18 Oct 2011 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
Sahar Maher, human rights activist and a member of the Free Maikel campaign, has told Index that authorities are transferring Maikel Nabil to a “mental hospital”, where he would be “put under watch for 45 days to make sure his mental situation is OK”. Nabil, who was handed a three-year prison sentence for criticising the practice of trying civilians in military courts, was scheduled to have a re-trial today, but is refusing to stand trial. Family members fear that Nabil, who has been on hunger strike for 57 days, will die while imprisoned. On 17 October, Nabil made a statement from El-Marg prison on his reasons for refusing to attend his trial:
I also felt great insult from the insistence of my lawyers to ignore my willingness in boycotting the military judiciary, and their insistence to impose a guardianship on me and to litigate before the military judiciary without my knowledge and against my will. That’s why I announce that I won’t attend tomorrow’s session, and that no lawyer represents me before the military judiciary. May the militarists go to hell with their ugly theatrical play, I don’t beg for my freedom from a group of killers and homeland stealers.
Maher said that she supports Nabil’s decision, and added that “the judges don’t care about how people feel or what people do.” Maher, who is pessimistic about Nabil’s future, saw him yesterday and described him as looking “very ill and very weak”. Since Nabil’s lawyers did not attend court, Maher said that the court “commissioned another lawyer from the military court itself”, and that the lawyer asked that Nabil be moved to a mental hospital, and the court accepted the suggestion. Now that Nabil may be transferred to the hospital, Maher is worried that he will be kept in the hospital, and that he will be in captivity indefinitely.
Maher, who was arrested earlier this month while demonstrating for Nabil’s release, mentioned that she has faced a series of threats for speaking out against military trials and the treatment of Nabil, much like his father and brother. In his statement, Nabil condemned the threats against Maher and his family members:
I was saddened for the militarists’ chasing of the leaderships of the movement and especially my sister and my colleague Sahar Maher and threatening them with death, imprisonment and attempting to recruit them to the Intelligence as the militarists attempted with me and fail continually.
Maher said that “being threatened” is the least of her worries, and that she is more concerned with “what the country is going through.”
11 Oct 2011 | Egypt, Middle East and North Africa
Maikel Nabil Sanad is today entering his 50th day of hunger strike. The Egyptian blogger has been abstaining from food since 23 August in protest of a three-year sentence handed to him by a military court on charges of “insulting the armed forces” and “spreading false news” in a blog post published last March.
Sanad had accused the Egyptian military of having conducted virginity tests on female protesters earlier that month — a charge that a senior military general later admitted was true. He had been handed the sentence after being tried in a martial court where, according to his younger brother Mark, “eyewitnesses were barred from testifying in the case.”
Maikel Nabil Sanad in Tahrir Square, Cairo on 30 January. Photo uploaded by Mena Nader on Yfrog
Journalist Shahira Amin visited him at the start of October, when he weighed 48 kilograms after having shed 12 kilograms since the start of his strike. “I’d rather die than live as a slave without dignity under an oppressive regime,” he explained to her.
Amin added that Sanad’s family fears he may not survive until his appeal hearing scheduled for today. The hearing had originally been set to take place on 4 October — the 43rd day of his hunger strike — but was adjourned until 11 October after a judge said that documents were “missing from the courtroom.”
Last week, the UK’s Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, Alistair Burt, expressed concern about Sanad’s situation. In a statement Burt said,
We have raised concerns about Maikel Nabil Sanad’s treatment as well as the issue of trials of civilians in military courts and the continued State of Emergency with the Egyptian authorities. We continue to urge the Egyptian authorities to repeal the emergency law.
Freedom of expression, including freedom of the media, is fundamental to building a democratic society and we will continue to follow the human rights situation in Egypt closely.
7 Oct 2011 | Middle East and North Africa, Uncategorized
Dear Anna Politkovskaya,
I am well aware that this honor, which bears your name, is not merely awarded to me personally but rather to the sons and daughters of Syria, and the 3,000 whose blood was spilled over the past 7 months by the same criminal exclusionary mentality that spilled your own blood.
