Category Archives: Human Right

Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Politics, Egypt, Espionage, Human Right

Takhabur: a Potent New Orwellian Arab Weapon……….

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Egyptian media can be some of the wildest in the Middle East, bar none, when it comes to toeing the official line. Remember when the once-venerable Al-Ahram, the big banana of Egyptian newspapers, doctored photos of world leader to put Hosni Mubarak at the front? They are doing even more now.

One headline I saw yesterday: “Muslim brothers caught with ‘certificates’ of Takhabur (تخابُر) with Hamas”.  (تخابُر is a broad Arabic word that can have any of several connotations: communicating; contacting; exchanging information).
‘Certificates of Takahbur‘: imagine how far you can go in telling your people how stupid you believe they are, maybe not in so many words. This “Takhabur” in Arabic is a recent twist of the term that Arab regimes (and their controlled media) have been using against their foes and against those they don’t like or suspect.
Takhabur: “communicating, exchanging news or information but also perhaps ideas” or “talking to”. You can get arrested for takhabur with The Onion or with Mad Magazine or with the CIA or the Mossad or Dhahi Khalfan, even with your next door neighbor, if they want to get you.
Anyway, they twist things to make it sound so sinister in a way that some regimes can do with impunity. The Egyptian military regime has even brought the charge of “takhabur” against president Morsi, and he was the president of the country! He was supposed to do “takhabur” with leaders and countries, just like any other head of state! Imagine how much ‘takhabur‘ Generalisimo Field Marshal Al Sisi is doing now with oily princes and potentates? How else could he do his job?

Now they are piling on Caliph Erdogan of Turkey, but that is okay: the Turkish Caliph ensconced in his billion-dollar palace deserves it. Suddenly the Egyptians are strongly pro-Greek on the Cyprus issue and on any other issues that come to their mind. They might even award ancient Troy to the Greeks, again. The Greeks must be amused.
Takhabur. A simple Arabic word has acquired terrifying connotations and meanings in the hands of Arab depots and potentates and their security agents and kangaroo courts. Journalists, former officials, dissidents, and doubters can spend many years in prison because of that word. From the Persian Gulf to the stagnant Nile, from Manama to Cairo, the regimes are using it to get you.
Remember the word: takhabur. Other non-Arab regimes in the Middle East (Iran, Turkey, Kurds, maybe Israel?) also use their own version of it to intimidate, but it sounds so pregnant with meanings and connotations in the Arabic language. So threatening on multiple levels.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Egypt, Human Right, Uncategorized

Great News: Egypt to Export its Expertise in Repression……….

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Egypt’s foreign minister is quoted in local media as asserting that Egypt is keen on transferring her expertise and experience in security issue to “sisterly” countries. He is quoted that Egypt is seeking to enhance the capabilities of “these countries” in matters of “internal security” with the overall goal of serving all our peoples.

Cute. Glad tidings for any Arab people who have not yet been subjected to arbitrary arrests, torture, summary death sentences, midnight knocks on the door, tear gas, and disappearances. If there is any rare Arab people that have not been subject to these, er, official diversions. Egypt has one important thing she can now export: the Sisi type of law and order, which is slightly nastier than Mubarak’s version of law and order.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Death Penalty, GCC, Human Right, Iran

Middle East Executions: Some Are More Equal Than Others…….

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The Iranian courts execute many people every year, too many. Many of them are probably drug dealers and drug runners from across the border, but there are many others strung up every year. Too many: when it comes to official state murder that is called capital punishment, even one is too many. Iran probably comes after China and before Saudi Arabia, but that is an issue of population size. Nobody knows about North Korea but I suspect they execute more people than Texas would like to. Hopefully they kill them faster than Oklahoma did last time they tried it with that botched injection that tortured the man for a long time.  

Knee-jerk reaction in the West about judicial executions in Iran is expected, it is normal. It is reciprocated by similar knee-jerk reaction from the Iranian mullahs who never tire of gleefully noting the extremely high U.S. rate and share of world incarceration. These executions are routinely condemned by the U.S. government, and maybe by one or two other European countries and maybe by the petroleum government of Mr. Harper in Canada. They are well-publicized in Western media, more than any other executions elsewhere in the world. More than the large number of men and women who are beheaded and crucified in Saudi Arabia. The latter are probably never officially condemned in Washington or Paris.

This weekend the Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati media joined the ISIS cutthroats and other Wahhabis in condemning the execution of the Iranian woman. Imagine, funny regimes that behead and crucify and stone are criticizing a hanging in Iran (FYI: as I noted they have too many hangings in Iran each year). Wahhabi polygamous ‘activists’, who justify sex slavery and taking and selling captive female concubines in Syria and Iraq condemn the execution of a woman in Iran. Some of the most sectarian bunch on the face of the planet are now claiming it was a sectarian execution. 

