Joint Statement by Twenty-Two Egyptian Rights Organizations on Morsi Declaration

[Protesters in Tahrir Square on 23 November 2012. Image by Jonathan Rashad via Flickr] [Protesters in Tahrir Square on 23 November 2012. Image by Jonathan Rashad via Flickr]

Joint Statement by Twenty-Two Egyptian Rights Organizations on Morsi Declaration

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following joint statement was issued by twenty-two Egyptian rights organizations in response to the recent constitutional decleration by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. The statement was originally published on 24 Novemeber 2012 by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies.]

The undersigned rights organizations announce their unequivocal rejection of the constitutional declaration issued by the president on 22 November and demand its immediate revocation. These organizations believe that the president has contravened the revolution’s goals of democratization and exploited the expansive powers he granted to himself shortly after his election to arrogate unparalleled powers and immunize his decisions against judicial oversight, thus precluding the possibility of any challenges or opposition to them by legal and judicial means. In this way, the president appears to be seeking absolute powers that will allow no person or body to challenge his rule or contest his decisions.

By issuing this constitutional declaration, President Mohamed Morsi directly attacked the judicial branch, the rule of law, and indeed the very concept of the modern state. The president, who now possesses authorities beyond those enjoyed by any president or monarch in Egypt’s modern history, has dealt a lethal blow to the Egyptian judiciary, thereby declaring the beginning of a new dictatorship in which it is not permitted to oppose the president, criticize his policies, or challenge his decisions. Although President Morsi announced these measures under the pretext of protecting the revolution and its goals, they portend a bleak future for human rights and liberties in Egypt.

The constitutional declaration, which came as a surprise to all, grants extraordinary powers to the president. It offers citizens a misleading preamble that celebrates the revolution and its goals of enshrining freedom and achieving democracy and social justice and claims that the presidency’s objective is to eliminate corruption, purge state institutions, and achieve social justice. However, contrary to these initial statements, the articles of the declaration entrench tyranny and one-man rule, giving the president, in addition to the executive and legislative powers which he already held, the authority to interfere in the judiciary as well.  The balance and separation of powers in Egypt has thereby been utterly demolished.

Through this declaration, the president severely debilitated judicial independence, obstructed litigation, blocked the application of the laws on the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) and on the judiciary, destroyed the authoritative nature of court rulings, and paved the way for state institutions to refuse to implement court orders, which may well lead to the spread of chaos in the country and the collapse of the idea of the state based on institutions rather than individual leaders.

The president used the constitutional declaration to serve the interests of the Freedom of Justice Party (FJP), putting them above the welfare of society, and to circumvent impending rulings from the SCC on the constitutionality of the Shura Council and constituent assembly by immunizing these two institutions from any dissolution order issued by any judicial body. These actions undermine the rule of law and the pillars of justice and exploit presidential powers to protect the interests of a particular political group. This is further demonstrated by the fact that the president chose to give his speech yesterday to an audience of his supporters in front of the presidential palace and to use strident, threatening language and affront his opponents, thus belying his promise to represent all Egyptians as president.

The undersigned organizations assert their severe concern, and indeed shock, over the issuance of such a declaration, which undermines judicial independence and rule of law. We are further alarmed that it comes at a time when a group of the most prominent advocates of judicial independence occupy executive positions in the executive power. Indeed, the contents of the declaration infringe on the independence that judges have long demanded from the executive. Their demands have included making both citizens and rulers subject to the law, removing the president’s authority to appoint the public prosecutor, and allowing for the public prosecutor to instead be appointed by the Supreme Judicial Council or selected by the president from a list of candidates presented by the judiciary.

Through broad language open to abusive interpretation, the constitutional declaration follows the same process of “tailoring” laws and constitutional provisions as was often done under the former regimes in Egypt. Article 6 gives President Morsi absolute powers to take “necessary measures and procedures” to confront what he deems to be threats to the revolution, the “life” of the nation, national unity, national safety, or the operation of state institutions. These prerogatives could be used to restrict liberties and undermine human rights, and they grant the executive the power to restrict citizens’ rights to peaceful protest and labor strikes. In other words, the president has assumed the power to suppress all forms of political and social protest in the country, thus possessing another exceptional tool in addition to his authority to declare a state of emergency.

It is important to note that this article of the constitutional declaration was adapted from Article 74 of the 1971 constitution, yet it goes even further by omitting the stipulation that the president must issue a statement to the people and conduct a referendum within sixty days of declaring a state of emergency, as well as by eliminating a provision which prohibited the dissolution of the Peoples’ Assembly even under such a state of emergency. The presence of these stipulations in the 1971 constitution effectively ensured that the president could not exercise emergency powers without obtaining the consent of the people in an official referendum and without the oversight of an elected parliament. However, Article 6 of the recent constitutional declaration thus lifts the restrictions on President Morsi which had previously limited even Mubarak’s power to issue despotic measures and decrees.

Since his election, President Mohamed Morsi, like the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces before him, has disregarded the revolution’s demands for security reform, the restructuring of the Interior Ministry, and an end to impunity for grave human rights abuses. Although the preamble of the constitutional declaration suggests that a decision has been made to purge state institutions, current policies indicate a lack of any such intention to restructure or purge any state institution.

The undersigned organizations are particularly alarmed by the continued disregard for demands for security reform, even as police forces continue to use excessive force to disperse the protests that erupted last week on Mohammed Mahmoud Street during the commemoration of the events which killed dozens and injured hundreds last year as a result of a brutal crackdown by security forces.

Despite the incurrence of additional deaths and injuries, the president’s office has been completely silent on the subject. The undersigned organizations strongly condemn the continuation of policies that grant impunity for human rights violations and for the killing and maiming of demonstrators before, during, and after the revolution and currently taking place in Mohammed Mahmoud Street and the surrounding area. The recent constitutional declaration does not achieve justice or protect the revolution. Rather, it merely codifies policies of impunity and provides for the continued absence of a state based on institutions and governed by rule of the law.

Signatories:

  • Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
  • Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights
  • Hisham Mubarak Law Center
  • Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination
  • New Woman Foundation
  • Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression
  • Andalus Institute for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies
  • Appropriate Communications Techniques for Developments (ACT)
  • Arab Foundation for Civil Society and Human Rights Support
  • Arab Network for Human Rights Information
  • Arab Penal Reform Organization
  • Egyptian Association for Community Participation Enhancement
  • Egyptian Center for Social and Economic Rights
  • Egyptian Center for Women Rights
  • Egyptian Coalition for Children Rights
  • Egyptian Organization for Human Rights
  • Egyptian Foundation for Advancement of the Childhood Conditions
  • Habi Center for Environmental Rights
  • Nazra for Feminist Studies
  • The Arab Center for the Independence of the Judiciary and the Legal Profession
  • The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of the Prisoners
  • United Group, Attorneys at law, legal researchers, and Human Rights Advocates
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412