HRW vs. Sisi

With so many significant events happening in the Middle East, it is easy to skip over a story like the one that appeared yesterday, "‘Systematic’ Killings in Egypt Are Tied to Leader, Group Says," by Kareem Fahim. I did in the morning. But failing to board a train right as it was about to depart the station in the evening led to additional idle time to read. Subsequently, I thoroughly scrubbed the front section of the paper.

Fahim's story about the Human Rights Watch report is an important reminder of what a pivotal event the Sisi coup was last summer:

CAIRO — A day after Egypt barred representatives of Human Rights Watch from entering the country, the group disclosed the source of the government’s alarm: a report implicating senior officials, including Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in what it called the “widespread and systematic” killings of protesters. 

Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said Monday that it had conducted a yearlong investigation into violence that followed the military’s ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi, and found that the killings of demonstrators by the police and army forces “likely amounted to crimes against humanity.” Official statements during the killings made clear that the attacks “were ordered by the government,” the group said.

The report, which was released Tuesday, was the latest of several independent attempts by human rights workers and journalists to document a series of mass killings last summer that Egyptian authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate, and that government officials seem determined to help the country forget. 

The worst of the violence occurred on Aug. 14, 2013, when the security forces used force to disperse a large sit-in of Mr. Morsi’s supporters near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo, killing more than 800 people, and possibly more than 1,000, according to Human Rights Watch. It called the episode “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.” 

No security or government officials have been prosecuted in the killings, which set off a period of civil conflict and government repression that included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists, journalists and leftist political activists. 

The report calls for an investigation of Mr. Sisi, who was commander of the armed forces at the time, and several other sitting government officials, including Egypt’s interior minister. The Obama administration has signaled its intention to return full American support for Egypt under Mr. Sisi, despite scant evidence that Egypt is becoming more democratic or inclusive. 

Human rights workers and civil society advocates have described an atmosphere that is more stifling and perilous than life under President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in a popular uprising in 2011.

On Monday, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and the director of the Middle East division, Sarah Leah Whitson, were deported from Egypt after being stopped at the airport on Sunday. 

It was the first time Egypt had denied entry to employees of Human Rights Watch, Ms. Whitson said. Airport officials wrapped a form around Ms. Whitson’s passport and checked a box that said, “For security reasons.”

David Kirkpatrick follows up this morning with "After Human Rights Watch Report, Egypt Says Group Broke Law":

Human Rights Watch “does not enjoy any legal status that may allow it to operate in Egypt,” the government said in a statement responding to the report. “Conducting investigations, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses without any legal backing are activities that constitute a flagrant violation of state sovereignty under international law,” the statement added. It called the report a “flagrant intervention in the work of the national investigative and judicial authorities, and an attempt to impinge upon the independence and integrity of the Egyptian judiciary.”

The government also said that Human Rights Watch had issued the report “in parallel with dubious moves by the terrorist organization and its supporters” — a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that sponsored Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian president — “with a view to carrying out further acts of violence and terrorism against the Egyptian state and innocent civilians.”

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“The government seems to be suggesting that H.R.W.’s investigation and visit to Egypt is part of a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist plot, which is farcical on its face,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s executive director for the region, said in an email. She called the charges “absurd, unsubstantiated allegations, and a naked effort to intimidate us.”

Human Rights Watch is generally a close ally of the U.S. government. Maybe this report, along with one published in July about the Ukrainian junta slaughtering civilians in Donetsk with Grad rockets, is proof of pockets of discontent within the Obama administration: in the case of Egypt, the discontent would be with the way in which the U.S. has meekly swallowed its soaring rhetoric of democracy and human rights and lined up with the Saudis behind Sisi's military dictatorship; in the Ukraine, the complaint would be with the neocon's rapacious embrace of the fascist coup government and its criminal assault on the civilian population of Donbass.

Government is not a monolith. There are always opposing camps struggling for advantage over one another. Sisi's conflict with HRW reminds us of this; but, more importantly, it reminds us that the "Sisi trend" -- totalitarianism -- to roll back the Arab Spring is still being contested, albeit obliquely, within the established power structure.