July, 08 2011, 11:27am EDT
Egypt: Cairo Violence Highlights Need to Reform Riot Police
Investigate Violent Response by Central Security Forces; Create Code of Conduct
CAIRO
The clashes in Cairo on June 28 and 29, 2011, between police and protesters in which more than 1,000 people were injured highlight the urgent need to reform security forces, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should promptly formulate an interim code of conduct for policing demonstrations and order a thorough investigation into any improper use of firearms and riot control weapons by the riot police during the protests.
"The video footage of Central Security officers throwing stones back at protesters and firing teargas recklessly is ample evidence of the need for police to follow basic international standards," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "With more demonstrations expected on July 8, the government needs to act quickly to prevent more mayhem and injury."
The Central Security Forces (CSF), Egypt's riot police, has a well-documented history of using excessive force against peaceful demonstrators as well as of shooting unarmed migrants on the Sinai border. The most recent incident was on June 25. A security official who did not give his name told Agence France-Pressethat border police had shot dead four African migrants attempting to cross the border, bringing the total shot dead in 2011 to eight.
Police Violence, Crowd Control Failure on June 28 and 29
The government said on June 29 that it had ordered an investigation into the 16-hour standoff between the CSF riot police and protesters objecting to the government's failure to prosecute former officials. According to the Ministry of Health, the clashes had injured 1,114 people by the afternoon of June 29. nterior Minister Mansour al-Eissawi denied that police had used excessive force against demonstrators, saying that they had used only teargas, but the quasi-official National Council for Human Rights, as well as independent Egyptian human rights organizations, documented the use of rubber bullets and pellet guns.
Police arrested at least 44 people at the scene and brought them all before military prosecutors, who ordered them detained for 15 days pending investigations on charges of assaulting public officials, destruction of public property, and possession of illegal weapons. The ongoing use of military courts to try civilians reflects a disturbing disregard for international standards and due process rights, Human Rights Watch said.
The violence started at the Balloon Theater in Cairo's Agouza neighborhood on June 28, though there are conflicting accounts about what set it off. Activists said that police had attacked the families of protesters killed during the January uprising, but officials later said there was a premeditated attack on the police by armed thugs.
At about 10 p.m. activists started sending out calls online for people to gather at the Interior Ministry on Sheikh Rihan Street in downtown Cairo in solidarity with the families of the victims. The demonstration there spread to surrounding streets over the next 14 hours.
Footage from the Balloon Theater incident posted on YouTube by activists appears to show four police officers, three in riot police uniform and one in regular police uniform, surround and beat a civilian man who had one arm in a sling and was holding up a poster of a victim of police violence during the January uprising. The footage shows the officers dragging the man across the street, beating him until he falls to the ground, and giving him what appear from the image and buzzing sound to be electroshocks with a short black device.
One protester told Human Rights Watch that by the time he arrived at the Interior Ministry at around 11 p.m., hundreds of angry protesters had gathered on the street outside, facing rows of riot police guarding the ministry and that the protesters and police were throwing stones at each other.
Human Rights Watch spoke with 10 witnesses, some of them protesters, who gave consistent accounts of seeing men in civilian clothing armed with sticks, and sometimes with metal rods and stones, standing with the riot police officers and apparently operating under their command.
Video footage taken by Mostafa Bahgat, a video-journalist for the news site Masry al-Youm, shows Central Security officers throwing rocks at protesters for several minutes at a time from the evening of June 28 through the next morning. It also shows the police firing teargas into the crowd at eye-level rather than into the air, at times kneeling on the ground as they fired directly at protesters, or shooting out of their vans.
One witness told Human Rights Watch that he saw a young man hit in the face with a teargas canister at around 4 a.m. on June 29. Another witness told Human Rights Watch that at around 1 a.m., on Mohamed Mahmud Street, he saw a young man with a bleeding wound in his stomach that may have come from a rubber bullet. Police also used pellet guns to disperse the demonstrators, witnesses said.
On June 30, Interior Minister Mansour al-Eissawi told the Egyptian private TV station Tahrir TV, "The Interior Ministry used nothing but teargas, there were no bullets, not even rubber ones."
