of Water, Irrigation and Electricity Seleshi Bekele, along with his Egyptian and Sudanese counterparts, Mohamed Abdel Aty and Khadr Mohamed Qasmallah.
No specific conclusions emerged officially from the meeting, the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation announced through the state-owned MENA news agency on Wednesday. The statement affirmed that all parties are committed to continuing talks, without providing further details.
Yet an Ethiopian diplomatic source, who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, says that there was an initial verbal agreement between the parties, which Cairo has since backed away from.
“The ministers reviewed what the team has been doing during the past three months and consulted on a way forward,” Teferra Beyene, advisor to Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity, tells Mada Masr.
While the study group’s findings have not been officially disclosed, the Ethiopian source tells Mada Masr that the team recommended the 74 billion cubic meter dam reservoir be filled over four to seven years, depending on the amount of rainfall and intensity of the Nile’s water flow.
Following the presentation of the report, the source described Ethiopia and Sudan’s ministers as immediately accepting the recommendations, and expressing a readiness to begin work on a joint declaration to bind the parties to these terms.
While the Egyptian delegation verbally accepted the report’s findings at first, it later said it would need more time to consider, the source explains. “The Egyptian delegation changed their minds and refused to sign the agreement. Instead, they want first to consult at headquarters and come to a decision.”
The four-to-seven-year window falls outside the timeframe Cairo has pushed for to fill the dam. An Egyptian diplomat told Mada Masr at the close of August that Cairo’s concerns have centered around the pace at which the dam’s reservoirs would be filled, and that this issue was the subject of “tough and elaborate talks.”
]]>Egypt Sends Actress to Jail for Spreading ‘Fake News’ Over Sexual Harassment - WSJ
▻https://www.wsj.com/articles/egypt-sends-actress-to-jail-for-spreading-fake-news-over-sexual-harassment-1538
CAIRO—A woman has been sentenced in Egypt to two years in prison for allegedly spreading fake news after she posted a video on Facebook decrying her experience of sexual harassment in the country.
The sentencing of actress Amal Fathy comes as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi has given free rein to the country’s police and judiciary to clamp down on women who complain of sexual assault and harassment and women’s activist groups. The crackdown on women and feminist organizations is part of a broader government assault on civil society, dissidents, and anyone perceived as tarnishing the country’s image.
Ms. Fathy was arrested in a raid on her home in May after she published a video on her personal Facebook page where she talked about her experience of sexual harassment in a Cairo bank.
]]>The U.S. is wrong about the Muslim Brotherhood — and the Arab world is suffering for it - The Washington Post
By Jamal Khashoggi
August 28 at 3:26 PM
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/08/28/the-u-s-is-wrong-about-the-muslim-brotherhood-and-the-arab-world-is-
During the Obama presidency, the U.S. administration was wary of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had come to power in Egypt after the country’s first-ever free elections. Despite his declared support for democracy and change in the Arab world in the wake of the Arab Spring, then-President Barack Obama did not take a strong position and reject the coup against President-elect Mohamed Morsi. The coup, as we know, led to the military’s return to power in the largest Arab country — along with tyranny, repression, corruption and mismanagement.
That is the conclusion that David D. Kirkpatrick arrives at in his excellent book “Into the Hands of the Soldiers,” which was released this month. A former Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times, Kirkpatrick gives a sad account of Egypt’s 2013 coup that led to the loss of a great opportunity to reform the entire Arab world and allow a historic change that might have freed the region from a thousand years of tyranny.
]]>How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
▻https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump
To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves. 1. The euphoria of discovery As the Arab Spring convulsed the Middle East in 2011 and authoritarian leaders toppled one after another, I traveled the region to try to understand the role that technology was playing. I chatted with protesters in cafés near Tahrir Square in Cairo, and many asserted that as long as they had the (...)
#Google #Facebook #Twitter #Instagram #algorithme #manipulation #domination #web (...)
]]>Heat: the next big inequality issue | Cities | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/13/heat-next-big-inequality-issue-heatwaves-world
But air conditioning will remain out of reach for many, even as it increasingly becomes a necessity. In 2014, Public Health England raised concerns that “the distribution of cooling systems may reflect socioeconomic inequalities unless they are heavily subsidised,” adding that rising fuel costs could further exacerbate this. And when we need to use less energy and cool the planet, not just our homes and offices, relying upon air conditioning is not a viable long-term plan – and certainly not for everyone.
‘In Cairo everything is suffocating’
Most of the research into heatwaves and public health has focused on western countries; Benmarhnia says more studies have been done on the city of Phoenix, Arizona, than the entire continent of Africa. But the problem is global, and especially pronounced across urban slums such as the ashwiyyat in Cairo, where temperatures during the city’s five-month-long summers have peaked at 46C (115F).
Traditionally Egyptians built low buildings close together, forming dense networks of shaded alleyways where people could keep cool during summer. But the rapid construction of high-rises and decreasing green spaces have made one of the fastest-growing cities in the world increasingly stifling. Subsidy cuts have brought about a rise of 18-42% in electricity costs, affecting many poor residents’ options for cooling down.
Um Hamad, 41, works as a cleaner and lives with his family in a small flat in Musturad in the city’s north. Though he considers them lucky to live on the relatively cool first floor, “in Cairo everything is suffocating”, he says. Hamad use fans and water to keep cool inside, but the water bill is becoming expensive . “There’s always that trick of sleeping on the floor, and we wear cotton clothes ,” he says. “The temperatures are harder to deal with for women who wear the hijab, so I always tell my daughters to wear only two layers and to wear bright colours.”
In a tight-knit cluster of urban dwellings in Giza, to Cairo’s south, Yassin Al-Ouqba, 42, a train maintenance worker, lives in a house built from a mixture of bricks and mud-bricks. In August, he says, it becomes “like an oven”. “I have a fan and I place it in front of a plate of ice so that it spreads cold air throughout the room. I spread cold water all over the sheets.”
Compounding the threat posed by the changing climate is the refugee crisis. The two are intimately linked, with extreme weather events often a factor in social, political and economic instability. A paper published in the journal Science in December found that if greenhouse gas emissions were not meaningfully reduced global asylum applications would increase by almost 200% by the end of the century.
On a plain north of Amman, some 80,000 Syrians live in the Za’atari refugee camp, a semi-permanent urban settlement set up six years ago and now considered Jordan’s fourth-largest city. Hamda Al-Marzouq, 27, arrived three years ago, fleeing airstrikes on her neighbourhood in the outskirts of Damascus.
Her husband had gone missing during the war, and she was desperate to save her young son and extended family. Eight of them now live in a prefabricated shelter, essentially a large metal box, which Al-Marzouq says turns into an oven during the summer.
It’s suffocating. We soak the towels and try to breathe through them
Hamda Al-Marzouq, Za’atari camp resident
“It’s a desert area, and we’re suffering,” she says by phone from the camp. “We have different ways of coping. We wake in the early morning and soak the floor with water. Then we sprinkle water on ourselves.” There is no daytime electricity, so fans are useless. When power does arrive at night, the desert has already cooled.
Many days, her family will wait until the evening to walk outside, wrapping wet towels around their heads. But the biggest problem are sandstorms, which can arrive violently during the summer months and engulf the camp for days. “We have to close the caravan windows,” she says, adding the room then gets hotter. “It’s suffocating. We soak the towels and try to breathe through them.”