Wherever it survives, capital punishment should be eradicated. Something should also be done about those many millions who are in prison in China and the United States, many of them convicted for committing non-violent crimes and for simply not affording good lawyers.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Revolutions, Arabian Peninsula, Caliphate, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Rainbow Opposition: Reactions to Regional Turmoil and ISIS………

_9OJik4N_normal Sharqeya-Baneen-15    DennyCreek2

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Saudi Arabia has several different kinds, actually strains, of opposition to the Al Saud rule and policies. It is a diverse rainbow of opposing opposition groups. There are three main strains:

  • There are relatively liberal human rights advocates among the educated city folks, but they are mostly heavily monitored and repressed. These are focused on the domestic issues of freedom and corruption and advocating for a civic society. Often they are thrown in prison on trumped up charges, as many ACPRAHR leaders are.
  • There are the marginalized restive Shi’as in their native homeland of the Eastern Province who have been restless and in an uprising mood for years.
  • Then there is a more interesting but growing animal, the relatively recent Wahhabi opposition. A Wahhabi opposition to a Wahhabi theocratic monarchy. Needless to say, these latter are groups that were born of the domestic and foreign efforts of the Saudi system itself.

This last one is a bit odd, since the Salafis, like the rest of the Saudi political and religious establishment, believe in obeying the Wahhabi ruler no matter what. In that they rely on an old Hadith, or a quote that alleges to quote the Prophet Mohammed about obedience to a ‘Muslim’ ruler. By their doctrine they can justify it only by insisting that a particular ruler is “not Muslim”, which these days means “not Wahhabi enough”. Of course they believe that anyone who i not a Wahhabi/Salafi is not a Muslim: that is how they justify blowing up Iraqi and Syrian civilians and beheading them and enslaving their women as sex concubines.

Needless to say much of this last Wahhabi opposition supports the more extremist groups like Al-Qaeda, AQAP, and especially the Caliphate of ISIS and Al-Nusra Front and their ilk in recent years. They focus exclusively on aiding these Jihadist groups from Yemen to Syria and Iraq and beyond. Yet like some other tribal/Salafi opposition movements on the Persian Gulf these latter are violently against the continuing Bahrain protests and are happy to have the Al Saud help crush them. These groups are also very active on the Internet social media. Some of their top “activists” have followers in the millions. They seem to have three main complaints:

  1.  the Al Saud are not following the true Salafi line of Islam. That is the only way a Salafi can justify disobedience;
  2. the Al Saud are too nice to the local Shi’as (as well as to those in Iran and Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen);
  3. the Al Saud are plotting with all of the above as well as with Al Assad of Syria against the true faithful of the ISIS Caliphate and Al Qaeda. Occasionally they throw in Israel and the United States, probably just to cover all their bases. This line in support of ISIS is also taken by other such Gulf groups, including much of the Kuwait opposition which also, oddly, rejects any local criticism of the Al Saud even as they blast the local ruling family.

These are Wahhabi ‘activists’ on the social media, although I believe the more prominent ones are doing it from the safety of Western capitals. None of them, as far as I know, has offered to relocate in Raqqa (Syria) or Mosul (Iraq). Mostly the more prominent among them comment openly under their own names. One of the most popular of them goes under the nom de plume of Mujtahidd (various meanings in Arabic: hard working, originator of ideas, interpreter of Shari’a, etc). He is not shy to comment freely, but is too ‘shy’ to write under his own name, which some might think makes him a bit less “hammam” than he claims to be in his brief Twitter bio. But he claims to have access to insider information deep within the Saudi power structure, sort of like those Hollywood gossip columnists of a bygone pre-Internet era.

Good news for the Al Saud: these various ‘opposition’ groups seem like young children, playing around each other rather than with each other. Studiously avoiding crossing paths. Ideological, tribal, and sectarian factors keep them separate and that keeps the Al Saud happy. This division of the opposition is certain to continue. 
Cheers
MHG

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Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right, Sectarian

Bahrain Uprising: the War on the Al Khawaja Family……….

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“Police detained Bahraini human rights campaigner Maryam al-Khawaja after her arrival in the Gulf country on Saturday, her mother said. Al-Khawaja has dual Bahraini and Danish citizenship. Her mother, Khadija al-Musawi, told The Associated Press that her daughter was refused entry after presenting her Danish passport and a Bahraini identification card, and at one point was surrounded by police. The activist has said she wanted to visit her jailed father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who is on hunger strike to protest his detention. Lawyer Mohammed al-Jishi told the AP that prosecutors plan to press charges against al-Khawaja that include insulting the king and police……………”

How can anybody ever ‘insult’ that particular king and police? Is that even possible in this days and age and in that venue?

