The recent clampdown of the Egyptian government against local and foreign NGOs, on charges of receiving foreign funding and working to manipulate political inclinations in the Egyptian community, has raised not a few eyebrows in Egypt
WATANI International
10 February 2012
The recent clampdown of the Egyptian government against local and foreign NGOs, on charges of receiving foreign funding and working to manipulate political inclinations in the Egyptian community, has raised not a few eyebrows in Egypt.
The NGOs include Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the International Centre for Journalists, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Prosecution and army forces raided their offices last December, confiscated equipment and documents and closed down some of the offices.
Some 44 workers in five foreign NGOs, including 19 Americans, were referred to the Cairo Criminal Court for violating Egyptian law by receiving illegal foreign funding.
Also facing charges are five Serbs, two Germans, two Lebanese, one Jordanian and one Palestinian, in addition to 14 Egyptians, all of whom have either been banned from travel or have been placed on inbound watch-lists if they are outside the country.
Judge Sameh Abu-Zeid, investigating the alleged illegal foreign funding of the NGOs, has said that inspecting their offices was legal according to the criminal procedural law.
“Labelling this inspection as a ‘raid’ is inaccurate since the law gives us the authority to order the prosecution to inspect the NGOs in question,” Abu-Zeid said
Investigating Judge Ashraf El-Ashmawy said the defendants were referred to court in line with Egypt’s penal code and not the controversial NGOs law, adding that the charges against the staff could lead to five-year prison sentences.
“These organisations conducted unlicensed and illegal activities without the knowledge of the Egyptian government,” El-Ashmawy said.
Sameh Abu Zeid told reporters that investigators had collected 160 pages of evidence so far.
“We discovered that five foreign NGOs received secret money transactions from abroad under the names of workers inside these NGOs not through official bank accounts [under the name of the NGOs]. Transactions were in the millions of pounds,” he said.
“Workers inside these NGOs deliberately had tourist visas, not work visas, and did not pay taxes,” Abou Zeid continued. He said 67 items were confiscated during the raid, including documents that “prove foreign funding.”
“One piece of evidence we found was a map showing Egypt divided into four parts: Upper Egypt, the Delta, Greater Cairo and the Canal provinces,” Abu-Zeid said. The accusation reflects claims made by the media and Egyptian officials that there is a foreign plot to divide Egypt.
Abu-Zeid said the five NGOs were not involved in community services, but in politics.
“Many eyewitnesses who used to work for these NGOs told us they conducted surveys across the country asking Egyptians about their religious beliefs and their dress codes,” Abu-Zeid said. “The results of these surveys were never published in Egypt, but were secretly reported to the mother organisations in the US,” the judge said.
“Homeland Security and National Security” refused to give licenses to these organizations before the revolution but they continued to operate illegally, he added.
US State department officials have said that relations between the US and Egypt are at a low point because of the NGO crisis.
“The Egyptian authorities are using a discredited Mubarak-era law to prosecute non-governmental groups while proposing even more restrictive legislation,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. He demanded that Egyptian authorities should drop all charges against unregistered nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and stop the criminal investigation of such groups.
Several Egyptian NGOs and rights groups, including the al-Nadim centre and the Arab network for data on human rights, declared the clampdown on the five NGOs a campaign to terrorise rights activists and freeze activities geared towards defending human rights and combatting repressive policies.
Several observers of the Egyptian scene have remarked that, before the 25 January 2011 Revolution, authorities used to place religious groups on the top of the list of NGOs accused of receiving foreign funding in violation of Egyptian law. After the revolution, the focus moved from Islamist groups to human rights organisations. The question that begs an answer, according to Egyptian rights activists, is why charges of receiving foreign funding are not levelled at Islamist groups, most of which are well-known to have received such funds?