Al-Marzouq’s five-year-old son suffers respiratory problems and keeps getting infections, while asthma is rife across the camp.
Water has also been an issue, with demand in northern Jordan – one of the most water-scarce countries in the world – surging following the refugee arrivals. A Unicef-led operation will see all households connected to a water network by October, which Al-Marzouq says has been a significant help.
“We used to collect water with jerry cans and had to carry it for long distances. Now, with the water network being operational, things are much easier. We don’t have to fight in a long queue to get our share of water. Now there is equity.”
]]>Galal El-Behairy - PEN America
▻https://pen.org/advocacy-case/galal-el-behairy
Galal El-Behairy is an Egyptian poet, lyricist, and activist who has been in detention in Tora Prison in Cairo since March 2018. Early this year he collaborated with musician Ramy Essam on the song “Balaha” and was planning to publish a book of poetry, both of which caused him to be detained, tortured, and imprisoned unjustly for several months awaiting a court indictment. El-Behairy was arrested five days after the release of “Balaha,” disappeared for a week, and exhibited signs of torture when he appeared before the High State Security Prosecution. El-Behairy is currently being held in detention under the High State Security’s charges of terrorist affiliation, dissemination of false news, abuse of social media networks, blasphemy, contempt of religion, and insulting the military. The verdict in his case was expected on May 16, but was then rescheduled to June 27, 2018, and again to July 28, 2018.
En définitive, c’est 3 ans de prison.
▻https://www.raialyoum.com/index.php/%d8%ad%d8%a8%d8%b3-%d8%b4%d8%a7%d8%b9%d8%b1-%d9%85%d8%b5%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d8%
]]>As U.S. pushes for Mideast peace, Saudi king reassures allies |
Reuters
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-paelestinians-usa-saudi/as-u-s-pushes-for-mideast-peace-saudi-king-reassures-allies-idUSKBN1KJ0F9
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent U.S. deal which aligns with Israel on key issues.
King Salman’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defense of long-standing Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing under his powerful young son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, diplomats and analysts said.
This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines, can rally Arab support for a new push to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with an eye to closing ranks against mutual enemy Iran.
“In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “The U.S. mistake was they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine.”
SPONSORED
Palestinian officials told Reuters in December that Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, had pressed Abbas to support the U.S. plan despite concerns it offered the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.
Such a plan would diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 in which Arab nations offered Israel normal ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.
Saudi officials have denied any difference between King Salman, who has vocally supported that initiative, and MbS, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a U.S. magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land - a rare statement for an Arab leader.
The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al-Agha, told Reuters that King Salman had expressed support for Palestinians in a recent meeting with Abbas, saying: “We will not abandon you ... We accept what you accept and we reject what you reject.”
He said that King Salman naming the 2018 Arab League conference “The Jerusalem Summit” and announcing $200 million in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table.
FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attends Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the current status of diplomatic efforts.
RED LINES
Diplomats in the region say Washington’s current thinking, conveyed during a tour last month by top White House officials, does not include Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a right of return for refugees or a freeze of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians.
Senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has not provided concrete details of the U.S. strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.
A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.”
Independent analyst Neil Partrick said King Salman appears to have reined in MbS’ “politically reckless approach” because of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims.
“So MbS won’t oppose Kushner’s ‘deal’, but neither will he, any longer, do much to encourage its one-sided political simplicities,” said Partrick, lead contributor and editor of “Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation”.
Kushner and fellow negotiator Jason Greenblatt have not presented a comprehensive proposal but rather disjointed elements, which one diplomat said “crossed too many red lines”.
Instead, they heavily focused on the idea of setting up an economic zone in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with the adjacent Gaza Strip possibly coming under the control of Cairo, which Arab diplomats described as unacceptable.
In Qatar, Kushner asked Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to pressure the Islamist group Hamas to cede control of Gaza in return for development aid, the diplomats said.
One diplomat briefed on the meeting said Sheikh Tamim just nodded silently. It was unclear if that signaled an agreement or whether Qatar was offered anything in return.
“The problem is there is no cohesive plan presented to all countries,” said the senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “Nobody sees what everyone else is being offered.”
Kushner, a 37-year-old real estate developer with little experience of international diplomacy or political negotiation, visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel in June. He did not meet Abbas, who has refused to see Trump’s team after the U.S. embassy was moved to Jerusalem.
In an interview at the end of his trip, Kushner said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon, and press on with or without Abbas. Yet there has been little to suggest any significant progress towards ending the decades-old conflict, which Trump has said would be “the ultimate deal”.
“There is no new push. Nothing Kushner presented is acceptable to any of the Arab countries,” the Arab diplomat said. “He thinks he is ‘I Dream of Genie’ with a magic wand to make a new solution to the problem.”
A White House official told reporters last week that Trump’s envoys were working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the long-awaited peace proposal, which would include what the administration is calling a robust economic plan, though there is thus far no release date.
Editing by Giles Elgood
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
]]>Egypt: The White House and the Strongman - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/sunday-review/obama-egypt-coup-trump.html
President Trump boasts that he has reversed American policies across the Middle East. Where his predecessor hoped to win hearts and minds, Mr. Trump champions the axiom that brute force is the only response to extremism — whether in Iran, Syria, Yemen or the Palestinian territories. He has embraced the hawks of the region, in Israel and the Persian Gulf, as his chief guides and allies.
But in many ways, this hard-line approach began to take hold under President Barack Obama, when those same regional allies backed the 2013 military ouster of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
That coup was a watershed moment for the region, snuffing out dreams of democracy while emboldening both autocrats and jihadists. And American policy pivoted, too, empowering those inside the administration “who say you just have to crush these guys,” said Andrew Miller, who oversaw Egypt for the National Security Council under Mr. Obama, and who is now with the Project on Middle East Democracy. Some of the coup’s most vocal American advocates went on to top roles in the Trump administration, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser.
Image
In July 2013, supporters of the ousted Mr. Morsi protested in Cairo against the killing of 50 demonstrators a day before. A much bigger massacre came in August.CreditNarciso Contreras for The New York Times
I was The New York Times Cairo bureau chief at the time of the coup, and I returned to the events years later in part to better understand Washington’s role. I learned that the Obama administration’s support for the Arab Spring uprisings had been hobbled from the start by internal disagreements over the same issues that now define Trump policy — about the nature of the threat from political Islam, about fidelity to autocratic allies like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and about the difficulty of achieving democratic change in Egypt and the region.
]]>Hamas delegation in Cairo: More media show for ‘century deal’ than substance | MadaMasr
While ‘a way out’ of the US economic deal was among the delegation’s aims, the refusal of key Hamas political figures to attend makes outcomes of the talks ‘meaningless.’
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/07/14/feature/politics/hamas-delegation-in-cairo-more-media-show-for-century-deal-than-substance
A Hamas delegation left Cairo on Friday night after spending four days in the Egyptian capital, pushing for a temporary resolution to the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip and a way out of the United States’s “deal of the century” with the “least amount of damage” possible, according to a source close to the Palestinian movement’s Gaza-based leadership.
Despite the seeming stakes of the Cairo agenda, a second high-ranking Hamas source minimized the significance of the talks between Egyptian General Intelligence Director Abbas Kamal and the Gaza delegation that is headed by Saleh Arouri and composed of Hamas political bureau members Moussa Abu Marzouk, Ezzat al-Risheq, Khalil al-Hayya, Hossam Badran, and Rawhi Mushtaha.