The father, Abdulhadi Al Khawaja, has been under arrest almost since the beginning of the Bahrain uprising in 2011. He is reported to have undergone torture.  Another daughter was released just recently from prison but faces other charges from the ruling family. She will probably spend more time in prison. This one, Maryam, has been outside Bahrain, traveling for the cause of her country. Most Arab countries like Egypt have banned her from entering their territory, in deference to the Saudi princes and/or local Salafis. Oddly, such is the poisonous sectarian atmosphere encouraged by the Al Saud and other Wahhabi propaganda that some Arabs who have revolted against their own regimes are also against the Bahrain uprising.

She remained outside prison by remaining outside the occupied country. Now she is back home and in prison, arrested upon arrival at the airport, allegedly pending an investigation. She will probably start spending more time in prison as well. At some point the whole family will probably be in a regime prison at the same time.

The Bahrain ruling family is moving fast toward Saudi-ization of its court and legal systems. The room for dissent and criticism is narrowing by the week. As the late Egyptian poet Ahmad Fuad Negm reportedly opined once: “The poor Bahraini. He gets arrested by Pakistani or Jordanian policemen, he is tormented by Syrian or Jordanian interrogators, and he is tried and sentenced by an Egyptian judge. He, the accused native is the only Bahraini in the courtroom“. Or something to that effect.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Politics, Human Right, Kuwait

Kuwait Parliament: Going from Dumb to Dumber?……..

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“Kuwaiti lawmakers have announced proposals to withdraw passports from any Kuwaiti citizen who harms their country’s reputation abroad. According to Gulf News, Nabeel Al Fadhel, member of the parliament said “We would like also the health minister to suspend the right for treatment trips abroad for any patients or their relatives who misbehaves abroad. The situation has gone beyond the point of resentment among Europeans who are now calling for the expulsion of all Arabs.” MP Abdul Hameed Dashti said he would call for a debate on the issue of Kuwaiti acts abroad that affect their country’s reputation………….”

Pretty dumb, if this is taken seriously, but what should we expect? Actually perhaps getting dumber if they take this proposal seriously and act upon it. Still, probably not as dumb as when the tribal and Islamist Wahhabi opposition controlled it in 2012, and voted to convert the country into a Wahhabi theocracy, but the Emir used his veto power to block them.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Arab Counterrevoltion, Cairo, Egypt, Human Right

Counter-Revolution: the Pussycat, the Coyote, and a Butcher of Cairo?………

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“You say you want a revolution
Well, you know We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know We all want to change the world”  The Beatles’ “Revolution”

“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,”………………”

Many Egyptians who write and talk on politics in public seem delusional or confused, actually both, when they talk of “revolution”. Some talk of several opposing revolutions: (1) the Tahrir “revolution” of January-February 2011; (2) the June 30 “revolution”, referring to the large protests of the opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood president Morsi on June 30, 2013, many of the protesters were calling on the army to return to take over again; (3) the July 3 military coup of 2013, when Generalisimo Al Sisi staged a coup against the man who had promoted him to minister of defense. Some deluded former Egyptian liberals (and Wahhabi liberals) called that a “revolution”. That last one, the coup, was the final nail in the coffin of the  Egyptian uprising of Tahrir Square, the final act in the counter-revolution: it was reportedly financed by money from the potentates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Saudi princes.

The Rabi’a (Raba’a) massacre in August 2013 by the army and security forces of Al Sisi was the largest in the history of modern Egypt. More than one thousand unarmed people were reported shot and killed, and many wounded. It occurred at a square outside a mosque named for a famous early female Islamist poet of Iraq (Rabi’a Al-Adawiya). The massacres continued beyond that. Many were killed over the months after that. Almost two thousand have been sentenced to death for their political affiliations. Tens of thousands have been arrested, most of them have not been tried.

In retrospect, Hosni Mubarak was like a pussycat compared to the blood-stained coyote that Al Sisi has become. One difference is that people were not delusional under Mubarak, they knew what they had and owned up to it. These days many of them play a game of “pretend freedom”.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Arab Revolutions, Bahrain, GCC, Human Right

The Writing on the Wall in Bahrain: End of the Peaceful Phase of the Uprising?……….

