43 Nonprofit Workers Sentenced to Prison in Egypt
The Washington Post reports that anEgyptian court has imposed prison sentences on 43nonprofit workers, including 16 Americans (one of whom is the son of the UnitedStates Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood). Only11 (all of whom are Egyptian) received suspended sentences; the rest, includingthe Americans, were ordered to serve real jail time. None of the American defendants are now inthe country, although one stayed until the verdict was issued, according to thestory. The verdict, says the Post, “alsoordered the closure of the offices and seizure of the assets in Egypt belongingto the U.S. nonprofit groups and a German organization for which many of thedefendants worked.” These nonprofitsinclude the International Republican Institute, the National DemocraticInstitute, Freedom House, and Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
What didthese groups do that the Egyptian court found so objectionable? The Post reports that the nonprofit groupswere engaged in democracy training. Theywere alleged to have fostered protests in 2011 against the military following HosniMubarak’s departure. Secretary of StateJohn Kerry and several U.S. Senators reportedly have denounced the verdict as politicallymotivated and inconsistent with Egypt’s movement towards democracy.
Concernover the treatment of nonprofits in Egypt is apparently very high. The Post explains that President Mohamed Morsi“has proposed a controversial bill regulating NGOs, soon to be debated by theinterim, Islamist-dominated parliament,” which “would allow the state tocontrol nonprofits’ activities as well as their domestic and internationalfunding,” according to Human RightsWatch. The story continues:
In ajoint statement last week, 40 Egyptian rights groups accused Morsi’s MuslimBrotherhood and its political arm of seeking to curb the freedom of rightsgroups through legal restrictions. They said the proposed law potentially givesEgypt’s security apparatus the power to suppress rights group[s], drawingparallels to Egypt’s recent past under Mubarak’s 29-year rule.
These human rightsorganizations also are reported to have “expressed fears that foreignnonprofits would be treated with hostility and that vaguely worded legislationwould hinder operations or the issuance of work permits.”
JRB