Thank you very much for inviting me to come to the Parliament of Canada to speak on human rights in Egypt and to give you my assessment and Amnesty International's views on the current situation in Egypt.
In the last year and a half, the country has witnessed some historical events, leading to a lot of expectations for development and improvement of the human rights record of Egypt, which has been grim under Mubarak, and continues to be grim under the military council that is ruling Egypt currently and since Mubarak stepped down in February 2011.
During the uprising, along with a number of other colleagues, we were trying to identify whether police and riot police have been using lethal and excessive force against the Egyptian protesters in the squares and near police stations where they have been protesting across Egypt. We were also looking at the violations by the military itself during those 18 days that changed the face of Egypt. We have come to conclusions around lethal use of force by the police and riot police that was illegitimate and unjustified and where there was no immediate need to safeguard life. It is important to point to that element.
As you know, Mubarak is on trial. The ruling in the Mubarak trial is expected on June 2. This is one of the very hot issues where victims and the families of the victims are going to want to see justice. So far they haven't seen the truth coming out of that trial. We don't want to jump to conclusions as yet, and we'll be able to comment on the trial after it has ended.
Other violations have continued during the past year and a half: torture by the military forces themselves, by the military police, but also by the Ministry of Interior and in prisons. We have been documenting torture under Mubarak for a very long time. I am sad to say that during the last year and a half there are levels of severe pain inflicted by the military on detainees known to be protesters. There are some new phenomena, like virginity testing of female protesters and degrees of sexual harassment against female protesters, witnessed in December last year that we were not documenting in the past.
The level of violence against protesters has remained similar to the pattern that existed under Mubarak's time. Riot police continue to use excessive force, using U.S.-made tear gas canisters to fire in a disproportionate way on protesters who don't represent a danger, requiring such an amount of tear gas, and shot at with shotgun ammunition, mostly produced in the U.S. and shipped to Egypt after the uprising and after Mubarak left power.
This is on the policing side. You might also be interested, as I understand, in the violence that occurred on October 9 in front of the Maspero state television building. This was one of the largest protests that the Coptic community has organized to ask for the end of discrimination and for equal treatment of all Egyptians. This protest was crushed, as you know, by killing 27 protesters. Most of them, 26, were Coptic, one was Muslim, and one soldier was also killed. Most of those killed were killed by bullets. A number of them were killed by being run over by armoured vehicles, driven, we believe, by the military.
The process of the investigation has been just as non-transparent as many other investigations of many protests in the past. The victims of those protests continue to await justice. They cannot see it coming from a military court.
I have to say that the process of investigation has been very complicated. The case was initially referred to the military judiciary. Today there are three officers from the military who are on trial for involuntary homicide for driving those armoured vehicles in the crowds. That's the charge they are facing, but nobody is charged for the killings with live ammunition. Those who were actually investigated in that respect were protesters themselves, and they were initially investigated by the military judiciary and then referred to an emergency prosecution, a civilian judicial power with exceptional powers under emergency law. Later on, that civilian process was referred to an investigative judge, and the process has pretty much stopped so far.
All defendants have been released. We're in the situation where we have two processes in parallel, a trial of three officers in the military judiciary and an investigation that continues until now at the level of the civilian judiciary.
I have to tell you that the lawyers of the victims have withdrawn from the military judicial process, from the military trial itself. They cannot see justice coming out of such a process. The military have proven that they cannot punish or hold to account people among their ranks. They have no access to old case files; the lawyers can only see the testimonies of the defendants themselves, and they can see no justice coming out of a case that is looked at by two parallel judicial investigations.
They have put in a number of demands as lawyers and representatives of the victims who were killed in the Maspero protest. Their main call is for a new, impartial civilian investigation into what happened in Maspero. They are asking for this investigation to be conducted by an impartial body that would have the power to summon officers and military men and military leadership to come and testify about their role in the orders given to those armoured vehicles and army to disperse that protest with lethal force. They have also asked for investigation into the involvement of state TV in inciting public opinion against the Coptic population. Indeed, during the killings, a state TV presenter made a live call to the public to interfere to save the Egyptian army, which is a way of inciting the general population to attack the Coptic protesters, and indeed, many Coptic protesters were attacked by extremists around Tahrir Square. Thank God, nobody was killed, but there were a lot of injuries.
This is one of the incidents where protesters were killed. There were many that followed that one. In Mohamed Mahmoud Street, over 40 people were killed in November. In the December protests in front of the Prime Minister's cabinet, 17 people were also killed. In February of this year, at least 16 people were killed near the Ministry of Interior, and in Suez near the police directorate in the city of Suez. There is a pattern of killing of protesters and excessive use of force that doesn't just apply to the Copts.