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“Bahrain’s Justice Ministry filed a lawsuit Sunday to suspend the activities of the country’s main Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq for three months. The move by the government comes after top Al-Wefaq figures met with a U.S. State Department official without a Bahraini government representative present earlier this month. This angered the Gulf country’s leadership, who ordered U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski to immediately leave Bahrain. The lawsuit, though, makes no mention of the meeting. Instead, Bahrain’s official news agency reported that the ministry is taking Al-Wefaq to court for violating regulations of transparency in their general meetings. The Ministry of Justice said it filed the lawsuit after Al-Wefaq broke the law……………”

This lawsuit is just a formality, the courts usually do whatever the regime wants them to do. The laws, those that are enforced in Bahrain, are enforced by imported mercenaries from foreign places like Jordan and Pakistan and Syria, and the courts are manned by imported Arab judges, mainly Egyptians. We can say the same about the many laws that are broken by the regime. But this case can go either way, depending on what the ruling Al Khalifa family want.

If this happens, as seems now likely, it probably will mark an important watershed in the ongoing struggle of the people of Bahrain against the repression and corruption of the ruling Al Khalifa family. So far the protests of the past three and a half years have been peaceful; all the violence has come from the regime’s security forces, its imported foreign mercenaries, and Saudi forces.

Al-Wefaq, whatever you think of its ideology and leadership, is the largest opposition movement; in fact the largest political bloc. There are other opposition groups, not all of them Shi’a, but all have been decimated. They are all being hunted, with the exception of Wahhabi-ized Sunni Islamist groups who are now closely allied with the ruling family and its tribal allies.

So what other avenue will be left for the people of Bahrain to demand their legitimate rights, to regain the old democratic constitution that the rulers have distorted and altered and then distorted the alteration again? The ruling family seems intent on gradually adopting an absolute tribal Saudi model of governance, and it has Saudi forces in its capital to enforce it. That means not only continued corruption and the apartheid policy, but also dwindling freedom of speech and possibly religious freedom.

Given where this is going, what alternative will the people have? You figure this one out, but it looks like the writing is on the wall…………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Politics, Arabian Peninsula, Human Right, Saudi Arabia

Arab Dissidents: Internal Exile in a Kingdom Without Magic……

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“Yet recently enacted anti-terrorism legislation has so far been more enthusiastically directed at a different target: Saudi human-rights activists. On July 6th Waleed Abul Khair, a lawyer and founder of a local rights centre, was sentenced to 15 years in jail and a 15-year travel ban upon his release. According to his wife, who was at his hearing, the judge cited vaguely defined offences such as “distorting the kingdom’s reputation” and “inflaming public opinion”. Mr Abul Khair had defended Raif Badawi, who was sentenced in May to ten years in jail and 1,000 lashes for starting a Facebook page to talk about religion. The two men are the most recent of a string of activists convicted for doing little more than talking and sending messages …………..”

There used to be a famous poster in Europe during World War Two, warning of enemy spies, saying: “loose talk costs lives”. Now all Arab capitals should have posters saying: “Plain talk costs more than freedom”.

Abul Khair was sentenced to 15 years prison, then 15 years banned from leaving the kingdom. Which means he was sentenced to 30 years in prison (the last half of it in a larger prison). That means remaining in the country is considered by the ruling princes a form of punishment. This raises an odd comparison between the Arab past, under foreign colonial rule and the present under local despotic rule.

Under European colonialism, prominent Arab dissidents were usually sentenced to foreign exile. They were forced to leave their countries: Urabi and Zaghloul of Egypt, King of Morocco, others. Now under Arab regimes, things have been switched: the Arab dissidents are punished by being banned from travel. They are being forced to remain in the country, in a sort of internal exile (plus the medieval or biblical flogging with 1,000 lashes).

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

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Arab Counterrevoltion, Egypt, Human Right

The Sad Grim Future of Khaled Said……


      

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Young opponents of the old Mubarak regime in Egypt used (and some still use) the motto: “We are all Khaled Said” online. That was to commemorate a young activist who was beaten to death by old regime security agents in Alexandria in 2010. 

  • Now the old regime security is the new regime security, the old goons are the new goons. 
  • Just as the new regime bureaucrats are the old regime bureaucrats, just as the old regime courts are the new regime courts. 
  • Come to think of it: the new regime is the old regime. 
  • The one difference may be that the new regime probably has collected more political prisoners than the old regime, and in a much shorter time. And it is killing off more opponents than the old regime did, either on the streets or through kangaroo courts passing mass death sentences.
  • Just this weekend another Egyptian kangaroo court sentenced ten more young people to hanging, adding them to the more than a thousand others already on death raw for political reasons.
  • Also this weekend an Egyptian appeals court freed a police officer who was charged with killing 37 political detainees.
  • So, you know where all this is heading in the coming months and years.



Expect many more Khaled Saids in the future of Egypt. Some of them will no doubt be called ‘terrorists’, but in many cases that will not be true. They will simply be new versions of the Khaled Said who was beaten to death months before the Tahrir Uprising. But they will be facing the same old enemy that he faced in 2010……..

Cheers
mhg

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