The second source, who is close to representatives of the Hamas leadership abroad, tells Mada Masr that Cairo extended an invitation to Hamas senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh and the movement’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar. However, neither accepted the invitation, with Haniya calling the visit “worthless,” according to the source.
For the second Hamas source, the visit’s objectives were twofold: “probing” and “staging a media show to suggest to the Americans that the key to Gaza remains singularly in Hamas’s pocket.”
]]>A Strip apart? Gaza grapples with politics of expanded Egyptian administration in Trump’s ‘century deal’ | MadaMasr
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/06/29/feature/politics/a-strip-apart-gaza-grapples-with-politics-of-expanded-egyptian-administrat
An economic delegation from the Gaza Strip arrived in Cairo on Tuesday night to discuss the United States’ proposal concerning the humanitarian and economic state of the besieged Palestinian territory, as Washington continues to push talks concerning the “deal of the century.”
Deputy Finance Minister Youssef al-Kayali headed up the Gaza delegation, which, according to a Palestinian political source who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, was in Cairo “to listen to what the Egyptian side proposes without a preconceived position and without violating known Palestinian principles.”
To this point, indications of Gaza’s appetite for the deal have been absent from the unfolding diplomatic discussions. The US diplomatic envoy headed by Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, and Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, was primarily focused on informing regional leaders of the defining features of Trump’s initiative to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but, notably, did not meet with Palestinian actors during last week’s regional tour, which included stops in Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The framework of the US’s “century deal” involves the construction of a joint port on the Mediterranean between the Egyptian and Palestinian cities of Rafah, according to US and European diplomatic sources that spoke to Mada Masr ahead of the US delegation’s visit last week. The joint port would act as a prelude to extensive economic activity, for which North Sinai would serve as a hub, and would include five principal projects that would be funded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with a labor force that would be two-thirds Palestinian from the Gaza Strip and one-third Egyptian.
]]>Comment la France a armé la dictature en Égypte
Middle East Eye | Akram Kharief | 2 juillet 2018
▻http://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/reportages/comment-la-france-arm-la-dictature-en-gypte-1234736328
Cinq ans après son accession au pouvoir, le président Abdel Fattah al-Sissi a pu compter sur la France comme fournisseur d’armes, dans une des périodes les plus troubles de l’histoire de l’Égypte.
C’est ce que révèle ce lundi un rapport de plusieurs ONG – la Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH), le Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, la Ligue des droits de l’homme et l’Observatoire des armements (OBSARM) – selon lequel « l’État français et plusieurs entreprises françaises ont participé à la sanglante répression égyptienne des cinq dernières années ». (...)
]]>Electro Chaabi: music from the slums of Cairo - 4:3
▻https://fourthree.boilerroom.tv/film/electro-chaabi
Documentary
80 min
2013
Directed by Hind Meddeb
Against a backdrop of corruption and social segregation, youth in the slums of Cairo are dancing nights away to Electro Chaabi.
Inspired by the down-and-dirty music played at street parties and weddings, the sound mixes a punk ethos with hip hop attitude and a furious cascade of electronic beats.
If Buena Vista Social Club introduced the world to lost Cuban music, Electro Chaabi brings the furious, sweaty rhythms of downtown Cairo and the restless, revolutionary fervour of its youth to global ears.
]]>Egypt, Ethiopia approach negotiations over filling Renaissance Dam reservoir | MadaMasr
▻https://madamirror.appspot.com/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/06/21/feature/politics/egypt-ethiopia-approach-negotiations-over-filling-renaissance-dam-reservoir/?platform=hootsuite
As the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) nears completion, both Egyptian and Ethiopian sources say that the most significant outcome of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s three-day visit to Cairo in early June was reaching a direct understanding with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on beginning to draft a legal agreement regarding filling the dam’s reservoir.
The water reservoir is projected to be filled with approximately 75 billion cubic meters over the course of three phases, and is designated to generate a massive electricity supply for Ethiopia. The construction of the dam commenced six years ago, and the Nile Basin country is expected to mark the launch of the first filling phase later this year with mass popular celebrations.
Egypt is concerned that filling the reservoir too rapidly would affect its water share, which it already claims is insufficient. But since construction began, Ethiopia has reiterated that the project — whose projected cost is approximately US$4.2 billion — is vital to the development of the country and to meeting the needs of its population, which is nearly as large as Egypt’s.
Although Ahmed was friendly during the three day visit, which ran from June 10 to June 12, and repeatedly expressed that Ethiopia completely “understands” the significance of the matter of the Nile water to the Egyptian people and, consequently, the implications of “any big setbacks” in that regard for “[Sisi]’s situation,” he was also clear that his country is determined to begin the first filling phase this coming fall, sources speaking on condition of anonymity tell Mada Masr.
]]>Pitch dreams
▻https://africasacountry.com/2018/06/pitch-dreams
Football in Senegal is magic. That the team has qualified for their second World Cup, heightens the joy.
Afternoon football in Yoff, Senegal. Image credit Martin Herrndorf via Flickr.
1986 I am sitting with my father, in a dark living room packed with men. Senegal is playing at the African Cup of Nations in Cairo, Egypt. I don’t remember the opponent. But that year, as renowned and ancient Senegalese sports journalist, Abdoulaye Diaw, always reminds us, we reached the semi-finals. I don’t remember women being there. They would be in the kitchen, cooking, cleansing and fixing something. Sports is a male thing. Suddenly, my father, my uncles, my cousins all wake up in unison. Senegal has scored, I guess. On these rare (...)
]]>1938 : le monde ferme ses portes aux réfugiés
Des réfugiés qui fuient en masse le nazisme, des gouvernements qui leur barrent l’accès à leur territoire, des exilés contraints d’embarquer clandestinement sur des bateaux de fortune, une diplomatie prête à donner des gages aux pires dictatures et néanmoins impuissante, comme l’atteste l’échec prévisible de la conférence d’Évian en 1938 : les analogies sont décidément troublantes entre l’attitude des États à l’égard des Juifs dans les années 1930 et celle qu’ils adoptent aujourd’hui à l’égard des réfugiés.
Les États européens, obsédés par le « risque migratoire », mettent depuis de longues années toute leur énergie à tenir à distance les flux de migrants, demandeurs d’asile inclus, et à leur interdire l’accès à leurs territoires. Cette tendance a été poussée à son paroxysme au moment de la « crise migratoire » de 2015, face à l’afflux de réfugiés venus de Syrie, d’Irak, d’Afghanistan ou d’Érythrée. Au point que plusieurs observateurs n’ont pu s’empêcher de faire le parallèle avec l’attitude qui fut celle des États, dans les années précédant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, à l’égard des Juifs fuyant le nazisme [1].
Ce parallèle non seulement n’a rien de scabreux, mais il s’impose. Il n’a rien de scabreux car si les Juifs, à l’époque, sont persécutés, spoliés, humiliés, pourchassés, physiquement agressés, personne ne peut alors anticiper la « solution finale ». Il s’impose tant les analogies sont frappantes : la fermeture de plus en plus hermétique des frontières à mesure que la persécution s’aggrave et que les flux d’exilés augmentent ; des réfugiés contraints à embarquer clandestinement sur des bateaux de fortune avec l’espoir, souvent déçu, qu’on les laissera débarquer quelque part ; en guise de justification, la situation économique et le chômage, d’un côté, l’état de l’opinion dont il ne faut pas attiser les tendances xénophobes et antisémites, de l’autre ; le fantasme, hier, de la « cinquième colonne » – agitateurs communistes, espions nazis –, aujourd’hui de la menace terroriste ; et finalement une diplomatie qui n’hésite pas à pactiser avec les pires dictatures, hier pour tenter de sauver la paix (on sait ce qu’il en est advenu), aujourd’hui pour tenter d’endiguer les flux de réfugiés.