A real change in the human rights record of Egypt requires some drastic reforms of the security sector and some courageous decisions from countries that support the Egyptian police, such as the U.S., which continues to send tear gas and shotgun ammunition to the Egyptian authorities. Amnesty called for an embargo on those shipments, those ships of shame, as we call them, that have continued to provide the Egyptian authorities with the tools to repress the calls for non-discrimination and the calls for real, genuine change.
At the level of the current political situation, presidential elections are to start on May 23, in the first round. A number of political parties that we had approached before the parliamentary elections in November have made pledges to respect human rights.
I was able to meet a number of political parties, and the major ones, to get their commitments to what Amnesty sees as the main human rights issues in Egypt. These are: lifting the state of emergency; ending secret detention and torture; upholding the right to freedom of expression and association; providing fair trials to everybody; holding to account people who are suspected of having committed grave crimes under the rule of Mubarak, including torture; realizing economic and social rights for the most poor; ending forced evictions in Egyptian slums and ensuring genuine participation of the local communities in putting forth plans of development for slums; non-discrimination as a principle applied on the basis of religion, race, language, or gender; protection of women's rights; and abolishing the death penalty.
These were the ten points contained in our Amnesty manifesto, which I lobbied to political parties participating in the elections in November. Lots of them have committed to those points. Nine political parties have actually signed our manifesto, only two unreservedly. A few of the more liberal parties have agreed to all the points, except the abolition of the death penalty. And a couple of parties with Islamic backgrounds, including the Salafist Al-Nour party, which came second in the elections, have agreed to all the points except protection of women's rights and abolition of the death penalty.
The Freedom and Justice Party, which is the largest party in Egypt, has not signed the manifesto and has not given us any feedback, despite repeated demands to obtain pledges from them about their organization. We can see from their performance in parliament that they have been progressive on some civil and political rights, limiting the powers of the military tribunals to try civilians, for example, and trying to introduce a definition of torture that would encompass all forms of ill treatment. But on the other side, there is more to do in terms of rights of association and protection of women's rights. Some statements have been particularly worrying, for example, reducing the age of marriage to 14 years for girls and allowing female genital mutilation.
Now the presidential race has started with thirteen candidates, and some of the candidates belong to that political current of political Islam, where we have some worries around non-discrimination, especially on the basis of gender.
Other candidates have represented parties that we have approached who have been supportive of our manifesto for human rights changes. Amnesty met a number of the candidates previously, before they were presidential candidates, and has an open dialogue with a number of them.
Just to end on the presidential elections, there is a mounting fear of violence and attacks against protesters. Indeed, some protesters were attacked in the last couple of days near the Ministry of Defence. With the political situation, we foresee that there could be some questioning around the results of the elections, especially given that the electoral committee itself is immune from actually appealing the results of the elections, legally speaking and according to the constitutional declaration. There is a fear around questioning the results and losing trust and credibility in that committee.
The electoral committee itself is headed by the same people who have spearheaded the attack on the U.S. NGOs in Egypt, and were blamed, for the wrong reasons, for interfering in judicial matters by allowing foreign workers to leave Egypt. So there is a lack of credibility and trust in that body from the general public—for the wrong reasons, but it exists and threatens the integrity of the presidential elections.
I have to come back to the attacks on the Copts again. I mentioned the protests. There were a number of attacks on the Coptic community and churches. The most recent ones were the reason behind the attack in Maspero. A church was demolished in the south of Egypt. The Copts tried to seek repairs and a change of that policy and were not able to obtain it by peaceful means. They were actually attacked by the military police for asking for non-discrimination, not only in life in general in Egypt, but also in allowing them to build and repair churches with rights equal to those of the rest of the citizens of Egypt, namely by amending the presidential decree number 291/2705, which limits the chances for Christians to actually repair old churches and also puts as a condition for building new churches the approval of the president, which is not a condition for building mosques.
There were attacks that happened in 2010. A drive-by shooting on January 6, 2010, at a church south of Egypt led to the death of about 20 people during the sermon. After the Maspero protest in 2011, the government tried to contain the anger of the Copts by sentencing to death the man who was on trial for that first drive-by killing of 2010, and he was executed last year. So the death penalty, which Amnesty opposes, has been used as a way to appease, in a way, the Coptic community. This is not a solution that we can accept.
There are some root causes for discrimination and a lack of protection for the Copts during their sermons on several occasions, which has led to violent clashes in some neighbourhoods—