I am aware that your passion for truth and the defense of human dignity, for which you gave your life, is but a link in a chain that stretches across the world, through individuals and entire peoples, all of whom believe in everyone’s right to live free of oppression, humiliation, and subjugation.
Nonetheless, bestowing this honor on me personally out of all other Syrians assumes another dimension, as it comes on the fifth anniversary of your death. It means a lot to me to receive an award in your name, Anna, as a Russian citizen — even as the Russian government continues to support the Syrian regime, which has been committing crimes against humanity for several months now; crimes that have been documented by international human rights organizations.
This vividly exemplifies that what we share in humanity transcends languages, nationalities, and borders, just as tyranny and corruption share the same essence although they differ in details.
For this very reason I believe the battle for freedom, being fought by Syrians for months now, would bring comfort to your soul: because each step forward towards peace and justice in any part of the world benefits all humanity.
I am aware, Anna, that it would have hurt you deeply to see the passage that my country is going through to rid herself of a regime that perfected criminal behavior for several decades. Under this regime tens of thousands have perished in the dark dungeons of its security apparatus, or died in massacres and were buried in mass graves. Hundreds of thousands have suffered the silent and lonely years of detention, forced to express and recite phrases of false loyalty to their hangman, day in and day out. And after all this, the regime was inherited, like a royal heirloom, from father to son, in an act unprecedented in a republic. All this occurred amidst deafening Arab and international silence, and a level of complicity rarely seen before.
The oppressed people, meanwhile, were blamed for the crimes of the tyrant.
When the Syrian people decided last March to tear down the wall of fear and stand up against the violence and humiliation imposed on them by the security apparatus, they did it alone. They did it bearing nothing but the scent of freedom that breezed from Tunisia and Egypt, and the vision of a new homeland that does not steal their being, their future, and the dreams of their children.
Since then the security apparatus has been killing unarmed civilians, whose commitment to peaceful protest has stunned the world for months. As of today, according to the Center for the Documentation of Violations in Syria, there have been 3,031 martyrs, including 192 children and 85 women and girls. These figures do not represent the actual number of martyrs, as we continue to discover mass graves and learn of the disappearance of thousands of prisoners of this revolution.
Tanks have besieged our cities and towns, military forces have bombed homes, and tortured dozens of people to death, disfiguring them and stealing their organs. Hamzeh al-Khatib, the 13-year-old boy, who was arrested, whose dead body was savaged, and whose genitals were mutilated, was but one of many similar cases.
Peaceful protesters have been arrested and killed in cold blood. Ghiath Matar, the non-violent activist, a young man of 26, died under torture 3 days after his arrest. The regime offered him death after he offered them roses and water in one of the demonstrations he was leading.
Family members of activists have been kidnapped, tortured, and executed as a form of punishment — and no one is excluded. Zeynab Al-Husni, 19 years old, served as an example of what might befall the families of activists and protesters: she was kidnapped by the security forces, tortured and killed a few days after they murdered her activist brother.
Security forces carry out mass executions day after day, we find new bodies buried in unmarked graves.
Just as we are proud, dear Anna, that you found loyal friends who kept your name alive to remind us of who you were, and what you sacrificed for the sake of truth and human rights, I wish I could recite the names of all our martyrs, one by one. And I wish I could recite the names of the tens of thousands who were, and continue to be, subject to arrest and torture.
All of them: children, women, young men, and the elderly, they all deserve to have their names honored and immortalized. For they have opened the door to freedom. They have opened a door that was closed for decades, so that we might follow them on the road ahead together and behind them.
And I would like to remind the world that the Syrian people, who were victims to all those crimes yet still patient and persistent, are people who deserve much more than complicit silence, or timid criticism from those who have failed to refer this regime to the International Criminal Court despite acknowledging its crimes.
All those activists, some of whom we know and others that we don’t, are creating a new history for their country and their region. They are creating a homeland and a future from the ashes of the violence carried out by one of the most notorious authoritarian regimes in the world.
And so, Anna Politkovskaya, we continue. We continue in your memory, and in the memory of all the other symbols of truth and freedom in the world, until freedom, justice, and democracy prevail in our Syria and the entire world.
Razan Zaitouneh is the winner of the RAW in WAR Anna Politkovskaya Award 2011.