L’évocation du passé donne, hélas, le sentiment que l’histoire bégaie : car la Realpolitik qui prenait hier le pas sur les préoccupations humanitaires continue aujourd’hui à dicter l’attitude des États, alors même qu’ils ont collectivement décidé d’accorder au droit d’asile une place éminente parmi les droits de l’Homme et se sont engagés à le respecter.
Au lendemain de la Première Guerre mondiale, la communauté internationale, inquiète des risques de déstabilisation engendrés par les masses de réfugiés qui, par centaines de milliers, fuient les guerres civiles, les dictatures, les persécutions, décide de se saisir du problème.
Mais l’action diplomatique en faveur des réfugiés reste subordonnée à la défense par les États de leurs intérêts propres et de leurs prérogatives souveraines. Entre 1922 et 1928, une multitude d’« arrangements » sont passés sous l’égide de la Société des Nations, visant à accorder un minimum de protection aux réfugiés. C’est notamment le fameux « passeport Nansen » qui leur confère, à eux qui ne sont plus reconnus ni protégés par leur pays d’origine, un minimum d’existence juridique. Mais la portée de ces textes, applicables au départ aux réfugiés russes, puis aux Arméniens, puis aux Assyro-Chaldéens, est très limitée, tant par la faiblesse des garanties qu’ils confèrent que par leur absence de caractère obligatoire. Avec l’aggravation de la situation économique consécutive à la crise de 1929, les États n’hésitent pas à refouler ou expulser les réfugiés, considérés comme un fardeau. À l’approche de la guerre, viendront s’ajouter à ces considérations économiques des considérations de police et de sécurité.
Des arrangements sans contrainte
C’est dans ce contexte que les États vont être confrontés à la question des réfugiés provenant d’Allemagne puis, après l’Anschluss, d’Autriche. La diplomatie s’active timidement : un « arrangement provisoire intergouvernemental concernant le statut des réfugiés venant d’Allemagne » est signé le 4 juillet 1936, dont les dispositions sont reprises dans la convention du 10 février 1938 : les États s’engagent à délivrer aux réfugiés un titre de voyage ou un document tenant lieu de passeport ; lorsqu’ils les ont autorisés à séjourner, ils ne peuvent les expulser ou les refouler qu’en cas de risque pour la sécurité nationale ou l’ordre public, et, en aucun cas, vers l’Allemagne sauf « s’ils ont de mauvaise foi refusé de prendre les dispositions nécessaires pour se rendre dans un autre territoire ». Mais la convention n’est signée que par sept pays : la Belgique, la Grande-Bretagne, le Danemark, l’Espagne, la France, la Norvège et les Pays-Bas, et elle n’aura guère le temps, de toute façon, de produire des effets avant le déclenchement de la guerre.
Ayant juridiquement toute latitude pour agir à leur guise, les États n’ont aucun scrupule à fermer leurs frontières. Les États-Unis s’en tiennent à la politique adoptée depuis l’Immigration Act de 1924 et à un quota annuel de 27 370 immigrants pour l’Allemagne et l’Autriche. Après l’Anschluss, le ministre de l’intérieur britannique, s’adressant à la Chambre de communes, affirme que le pays maintient sa tradition d’asile, mais qu’il faut « éviter de donner l’impression que la porte est ouverte aux immigrants de toutes sortes. Car alors de prétendus émigrants se présenteraient dans les ports en si grand nombre qu’il serait impossible de les admettre tous ; les services d’immigration auraient de grandes difficultés à décider qui devrait être admis et d’inutiles épreuves seraient imposées à ceux qui effectueraient un infructueux périple à travers l’Europe [2] ». Pour les Britanniques, au demeurant, la question centrale reste celle de la Palestine : depuis l’arrivée de Hitler au pouvoir, l’immigration est passée de 9 500 personnes par an à 30 000 en 1933 et à près de 62 000 en 1935. Alors que ce territoire apparaît comme le seul lieu de refuge potentiel pour les Juifs, la Grande-Bretagne, confrontée à l’hostilité des Arabes, remet en question son engagement en faveur de l’établissement d’un Foyer national juif : le Livre blanc du printemps 1939 limite le quota annuel d’immigrants vers la Palestine à 10 000 personnes par an pour les cinq années suivantes. Des navires de la Royal Navy patrouillent pour empêcher les réfugiés d’accoster. S’ils n’ont pas de certificat ils sont refoulés ou bien internés à Chypre, sur l’île Maurice ou en Palestine même.
En France, en 1933, les premiers réfugiés passent facilement la frontière. Mais, très vite, les pouvoirs publics s’inquiètent de cet afflux des exilés et, dès la fin de l’année, l’attitude change : nombre de candidats à l’entrée sont refoulés et ceux qui, ayant réussi à entrer, ne sont pas en règle sont expulsés. L’arrivée au pouvoir du Front populaire marque une accalmie temporaire, mais la situation des réfugiés, considérés comme une menace pour la sécurité, voire comme une porte d’entrée pour les espions et les agitateurs, se dégrade à nouveau sous le gouvernement Daladier. En aucun cas, dit le ministre de l’intérieur de l’époque ,« la France ne saurait consentir à ouvrir ses frontières inconditionnellement et sans limitation à des individus par le fait seul qu’ils se prévaudraient de leur qualité de réfugiés. En effet l’état de saturation auquel nous sommes arrivés en matière d’immigration étrangère ne nous permet plus d’adopter une politique aussi libérale [3] ».
La Suisse entrouvre sa porte aux réfugiés allemands en 1933 – mais ne peuvent se revendiquer de cette qualité que les personnes menacées pour leurs activités politiques. Une directive du Département fédéral de justice et police dit très explicitement que seuls les « hauts fonctionnaires, les dirigeants des partis de gauche et les écrivains célèbres » doivent être considérés comme réfugiés [4]. Les Juifs, eux, sont considérés comme de simples étrangers en transit et se voient reconnaître au mieux un droit de résidence temporaire, sans possibilité de travailler. Après l’Anschluss, le gouvernement décide la fermeture des frontières à tous ceux qui ne sont pas formellement habilités à entrer et l’expulsion de ceux qui sont en situation irrégulière. Pour faciliter le travail des autorités suisses amenées à faire le tri parmi les ressortissants du Reich, une négociation s’engage avec les autorités nazies pour que soit apposé un cachet spécial sur les passeports des Juifs – un grand J rouge de trois centimètres de hauteur – qui permet de repérer ceux qui doivent demander une autorisation spéciale pour entrer dans le pays [5].
« Un seul serait déjà trop »
Il n’est guère étonnant, dans ces conditions, que la #conférence_d’Évian, réunie en juillet 1938 pour chercher des solutions concrètes au problème des réfugiés juifs allemands et autrichiens, se solde par un échec [6]. Face à la détérioration de la situation et à la pression exercée par une partie de l’opinion publique, mais désireux aussi d’éviter un brusque afflux de réfugiés aux États-Unis, Roosevelt a en effet pris l’initiative de réunir une conférence internationale qui se tient à Évian du 6 au 15 juillet.