But a doctor at a makeshift clinic just off Tahrir Square told Human Rights Watch on the morning of June 29 that the injuries he had seen throughout the night included severe breathing difficulties, some knife wounds, and a few cases of wounds caused by rubber bullets as well as second-degree burns caused by teargas canisters fired at close range.
"The interior minister's denial of wrongful police behavior before any official investigation took place is premature and not a good sign of his commitment to change the way security forces operate," Stork said. "The first step should be to ensure a full and impartial investigation of the violence captured on video and to hold all transgressors accountable - police as well as protesters."
Central Security Force Violence at the Border
Since mid-2007 Egypt's border guards, who are part of the CSF, have shot dead at least 93 unarmed migrants as they tried to cross the border into Israel. Human Rights Watch, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, and other organizations have repeatedly criticized this lethal and unjustified use of force. Egyptian officials have said that the border police follow a common warning procedure before directly targeting people who are trying to cross.
However, international standards on the intentional use of lethal force by law enforcement agents say that such force should only be used when strictly necessary to protect life, whether or not there are warning shots. The Egyptian authorities have never explained why lethal force is justified when used against migrants fleeing from the police.
"The policy of shooting unarmed migrants along the Sinai border is one of the most abhorrent practices of the Mubarak regime and should not be occurring in post-Tahrir Egypt," Stork said. "The apparent resumption of this practice shows a blatant disregard for the right to life and is one that the minister can halt immediately with one order."
Egypt's Police Law and Impunity for Violence at Demonstrations
The CSF riot police are responsible for policing demonstrations and public gatherings and have frequently used excessive force against unarmed civilians, Human Rights Watch research has shown. Under former President Hosni Mubarak, the authorities did not investigate the use of excessive force against demonstrators or punish those responsible.
Egypt's Police Law provides overly broad powers to police dispersing demonstrations that are not consistent with international standards, Human Rights Watch said. Article 102 of Egypt's 1971Police Law No. 109 provides that:
[P]olice officers may use necessary force to perform their duties if this is the only means available. The use of firearms is restricted ... to disperse crowds or demonstrations of at least five people if this threatens public security after issuing a warning to demonstrators to disperse. The order to use firearms shall be issued by a commander, who must be obeyed.
Beyond this provision, Egypt has no code of conduct regulating the use of force and firearms by CSF.
The UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms stipulate that law enforcement officials "shall, as far as possible, apply nonviolent means before resorting to the use of force" and may use force "only if other means remain ineffective." When the use of force is unavoidable, law enforcement officials must "exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence."
"Peaceful demonstrators who plan to gather in Tahrir Square to call for justice for the victims of the uprising and a full transition to democracy need to feel confident that the police will protect them and that any resort to use of force will be responsible and proportionate," Stork said. "The minister of interior needs to announce a strategy on how he plans to reform the riot police."
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
LATEST NEWS
X Suspends Journalist Ken Klippenstein Over Publication of JD Vance Dossier
"The 'free speech absolutist' has once again silenced a journalist he didn't like," said one observer.
Sep 26, 2024
X—the social media platform formerly known as Twitter—suspended Ken Klippenstein's account Thursday after the investigative journalist posted an article containing a link to a dossier on Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate JD Vance that allegedly came from an Iranian hack of former President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign.
Klippenstein, who formerly worked at The Intercept, said on his paid Substack Thursday that his X account was suspended for violating the platform's ban on posting private information.
"I know that it is general practice to delete 'private' information from leaks and classified documents, but in this case, not only is Vance an elected official and vice presidential candidate, but the information is readily available for anyone to buy," he wrote. Vance is also the junior U.S. senator from Ohio.
Klippenstein continued:
We should be honest about so-called private information contained in the dossier and "private" information in general. It is readily available to anyone who can buy it. The campaign purchased this information from commercial information brokers. Those dealers make huge profits from selling this data. And the media knows it, because they buy the data for reporting purposes, just like the campaign. They don't like to mention that though.
According to Klippenstein, the corporate media has "been sitting on" the dossier since June, "declining to publish in fear of finding itself at odds with the government's campaign against 'foreign malign influence.'"
