Injustice and curtailed rights

Mira Maher Raouf graduated from Minya University’s Medical School in 2000 with a degree in surgery, an overall grade of ‘Very Good’, and ranked fourth in her class. She was appointed resident doctor in the Pediatrics Department, and earned a MSc degree in Pediatrics in 2006 with a grade of ‘Good’. Raouf thus became eligible to a permanent job as an assistant instructor in the Pediatrics Department.
It is obvious that the assistant professor who supervised Raouf’s Master’s degree thesis did not approve of her becoming assistant instructor and was intent on preventing her from winning the post. I intentionally refrain from printing this professor’s name since it is not my aim to defame the lady; Watani does not concern itself with personal flaws or misconduct but with the issue of injustice and curtailed rights. Anyhow, this assistant professor accordingly gave Raouf a very low grade in the oral exam, which was flagrantly inconsistent with the full mark grades Raouf scored in all other oral tests. The oral exam grades are a common ploy used by professors in Egyptian Medical schools to control the overall grades of a student, given that they cannot tamper with the grades of written exams.
When the ploy did not appear to work well enough in Raouf’s case, the assistant professor resorted to another move. She filed a complaint to the dean accusing Raouf of treating her in an insulting, offensive manner.
Raouf had to undergo an interrogation by the university’s legal department. She says that the documents of the interrogation revealed blatant contradictions in the witnesses’ testimonies. More important however is the following testimony by professor Salem Ahmed Sallam, head of the Pediatrics Department:
“My colleague Dr … assistant professor at the Pediatrics Department filed a complaint against resident doctor Mira Maher Raouf who ranked first among the Pediatrics students and whose attitude is praised by all her colleagues and teachers. The department referred the complaint, which was the first of the kind against Raouf, to the legal department. It is remarkable that the assistant professor never filed any complaint against Raouf when she was her supervisor.”
The crisis could have been contained since the chairman of the Pediatrics Department testified in her favour and the witnesses’ testimonies were contradictory. But the crisis remained unresolved for a long time, a situation which induced the department head Salem Ahmed Sallam to take an unprecedented move that caused huge controversy. In protest against the injustice suffered by Raouf he tendered his resignation in February 2006. His letter, addressed to the president of Minya University and the dean of the Medical School, cited as reason for his resignation “the measures taken against Dr Mira Maher Raouf, the resident doctor in the Pediatrics Department…because of her religion”. Dr Sallam described these measures as “contradictory to citizenship rights” and declared that they “prevented her appointment as assistant instructor in the department”. He wrote that the university had procrastinated in resolving this grave question, although there was very clear proof of the injustice she suffered. “When I tried to intervene and convince my superiors of Raouf’s right to the post I was advised to stay away from this ‘thorny’ issue, and I was even accused of trying to create a problem out of nothing.”
“Citizenship rights are a great value that should be stressed if we are to achieve comprehensive progress on the economic, political and cultural levels. Yet we cannot talk about respect of citizenship rights as long as some people are denied equal rights or discriminated against on the basis of their religion,” Dr Sallam’s letter of resignation declared.
Even though the resignation caused a furore at the time, no action whatsoever was taken and the case has been frozen ever since. This is exactly why I am again raising this matter two years later, and will continue to do so, until it is resolved justly and transparently.

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