Les représentants des 32 États présents, tout en affirmant leur implication dans le règlement de la question des réfugiés, se retranchent derrière des considérations économiques et politiques pour justifier la fermeture de leurs pays à l’immigration et le refus d’accueillir des réfugiés juifs.
Les pays d’Europe occidentale se disent tous « saturés » : la Grande-Bretagne, la France, la Belgique, le Danemark, la Suède, la Suisse se déclarent les uns après les autres dans l’incapacité d’accueillir des réfugiés et n’envisagent d’accorder que des visas de transit. Le représentant de l’Australie déclare sans complexe que : « N’ayant aucun réel problème racial en Australie, nous ne sommes pas désireux d’en importer en encourageant une large immigration étrangère. » Et le délégué canadien, interrogé sur le nombre de réfugiés que son gouvernement pourrait envisager d’accueillir, répond : « Un seul serait déjà trop. »
Même les pays d’Amérique du Sud, terres traditionnelles d’immigration, font part de leurs réserves : les uns invoquent la crise économique, les autres craignent de déplaire à l’Allemagne à laquelle les lient des accords commerciaux. La Colombie dit pouvoir accepter des travailleurs agricoles, l’Uruguay également, à condition qu’ils possèdent quelques ressources. Seule la République dominicaine de Trujillo offre d’accueillir 100 000 réfugiés juifs autrichiens et allemands, pour des raisons qui ont peu à voir avec la compassion humanitaire : c’est une occasion de « blanchir » une population jugée trop noire ; et cette offre généreuse vise aussi à redresser l’image d’un pays ternie par le massacre, en octobre 1937, à l’instigation des autorités, de milliers de Haïtiens travaillant dans les plantations.
La conférence d’Évian se conclut donc sur un constat d’impuissance de la communauté internationale. Ce qui permet au journal allemand Reichswart d’ironiser : « Juifs à céder à bas prix – Qui en veut ? Personne !? » Hitler en effet peut triompher : personne ne veut accueillir ses Juifs.
Impuissante, cette diplomatie est également sans scrupule, prête à toutes les concessions face à Hitler si tel est le prix à payer pour sauver la paix. Les orateurs à la tribune se bornent à exprimer le vœu d’« obtenir la collaboration du pays d’origine », pays jamais nommé et jamais stigmatisé pour ses agissements ; à aucun moment il n’est fait ouvertement mention du fait que ces réfugiés sont juifs, pour ne pas fournir un argument supplémentaire à la campagne fasciste contre les démocraties « enjuivées ». Dans la résolution finale, purgée de toute appréciation morale sur les persécutions, les termes « réfugiés politiques » sont remplacés par « immigrants involontaires » pour éviter de froisser le Troisième Reich.
Le seul résultat concret de la conférence est la création d’un Comité intergouvernemental d’aide aux réfugiés allemands et autrichiens qui aura pour mission d’entreprendre « des négociations en vue d’améliorer l’état des choses actuel et de substituer à un exode une émigration ordonnée ». Aux yeux des pays occidentaux, en effet, de la même façon que la voie de la paix doit être recherchée en discutant avec Hitler, le problème des réfugiés ne peut être résolu qu’en accord avec les nazis.
Les « petits bateaux de la mort »
Visas refusés, frontières closes : les réfugiés sont acculés, en désespoir de cause, à prendre la mer, le plus souvent clandestinement. À la veille de la guerre, des dizaines, des centaines de bateaux, parfois des paquebots de ligne, souvent des bâtiments de fortune ou de contrebande qui ont pris leurs passagers en charge frauduleusement, naviguent sur les océans à la recherche d’un port où ils seront autorisés à débarquer : le Cairo part le 22 avril 1939 de Hambourg pour Alexandrie ; l’Usaramo pour Shanghai ; l’Orbita pour le Panama en juin 1939 ; l’Orinoco, vers Cuba [7]
D’autres restent bloqués pendant des semaines ou des mois dans les ports roumains de la mer Noire ou sur le Danube. D’autres encore errent en Méditerranée, avec l’espoir vain de pouvoir accoster en Palestine. La presse française se fait l’écho de ces « vaisseaux fantômes » voguant de port en port sans qu’on laisse leurs passagers débarquer, ne serait-ce qu’en transit, transportant par milliers « ces hommes, ces femmes, ces enfants dont personne ne veut », qui sillonnent les mers en se heurtant à l’inhospitalité des côtes [8].
Même ceux qui ont des papiers d’immigration en règle ne sont pas assurés d’être admis, comme le montre l’histoire cruelle du Saint-Louis. Ce paquebot transatlantique quitte Hambourg le 13 mai 1939 en direction de La Havane. Ses 937 passagers, presque tous des Juifs fuyant le Troisième Reich, sont en possession de certificats de débarquement émis par le directeur général de l’immigration de Cuba. Mais, dans l’intervalle, le président cubain a invalidé ces certificats. On interdit donc aux passagers de débarquer. Le bateau repart, et lorsqu’il passe le long des côtes de Floride une demande est adressée au président des États-Unis afin qu’il leur accorde l’asile – elle ne reçoit pas de réponse. Le 6 juin 1939, le Saint Louis reprend sa route vers l’Europe. In extremis, avant que le bateau ne soit contraint de revenir en Allemagne, le Jewish Joint Commitee réussit à négocier avec les gouvernements européens une répartition des passagers entre la Grande-Bretagne, la France, la Belgique et les Pays-Bas qui n’acceptèrent de les accueillir qu’à condition qu’il ne s’agisse que d’un transit dans l’attente d’une émigration définitive vers une autre destination. Temporairement sauvés, une majorité d’entre eux connaîtra le sort réservé aux Juifs dans les pays occupés par l’Allemagne.
Les embarquements clandestins se poursuivent une fois la guerre déclenchée, les réfugiés prenant des risques croissants pour tenter de rejoindre clandestinement la Palestine depuis les ports de la mer Noire, à travers le Bosphore, les Dardanelles et la mer Égée. Un gigantesque marché noir s’organise, avec la bénédiction des nazis qui, avant la programmation de la « solution finale », y voient une façon de débarrasser l’Europe de ses Juifs. Beaucoup de ces « bateaux cercueils », comme on les a appelés, font naufrage, d’autres sont victimes des mines ou des sous-marins allemands, et les épidémies déciment ceux qui ont réussi à survivre [9]. Lorsque, ayant surmonté tous ces obstacles, y compris percé le blocus britannique, ils arrivent à Haïfa ou Tel-Aviv, ils sont, dans le meilleur des cas, arrêtés et incarcérés, sinon refoulés et contraints de reprendre la route vers la Bulgarie ou la Roumanie.
On voit ici, comme un clin d’œil de l’histoire, la place géographiquement stratégique, déjà à l’époque, de la Turquie, qui contrôle la route empruntée par les réfugiés obligés de traverser les détroits du Bosphore et des Dardanelles. La Turquie interdit l’accès à son territoire aux réfugiés qui ne détiennent pas de visa pour la Palestine et, sous la pression de la Grande-Bretagne, ne laisse pas les bateaux faire escale dans ses ports, ce qui provoquera la catastrophe du #Struma (voir encadré). Décidément, on a parfois l’impression que l’histoire bégaie.