"If the document had been hacked by some 'Anonymous'-like hacker group, the news media would be all over it," he contended. "I'm just not a believer of the news media as an arm of the government, doing its work combatting foreign influence. Nor should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know."
Klippenstein shared a general overview of the contents of the dossier, which he described as "a 271-page research paper the Trump campaign prepared to vet" Vance, pulling out select quotes from the document:
- "Vance has been one of the chief obstructionists to U.S. efforts to providing [sic] assistance to Ukraine."
- "Vance criticized public health experts and elected officials for supporting Black Lives Matter protests while condemning anti-lockdown [Covid] protests."
- "Vance 'embraced non-interventionism."
- "In 2020, Vance criticized President Trump's airstrike killing Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, worrying it would continue to bog down America in the Middle East to the advantage of China."
- "Vance suggested that the country had been entangled in wars in the Middle East so 'financial elites' could profit from the rise of China."
"While the news media has paraphrased some of the contents of the dossier, what they haven't done is provide the American people with the underlying document, in the language in which it appeared, so they can decide for themselves what they think," Klippenstein said. "You decide for yourself."
An X spokesperson toldZeteo's Justin Baragona that "Ken Klippenstein was temporarily suspended for violating our rules on posting unredacted private personal information, specifically Sen. Vance's physical addresses and the majority of his Social Security number."
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the Trump campaign's claim of an Iranian hack. Iran's government denies any such action.
Numerous observers accused Musk—a self-described "free speech absolutist"—of hypocrisy over X's suspension of Klippenstein's account, although it is not known if the billionaire owner had any role in the decision. Other users also reported punitive action against their accounts over the dossier post.
"I'm old enough to remember when free speech zealot Elon Musk was outraged by Twitter's censorship," journalist Seth Hettena said on X.
Jacobin writer Branko Marcetic posted that "this scenario is actually a good preview of the future none of us want, but that we're heading to currently: A major story breaks, establishment press refuses to cover it, and the indy media that does is throttled by tech censors."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Helene's Catastrophic Potential Stokes Fear Amid Florida Insurance Crisis
Florida already has one of the nation's largest shares of homeowners "who don't have meaningful insurance."
Sep 26, 2024
Hurricane Helene continued barreling toward Florida on Thursday, highlighting the impacts of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, including difficulties securing insurance coverage in regions most affected by extreme weather.
"The Air Force Hurricane Hunters found that the maximum sustained winds have increased to near 120 mph," the National Hurricane Center said Thursday afternoon. "This makes Helene a dangerous Category 3 major hurricane. Additional strengthening is expected before Helene makes landfall in the Florida Big Bend this evening."
Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell said during a White House briefing that forecasts suggest Helene will make a "dead-on hit to Tallahassee" and "this is going to be a multistate event with the potential for significant impacts from Florida all the way to Tennessee."
Although this Atlantic hurricane season hasn't yet been as intense as U.S. scientists expected, trends in extreme weather disasters have led some insurance companies to exit the Florida market in recent years. Farmers Insurance announced last year that it would stop covering property in the state, in an effort to "effectively manage risk exposure."
While the Insurance Information Institute, an industry trade group, said in May that "legislative reforms passed in 2022 and 2023 have created a pathway to a stable Florida market," reporting from this week shows that residents—who aren't ultrarich—are still struggling to get and keep coverage.
"Florida ranks sixth among states with the largest shares of homeowners who don't have meaningful insurance. About 18% of homeowners across the state—about 1 in 6—are without it," NBC Newsnoted Wednesday. "Nearly 20% of Florida homeowners pay $4,000 or more a year for homeowners insurance—the largest share in the country, according to the Census Bureau."
According toThe Palm Beach Post, the global reinsurance broker Gallagher Re said in a Wednesday analysis that "landfall in the Big Bend or Panhandle region of Florida as a major hurricane (Category 3, 4, or 5) has historically translated to insured losses in the low single-digit billions."
"But Helene is not a typical storm," the firm explained. "Given Helene's very large wind radius, this would still bring hurricane-force wind gusts and high storm surge to coastal areas in the heavily populated Tampa Bay area, tropical storm force winds across most of the Florida peninsula, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and southern Appalachia."
