DAR AL ISLAM: FREEDOM SLIPS DOWN THE MIDEAST AGENDA

Islamists suffer as freedom slips down the Mideast agenda
By Heba Saleh

In a chilling account of his torture in a Cairo detention facility, Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric, describes how he was interrogated while naked, blindfolded and hanging upside down by his feet.

"I am recording my testimony from inside my grave," he writes in prison at the beginning of an account that goes on to detail beatings, electric shocks and sexual assault.

Abu Omar was released a few months ago after almost four years in detention. He is currently at the centre of a court case in Italy where prosecutors allege he was snatched from a street in Milan by CIA and Italian security agents, then flownto Egypt to be tortured underthe US extraordinary renditions programme.

Four years after US President George W. Bush launched an initiative promising a "forward strategy of freedom" to bring democracy to the Middle East, human rights activists say the war against terror and practices such as extraordinary rendition have underlined the shallowness of America's commitment to democracy and human rights in the Arab world.

Egypt is the most visible manifestation of this dilemma. Despite repeated promises of a democratic transformation, Egyptian authorities have launched yet another crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition force in the country. The government has also pushed through constitutional amendments that human rights defenders say mark an alarming regression in civil liberties. The US still voices concern about human rights in Egypt but more privately than in recent years. This message, moreover, is confused and undermined by its own record, including on renditions.

"The US and weak European allies have chosen at this moment in time [to support] repressive, stable, pro-western governments instead of the threat of the unknown - that is the Islamists having political power," says Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director of the US-based Human Rights Watch.

The failure of democratic reforms in Iraq to quell the mounting sectarian violence there, as well as the election of a Hamas-dominated parliament by the Palestinians, appear further to have eroded what remained of Washington's willingness to press for political reforms in countries where Islamists are certain to be main beneficiaries.

Hopes for improvement in democratic rights have been dashed across the region: there is no talk of new elections in Saudi Arabia, which held its first limited nationwide poll in 2005, for example, and some reformers who have demanded constitutional changes have faced renewed pressure.

In Syria, the regime has been cracking down hard, with the courts delivering long jail terms to some dissidents and human rights activists. In Jordan, meanwhile, the government has been accused by Human Rights Watch of breaking its promise to revise restrictive new press laws.

But it is the experience of Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country and once a trendsetter in the region, that activists both inside and outside the country find the most disappointing. "The impact in Egypt has been shocking. With the US backing down, Cairo thinks it has a licence to clamp down on the Muslim Brotherhood," says Ms Whitson.

Since late last year the government has arrested hundreds of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has widespread grassroots support despite being illegal. Some 40 members, including senior leaders, have been referred for military trial, in a move criticised by both local and international human rights groups.

Officials charge that the Brotherhood is a danger to democracy and to the cohesion of a society with a sizeable Christian minority. But in elections in 2005 the group outperformed all legal opposition parties: affiliated candidates running as independents won one-fifth of the seats in parliament.

Despite the Brotherhood's electoral success, and its leaders' insistence that they are committed to peaceful politics, the government has maintained its long-standing policy of containing them through periodic arrests.

During elections, such as those for the upper chamber of parliament in June, polling stations are often barred to Brotherhood supporters or even surrounded by riot police and closed.

"I think the government's policy towards the Brotherhood will continue especially after the [Palestinian Islamist group] Hamas takeover of Gaza," says Hafez Abu Saada, head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights. "Gaza has convinced the authorities here that they are doing the right thing and it has also helped convince the west of the Egyptian government's view. There will be more repression, but it will be easier because they won't have to justify it."

Already Egypt has adopted controversial constitutional amendments aimed at blocking further electoral advances by the Islamists. Human rights groups have loudly opposed one particular change intended to pave the way for a new anti-terrorism law that would allow the suspension of key constitutional guarantees of basic rights. The US has criticised the law, but in notably muted fashion.

The authorities contend the changes are necessary in the face of deadly attacks by Islamic militants. They say the new law will be used only in terrorism cases and under judicial supervision. But human rights activists are sceptical.

"This law will be a disaster," says Mr Abu Saada. "All they would have to say is that they suspect someone of being a terrorist or of planning violence and that will allow all sorts of exceptional measures, giving the security services unlimited powers of arrest and detention." For him and other activists, the fear is that the law will be used to intimidate opposition supporters.

The overall human rights picture may remain grim, with political activity constrained and practices such as torture rife, but the last few years have brought a big advance in freedom of speech, which is much in evidence in the privately-owned print and broadcast media.

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