–------------------------------------
Le Struma
Le 12 décembre 1941, 767 réfugiés juifs originaires de Bucovine et de Bessarabie – où sévissent les Einsatzgruppen – embarquent sur le Struma, un navire bulgare vétuste, prévu pour une centaine de passagers. Le navire part du port roumain de Constanza, sur la mer Noire, en direction d’Istanbul où les réfugiés espèrent pouvoir déposer des demandes de visa pour la Palestine. Le 16 décembre le bateau arrive dans un port turc au nord du Bosphore, mais la Grande-Bretagne fait pression sur la Turquie pour qu’elle l’empêche de poursuivre sa route. Le Struma reste ainsi bloqué 70 jours, pendant l’hiver 1941-1942, sur le Bosphore. Les réfugiés souffrent de la faim, de l’entassement. Ils finissent par être ravitaillés grâce aux dons des associations juives et avec l’aide de la Croix-Rouge. Les autorités turques décident de le refouler vers la mer Noire et le 23 février 1942 le bateau reçoit l’ordre d’appareiller : ce sont finalement les garde-côtes turcs qui doivent remorquer le Struma, hors d’état de naviguer. Quelques heures plus tard, il est touché par erreur par une torpille soviétique et coule rapidement. Il n’y aura qu’un seul survivant.)
Il y a déjà beaucoup de matériel sur seenthis concernant les #ONG en #Méditerranée (v. ▻https://seenthis.net/messages/678296)
Je me suis dite que cela valait la peine de commencer un nouveau fil, car il y aura encore beaucoup de choses à archiver depuis que le nouveau gouvernement en Italie a été formé...
Ce fil complète plus particulièrement celui-ci : ►https://seenthis.net/messages/514535
#asile #migrations #réfugiés #mourir_en_mer #sauvetage
cc @isskein
Under Sisi, firms owned by Egypt’s military have flourished
▻https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/egypt-economy-military
In the four years since former armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became Egypt’s president, companies owned by the military have gone from strength to strength. Local businessmen and foreign investors are concerned.
By Reuters staff Filed May 16, 2018, 11 a.m. GMT
CAIRO – In a four-decade military career, Osama Abdel Meguid served in the first Gulf War and was an assistant military attaché in the United States.
These days he issues orders from an office that overlooks the Nile, as chairman of the Maadi Co. for Engineering Industries, owned by the Ministry of Military Production.
Maadi was founded in 1954 to manufacture grenade launchers, pistols and machine guns. In recent years the firm, which employs 1,400 people, has begun turning out greenhouses, medical devices, power equipment and gyms. It has plans for four new factories.
“There are so many projects we are working on,” said Abdel Meguid, a 61-year-old engineer, listing orders including a 495 million Egyptian pound ($28 million) project for the Ministry of Electricity and an Algerian agricultural waste recycling contract worth $400,000.
Maadi is one of dozens of military-owned companies that have flourished since Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former armed forces chief, became president in 2014, a year after leading the military in ousting Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
The military owns 51 percent of a firm that is developing a new $45 billion capital city 75 km east of Cairo. Another military-owned company is building Egypt’s biggest cement plant. Other business interests range from fish farms to holiday resorts.
In interviews conducted over the course of a year, the chairmen of nine military-owned firms described how their businesses are expanding and discussed their plans for future growth. Figures from the Ministry of Military Production - one of three main bodies that oversee military firms - show that revenues at its firms are rising sharply. The ministry’s figures and the chairmen’s accounts give rare insight into the way the military is growing in economic influence.
]]>Syria cooperation highlights progress in Egypt-Russia relations as hurdles remain | MadaMasr
▻https://madamirror.appspot.com/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/05/01/feature/politics/syria-cooperation-highlights-progress-in-egypt-russia-relations-
Phone calls between high-ranking Egyptian and Russian officials have brought the two countries into accord on the Syrian crisis, according to an Egyptian government source, in what is one of several breakthroughs on pending Cairo-Moscow diplomatic discussions.
The government source, who is involved in Egyptian-Russian diplomatic relations, says communications between the two countries were at their peak prior to the mid-April joint airstrikes carried out by the United States, United Kingdom and France against government facilities in Syria. Talks centered on possible approaches to the conflict, to be taken in the event that the then-potential tripartite strikes were carried out, that would ensure that Islamist groups do not reap any political gains.
Egyptian-Russian cooperation was and remains mainly an exchange of information aimed at curbing Saudi Arabian and Turkish-backed militias that were deployed to Syria to “overthrow” President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to the source, who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.
The alliance falls in line, the source adds, with Cairo’s position on the situation in Syria: Assad remaining in power is the best available option, despite Cairo’s reservations on certain aspects of the way he’s managed the conflict. Tellingly, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s speech the Arab League summit in Dhahran in mid-April was free of any condemnation of the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta — the stated reason for the tripartite airstrikes — as much as any endorsement of the strike.
]]>Egypt : All for the kids |
The story of a Filipina domestic worker in Cairo
MadaMasr
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/04/21/feature/society/all-for-the-kids
On a hot summer day in 2012, two smartly clad Filipina women arrived at the JW Marriott Hotel on Cairo’s ring road, toting handbags in the crooks of their arms as they had often observed their madams doing. They lingered in the lobby for hours over small cups of coffee as they waited for a phone call.
In one of the rooms upstairs was Coco, another Filipina woman, in Cairo for the first time. She was accompanying her madam from Alexandria and had prepared carefully for the occasion, bringing along a scarf to cover her hair so as to avoid being questioned by the hotel staff. She knew she would not be able to take any belongings with her when she left and so had resorted to layering multiple sets of underwear beneath her dress.
In the late afternoon, Coco’s madam was deeply absorbed in a televised game show she had been avidly following that summer. Taking this as her cue, Coco snuck into the bathroom. She pulled the flush hard and with its sound masking that of the room’s door, slipped out. The keycard she had taken, which she hoped would operate the lift, did not work. Coco saw a guard approaching and grew nervous. She turned to take the stairs and he caught up. The hotel guard questioned her in Arabic, a language Coco had yet to learn. Her heart thumping, she made a phone signal with her hands and feigned an air of calm while repeating the word raseed, so as to give the impression that she was simply heading out to buy cell phone credit. The guard conceded. Once in the lobby, Coco dialed the number she had memorized months ago. On the other end, Sandra, who was sipping cold coffee in anticipation of this call, instructed Coco to head to the taxi stand. Coco was frantic. What does a taxi in this city look like? she wondered. Still terrified of being caught in the act of escape, she scanned the windows for something resembling a white car with a yellow sign on top.
]]>EGYPTIAN PROJECT - Home
▻https://www.facebook.com/egyptianproject
The Egyptian Project, musiques soufies à la sauce électro, concoctées par Jérôme Ettinger. On peut y voir du chic exotique ("Egyptian Project vous entraîne dans un voyage en Orient. Des bords du Nil à l’agitation du Caire, en passant par les Besharis du désert, les tableaux colorés, envoûtants et électronisants s’enchaînent...") ou le fruit d’une belle collaboration respectueuse...
More of an infusion than a fusion, Egyptian Project is the result of a long and commited collaboration between the defenders of Egyptian tradition and a young French musician who mix the sounds of the Nile delta and Cairo with the ambiances of trip-hop, electro, hip-hop, and even classical music. « The fluvial meeting of oriental fragrances and minimalist electronic sounds » makes for a journey into unexplored territories.