Gallagher Re suggested that "Helene's private insurance market losses should be expected to land in the range" of $3 billion to $6 billion, but if the hurricane "unexpectedly" moves toward Tampa, it could be over $10 billion.
Florida isn't the only state facing insurance trouble thanks to climate chaos. Voxreported last year that "insuring property in California has been a dicey proposition," pointing to torrential rainfall that "caused as much as $1.5 billion in insured losses" and "the costliest wildfires in U.S. history, including the 2018 Camp Fire, which led to more than $10 billion in losses."
Amid the intertwined climate and insurance crises, scientists, campaigners, and homeowners have demanded policy action—and elevated criticism of right-wing attacks on crucial programs.
In a June blog post, Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists' Climate and Energy program, wrote that "Congress and regulators need to ensure more transparency in the insurance market on how companies are evaluating risks as they make decisions about premiums. There also needs to be better information on what kinds of incentives companies are providing for adaptation measures that would help reduce risks."
"Alongside the necessary but ultimately bounded role of insurance in a warming world, public and private decision-makers must also shift investments away from business-as-usual maladaptive and risky choices to more resilient ones," Cleetus continued. "The nation must scale up resources for climate resilience and ensure they are reaching communities in a just and equitable way. Funding for safe, affordable, and climate-resilient housing must be expanded."
The Climate & Community Institute on Wednesday also shared recommendations in a new report—Shared Fates: A Housing Resilience Policy Vision for the Home Insurance Crisis—using case studies from California, Florida, and Minnesota.
"We propose the creation of Housing Resilience Agencies (HRAs), either by states or the federal government," the institute said. These agencies would:
- Provide public disaster insurance that offers fair and equitable protections;
- Coordinate and oversee comprehensive, community-oriented disaster risk reduction;
- Address existing market failures by providing coverage for oft-neglected sectors such as multifamily housing providers, mobile home dwellers, and heirs properties; and
- Host public risk models, climate risk advisory councils, and diverse governing boards to inform decision-making in a transparent and democratic manner.
"In order to confront the growing housing safety and affordability crisis, we need to understand our fates as shared," the institute added. "We must reimagine our home insurance system for it to reduce risk and provide equitable and fair protection."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Giuliani Permanently Disbarred in DC Over Effort to Overturn 2020 Election
"Imagine once being dubbed 'America's Mayor' and having an illustrious legal and political career, and throwing it all away for Donald Trump," said one observer.
Sep 26, 2024
Former Republican New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani can no longer practice law in the nation's capital after a federal appeals court on Thursday concurred with a disciplinary committee's recommendation for permanent disbarment over his efforts to "undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election" in service of then-President Donald Trump's "Big Lie."
In a one-page ruling, the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals permanently revoked Giuliani's law license, finding that the former federal prosecutor and personal attorney for Trump failed to explain why he should not be subject to reciprocal punishment after the New York Supreme Court's Appellate Division disbarred him in July for lying about the 2020 election.
The New York tribunal found that Giuliani "repeatedly and intentionally made false statements, some of which were perjurious, to the federal court, state lawmakers, the public... and this court concerning the 2020 presidential election, in which he baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country's electoral process."
Giuliani is also facing criminal charges related to alleged election subversion in Arizona and Georgia. He filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last December following a $148 million defamation judgment for falsely accusing two former Georgia election workers of engaging in a nonexistent conspiracy to "steal" the 2020 election.
These blows, culminating in Thursday's D.C. disbarment, mark a stunning fall from grace for Giuliani, who, as "America's Mayor" in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was named Time's "Person of the Year." Giuliani parlayed his popularity into a 2008 run for president in which he was an early GOP front-runner.
Giuliani spokesperson Ted Goodman slammed the D.C. court's ruling as a "miscarriage of justice."
"Members of the legal community who want to protect the integrity of our justice system should immediately speak out against this partisan, politically motivated decision," Goodman said in a statement.
Some observers linked Giuliani's disbarment to Thursday's indictment of current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, on corruption charges.
"Tough day for New York City mayors,"
quippedDemocracy Docket founder Marc Elias.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular