13
Violation of farmers’ rights and their right to lead a decent and peaceful life
This report has been issued for the sake of a better world, in which people can feel their dignity, a world with no humiliation, deceiving, or harming humanity of mankind by torture, mistreatment, or interfering with the rights of individuals that is related to their existence as humans. This report is presented to UN Committee against Torture, held in November 15, 2002 in order to discuss Egyptian Government Report, EGR[1] presented to the committee in February 19th, 2001. LCHR wishes to draw committee's attention to some general remarks about the above-mentioned governmental report before going through more details in this report. Some of these remarks are attributed to the general framework in the EGR that related to the environment of the human rights practices in Egypt. Although does not apparently linked directly to the theme of this report, the LCHR believes that without investigating this atmosphere, one might obtain incomprehensive understanding concerning the remain of the report. Other remark is about the mistreatment of citizens in Egypt, and violating their right to peace and safety, as it was mentioned in paragraphs 1 and 16 of Convention against Torture, CAT. Following are these remarks. First remark: about element (8) in the EGR, that related to the efforts of eliminating adults' illiteracy. The LCHR argues that the slight raise in the education expenses in the country has nothing to do with the elimination of adults' illiteracy and in particular rural areas. Examining this raise within the population raise makes this clear.If we had a look at the proportion of education expenses in Egypt in total expenses of the country, we will find out that it had a slight raising in seventeen years, from 1981 to 1997.[2] It was raised from 11% to 12.5% in twelve years, whereas population was doubled in the same period. As a result for that, illiteracy rate froze at 50% among rural districts' population that represents 59% of Egypt population, and 58.2% in urban districts' population that represents 41.8% of total population in Egypt.
Second remark: about element (ž9) in the EGR, related to the press and political parties, trade unions, non-government and private associations and organisations. The LCHR has these comments.
q Dated May 20th, 2000, the Egyptian government shut down the El-Sha'b journal (the labour party newspaper). Then the government froze this party itself in July 24th, 2000 Although several judicial verdicts were declared against this, the government has not respected these verdicts and return permitting this party to practice its political rights again.
q The government has issued the new private associations' law. Parliament, in which the majority represents ruling party, agreed on the law. That law threats the rights of the mentioned associations, as it implements governmental supervision of their activities. [3]
q The Law no. 100 of 1993 and its amendment of 1995 remains controlling the freedoms of establishing professions syndicates and practising activities within these syndicates. Among the serious violations in this law is attacking the democratic rights of the general assemblies of these syndicates and proposing a governmental supervision over its election process. [4]
Third remark: about element (12-a-b-c) of the EGR.
A) The report states (teaching the principles of human rights in basic mandatory education). This claim lacks any proof, as the EGR did not mention any examples of teaching these principles in the core curriculum of obligatory education. The LCHR also affirms that there is a decree of minister of education commanding that the secretary of pupil’s unions in obligatory schools should be male. The mentioned decree justifies this arguing that traditions and customs in the Egyptian Society require so.
B) The EGR also states the same concerning the evaluation of the core curriculum in the Egyptian universities seeking modifying them to include principles, basics, and treaties of human rights. This claim lacks any proof as well because there are core curriculum that contain teaching of human rights, except for the faculty of economy and political sciences' core curriculum, whereas the EGR meant all Egyptian universities.
Fourth remark: about the part of problems and difficulties related to implementation of paragraphs 29,30,31, and 32 of the CAT. The mentioned part asserts that there are no legal difficulties in implementing the CAT, because it accords the Egyptian constitution.
A) By examining the constitution, one can find that in article no. 42 of the constitution, actions of torture or miss treatments are considered crimes. Also in article no.57, one can find that criminal or civil lawsuits are not cancelled with the progression of time. These articles in the Egyptian constitution guarantee a sufficient protection for human rights, but there are still some problems, in particular concerning the role of the normal legal framework in implementing such constitutional principles. [5] For example, in article no. 126 in the Egyptian Criminal law one can notice that the crime of torture is poorly defined compared with the CAT. This mentioned article recognises only the torture that is used to extract confession from the accused in a particular crime. However, there are many other kinds of torture that are not included in the definition. The definition also does not set the acts done by who assisted in torture as criminal.[6]
The same article sates that torture is a crime in case it is done during the official (who commit torture)’s work or because of it. In that way, the torture victim has no rights in cases of out of work, and of law suites’ investigations. [7]
B) In addition, article no. 162 of the Egyptian Criminal procedural law directly contradicts the constitution itself due to the fact that it deprives the relatives of the victim of torture in terms of their right to suit the officials who commit torture. In case of the victim’s death, those have no rights to suit those officials. But this is only should go through the general Prosecutor office.
C) The above remarks have some significant impacts in implementation in the Egyptian court system as follows:
According to article no. 154 of the Egyptian Criminal Procedural law, the one judge can sentence the case to failure for the reason of “insufficient evidence”. The fact is that the controlling of the moving the criminal law suites against government officials (police officers in this case) has several serious impacts, particularly in the torture cases.
First: it is too difficult to collect sufficient evidences of torture. For one thing, police officers always torture the victim while his/her eyes are shut. Also, police officers usually use faked names, and ways of torture that are hard to prove such as sexual obtrusion. Nevertheless, the victim is not examined unless traces of torture are cured.
Second: there is no single case of a police officer that used torture for political reasons. Generally, cases of police officers in court because of committing torture are too little if compared to size of the problem in Egypt.
Fifth remark: several exceptional laws in Egypt seriously inflate and create the proper environment for the prosperity of torture. These laws include in particular, the emergency law. The trials of civilians before military courts have some serious impacts as well.
[1] Here and after in this report, the abbreviation ‘EGR’ means the Egyptian Government report.
[2] The Land Center for Human Rights Report concerning the impact of the Land law on the educational rights of tenants in Egypt (Nov. 2000).
[3] See the report ‘ nationalization of the volunteer work in Egypt, report published by the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.
[4] The syndicate’s freedoms in Egypt between the theoretical framework and the Constitutional Courts Principles as well as the practices published by Hisham Mubarak law Center.
[5] See the “ torture in Egypt: Facts and Testimonies, by Al-Nadeem Center for rehabilitation and psychic treatment for the victims of torture.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.