(En fait, les deux extraits sont le fruits de charcutages d’un même texte initial, opéré d’un côté par une salle parisienne (▻http://www.petitbain.org/-Petit-Bain-) et par une scène plutôt alternative cairote (▻http://www.culturewheel.com/en/event/2018-03-23/3065).
A vous de choisir votre version !
]]>What is Uber up to in Africa?
►https://africasacountry.com/2018/04/what-is-uber-up-to-in-africa
Uber’s usual tricks — to provoke price wars in an attempt to increase their share of markets, evade taxes, and undermine workers’ rights — are alive and well in Africa.
Technophiles and liberals across the African continent are embracing the ride sharing application Uber. Their services are especially popular with the young urban middle classes. In most African cities, public transport is limited, unpredictable and often dangerous, especially after dark. Uber is also cheaper than meter-taxis. Uber’s mobile application makes taxi rides efficient and easy, and women feel safer since rides are registered and passengers rate their drivers.
Since 2013, Uber has registered drivers in 15 cities in nine African countries: from Cape to Cairo; from Nairobi to Accra. In October last year, Uber said they had nearly two million active users on the continent. The plans are to expand. While media continues to talk about how Uber creates jobs in African cities suffering from enormous unemployment, the company prefers to couch what they do as partnership: They have registered 29,000 “driver-partners.” However, through my research and work with trade unions in Ghana and Nigeria, and a review of Uber’s practices in the rest of Africa, I found that there are many, including Uber’s own “driver partners,” who have mixed feelings about the company.
Established taxi drivers rage and mobilize resistance to the company across the continent. While Uber claims to create jobs and opportunities, taxi drivers accuse the company of undermining their already-precarious jobs and their abilities to earn a living wage while having to cope with Uber’s price wars, tax evasion and undermining of labor rights.
Take Ghana, for example. Uber defines its own prices, but regular taxis in Accra are bound by prices negotiated every six months between the Ghanaian Federation for Private Road Transport (GPRTU) and the government. The negotiated prices are supposed to take into account inflation, but currently negotiations are delayed as fuel prices continues rising. The week before I met Issah Khaleepha, Secretary General of the GRPRTU in February, the union held strikes against fuel price increases. Uber’s ability to set its own price gives it a distinct advantage in this environment.
Like in most African countries the taxi industry in Ghana is part of the informal economy. Informality, however, is not straightforward. Accra’s taxis are licensed, registered commercial cars, marked by yellow license plates and painted in the same colors. Drivers pay taxes. Uber cars are registered as private vehicles, marked by white license plates, which gives them access to areas that are closed to commercial vehicles, such as certain hotels.
Uber is informalizing through the backdoor and pushing a race to the bottom, says Yaaw Baah, the Secretary General of the Ghana Trade Union Congress (Ghana TUC). The Ghana TUC, the Ghanaian Employers Association (GEA) and the government all support the International Labor Organization’s formalization agenda, which says that the formalization of informal economy will ensure workers’ rights and taxes owed to governments.
The fault lines in Uber’s business model have been exposed in other parts of the continent as well. In Lagos, Uber cut prices by 40% in 2017, prompting drivers to go on strike. Drivers have to give up 25 percent of their income to Uber, and most drivers have to pay rent to the car owners. Many drivers left Uber for the Estonian competitor, Taxify, which takes 15 percent of revenues. In February 2017, an informal union of Nairobi drivers forced Uber to raise their fares from 200 Kenyan Shillings to 300 (from 33 to 39 cents) per kilometer; yet still a far cry from a foundation for a living wage.
In Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria, the fragmented and self-regulated taxi industry is associated with violence, conflicts and criminal networks. There are reports of frequent violence and threats to Uber drivers. So-called taxi wars in South Africa, which began in the 1980s, have turned into “Uber wars.” In South African, xenophobia adds fuel to the fire sine many Uber drivers are immigrants from Zimbabwe or other African countries. In Johannesburg two Uber cars were burned. Uber drivers have been attacked and killed in Johannesburg and Nairobi.
The fragmentation and informality of the transport industry makes workers vulnerable and difficult to organize. However, examples of successes in transportation labor organizing in the past in some African countries, show that it is necessary in order to confront the challenges of the transportation sectors on the continent.
A decade ago, CESTRAR, the Rwandan trade union confederation, organized Kigali motorcycle taxis (motos) in cooperatives that are platforms from where to organize during price negotiations, and to enable tax payment systems.
For Uganda’s informal transport workers, unionization has had a dramatic impact. In 2006, the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union in Uganda, ATGWU, counted only 2000 members. By incorporating informal taxi and motorcycle taxes’ (boda-boda) associations, ATGWU now has over 80,000 members. For the informal drivers, union membership has ensured freedom of assembly and given them negotiating power. The airport taxis bargained for a collective agreement that standardized branding for the taxis, gave them an office and sales counter in the arrivals hall, a properly organized parking and rest area, uniforms and identity cards. A coordinated strike brought Kampala to a standstill and forced political support from President Yoweri Museveni against police harassment and political interference.
South Africa is currently the only country in Africa with a lawsuit against Uber. There, 4,000 Uber drivers joined the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, SATAWU, who supported them in a court case to claim status as employees with rights and protection against unfair termination. They won the first round, but lost the appeal in January 2018. The judge stressed that the case was lost on a technicality. The drivers have since jumped from SATAWU to National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers (Nupsaw), and they will probably go to court again.
Taxi operators don’t need to join Uber or to abandon labor rights in order get the efficiency and safety advantages of the technology. In some countries, local companies have developed technology adapted to local conditions. In Kigali in 2015, SafeMotos launched an application described as a mix of Uber and a traffic safety application. In Kenya, Maramoja believes their application provides better security than Uber. Through linking to social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google+, you can see who of your contacts have used and recommend drivers. In Ethiopia, which doesn’t allow Uber, companies have developed technology for slow or no internet, and for people without smartphones.
Still, even though the transport sector in Ethiopia has been “walled off” from foreign competition, and Uber has been kept out of the local market, it is done so in the name of national economic sovereignty rather than protection of workers’ rights. By contrast, the South African Scoop-A-Cab is developed to ensure “that traditional metered taxi owners are not left out in the cold and basically get with the times.” Essentially, customers get the technological benefits, taxis companies continues to be registered, drivers pay taxes and can be protected by labor rights. It is such a mix of benefits that may point in the direction of a more positive transportation future on the continent.
#Uber #Disruption #Afrika
]]>Renaissance Dam discussions in Sudan expected to produce shared initial understanding | MadaMasr
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/04/04/feature/politics/renaissance-dam-discussions-in-sudan-expected-to-produce-shared-initial-un
Diplomatic sources close to arrangements for the tripartite meetings on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that began on Wednesday in Khartoum say the portfolio of understanding that is expected to come out of the talks includes directions such as a partial reservoir filling of the dam by Ethiopia, Egypt’s resort to national water reserves and guarantees granted to Sudan for its development projects.
The diplomatic sources, who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, say that there is “political will” on all sides for the meetings to result in positive initial understandings on the Ethiopian development project, which has strained relations between Khartoum, Addis Ababa and Cairo.
Attending the two-day summit are the foreign ministers, irrigation ministers and intelligence chiefs from the three countries, who will focus on the effects of completing the construction of the dam and making it operational in the second half of 2018.
An Egyptian source, who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity, says the talks are expected to produce three main outcomes. Firstly, Ethiopia will fill the reservoir with just enough water to allow the first two turbines to become operational in the short term (this had been a point of tension previously, as Egyptian officials were concerned that Addis Ababa had begun “early filling” of the dam). Levels of water in the reservoir would then increase incrementally, along with the rise in the number of operational electrical turbines. Secondly, Egypt would ensure it has strategic water reserves in Lake Nasser. And thirdly, Sudan would receive guarantees that its neighbors would support its agricultural projects and other developmental projects it needs to boost its economy.
]]>Egypt court orders suspension of Uber, Careem services in victory for taxis: sources
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-uber/egypt-court-orders-suspension-of-uber-careem-services-in-victory-for-taxis-
Forty two Egyptian taxi drivers filed a lawsuit a year ago against U.S.-based Uber and its Dubai-based competitor Careem, arguing they were illegally using private cars as taxis. They also claimed that the two firms were registered as a call center and an internet company, respectively.
Khaled al-Gammal, a lawyer acting for the taxi drivers, said
the court suspended the two companies’ licenses, banned their apps and suspended the use of private cars by the two ride-hailing services.
Tuesday’s decision was effective immediately, meaning the companies must suspend services pending a final ruling, although the companies have 60 days to appeal, the judicial sources said.
Uber said it would appeal and it was not immediately clear when a final ruling would be issued.
Careem said it had not yet received any official request to stop operations in Egypt, and continued to operate as normal.
Uber intends to appeal any court decision to suspend ride sharing licenses in Egypt, an Uber spokesperson said.
“We will do all we can to ensure millions of Egyptians can continue to enjoy the benefits of on-demand transportation,” the Uber official said.
“We are fully committed to working with the entire sector – including taxis – to improve mobility in Egypt together. We will appeal this decision, and continue to be available in Egypt in the meantime.”
Uber said Egypt is its largest market in the Middle East, with 157,000 drivers in 2017 signed up and 4 million users having used the service since its launch there in 2014.
The San Francisco-based company said last year it was committed to Egypt despite challenges presented by sweeping economic reforms and record inflation. In October Uber announced a $20 million investment in its new support center in Cairo.
It has had to make deals with local car dealerships to provide its drivers with affordable vehicles and adjust its ride prices to ensure its workers were not hit too hard by inflation.
Egypt is one of Uber’s fastest-growing markets, its general manager in the country, Abdellatif Waked, has said, according to state news agency MENA.
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Egypt’s investment ministry said last year that a draft law regulating web-based transport services would provide a legal framework for companies like Uber, but did not say when that bill was likely to be passed.
Uber has faced regulatory and legal setbacks around the world amid opposition from traditional taxi services. It has been forced to quit several countries, such as Denmark and Hungary.
Last year, London deemed Uber unfit to run a taxi service and stripped it of its license to operate. Uber is appealing against the decision.
]]>Same As It Ever Was: Orientalism Forty Years Later
ON EDWARD SAID, OTHERING, AND THE DEPICTIONS OF ARABS IN AMERICA
January 23, 2018 By Philip Metres
| Literary Hub
▻https://lithub.com/same-as-it-ever-was-orientalism-forty-years-later
“Why do they have to show that? That—that—violence,” I said to my mom hours later, burying my face in my pillow, unable to sleep, my little body convulsing with this strange grief.
In the packed dark of our local theater, eleven years old, I’d been reeling, gripping the armrests in terror as Raiders of the Lost Ark flashed across the huge screen. The swashbuckling Indiana Jones had somehow escaped a trap-filled temple in Peru with the golden idol in hand, but his local guide hadn’t. The image of a wide-eyed brown-faced man with a spike piercing his forehead had seared itself in my mind, but now they were somehow in Cairo, and Indiana, having escaped a chase in the casbah, found himself face-to-face with a black-cloaked, scimitar-wielding Arab. Smiling, laughing even, the man flung and swung the comically large sword from hand-to-hand. World-weary, Indiana pulled out his pistol and blew him away. The crowd around me erupted in cheers. Was I supposed to laugh? Before I could react, we were off again, with our American hero, between local “savages” and Nazis, until in the fury of the opened ark, the bad guys’ faces literally melted off. Walking out of the theater, I did everything I could to hold back sobs.
Growing up Arab American in the 1980s, I couldn’t escape these depictions of Arabs as vile, cruel terrorists. I was confused why so many movies I watched featured a bloodthirsty Arab vanquished by white American heroes. It wasn’t just Raiders, of course, it was also the weird creatures of the Tatooine desert in Star Wars, the vicious Sand People, who seemed more than a little familiar. And later, The Black Stallion Returns (1983), and not too long after that, the runaway time-traveling hit, Back to the Future (1985). What were Libyans doing in Hill Valley California, and why did they have plutonium? It was such a non sequitur that we never asked what they were doing there. Of course, the movie wanted us to say, those wretched Libyans! And like the Egyptian sword-wielder who was really a white stuntman, a whole parade of terrorists played by Israeli actors in “arabface” were trotted out in movie after movie produced by the Israeli-led Cannon Films.
Later, when I read the work of Edward Said and Jack Shaheen, I learned that my experience—and these films—are not the exception. Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (2001) looked at nearly 1,000 films and found only a dozen that depicted Arabs in a complex or positive way. Watching television, it was more of the same. I secretly loved the wrestler “The Iron Sheik,” who wore a keffiyah, robe, neat mustache, and played the heel. He was Iranian, actually, but he was as good as Arab to me (shout-out to my Iranian brothers and sisters). When he palled around with the Russian Nikolai Volkoff, I thought of the Russians as odd comrades. Of course, The Iron Sheik played the heel. Whenever the crowd began to jeer him—or anyone—I felt something churn in me. Some kind of fire ignited in my head. I was drawn to the one who was hated. Whether the person was black or brown or queer or just strange, I wanted to stand beside them.
]]>Egypt and Sudan: Diplomatic pacification, unresolved affairs | MadaMasr
▻https://madamirror.appspot.com/www.madamasr.com/en/2018/03/08/feature/politics/egypt-and-sudan-diplomatic-pacification-unresolved-affairs/?platform=hootsuite
Quietly and without an official announcement is how Osama Shaltout, Egypt’s ambassador to Sudan, returned to his post in Khartoum on Tuesday. On the same day, Abdel Mahmoud Abdel Halim, Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, returned to Cairo two months after he was recalled due to tension between the neighboring countries.
Shaltout spent the better part of two months in Cairo, as the Egyptian government worked to resolve the tension. Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid told Mada Masr on Wednesday morning that the reason for the ambassador’s stay in Cairo had been to “take part in official meetings.” Abu Zeid also stressed that Cairo did not recall Shaltout, either in response to Khartoum’s January decision or at any point since.
Although the return of both ambassadors to their respective posts is an indication of the end of the public escalation of tensions, several Egyptian and Western diplomats as well as observers believe that the matters which originally triggered the crisis earlier this year have yet to be settled, even if the restoration of diplomatic relations is a step in the right direction.
“The kind of escalation we saw in the January [between Sudan and Egypt] was kind of a negotiation being carried out in public, with a ratcheting up of rhetoric that didn’t necessarily match what was happening on the ground,” International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Analyst Magnus Taylor tells Mada Masr. “Of course, there are some real structural problems in the relationship on the Renaissance Dam, on the Muslim Brotherhood, the border conflict over Halayeb. But I’ve never really seen any of those issues as escalating into a border war or proxy war.”
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