Since assuming power, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of Egypt has failed to address several serious human rights problems in the country, and in many cases has exacerbated them. Excessive use of force against protesters, with near-total impunity, restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, the failure to repeal the emergency law, military trials of civilians before military and Emergency State Security Courts with no due process, and now the campaign against NGOs, have been major problems that could, if unchecked, keep Egypt on a dangerous and abusive path for years to come.
On January 24, 2012, the SCAF announced that it would lift the state of emergency except in cases of “thuggery.” But that announcement, which might have appeared positive on the surface, in fact opens up the possible use of the Emergency Law in a wide array of cases, since charges of "thuggery" have been applied by military tribunals to hundreds of peaceful protestors (the crime of "thuggery" did not even exist until SCAF added it to the penal code last year). Also, because authorities are not required to present evidence to a judicial authority, it is meaningless to say they will use it only for a particular category of detainees or in relation to a particular crime.
Since January 2011 the military government has referred more than 12,000 civilians to military tribunals, with few due process protections. That adds up to more than the total number of civilians tried by military courts during the 30-year-long Mubarak presidency. The military has since released thousands—though not all--of those convicted on public holidays and after retrials in which sentences were reduced--a recognition of the arbitrary nature of those sentences. Those referred to military tribunals have included children as young as 15, even though international law discourages trials of children in military proceedings. One of the children who remains imprisoned is Islam Harby, sentenced by a military court to seven years imprisonment in March 2011 for “thuggery” after military police rounded him up during a street fight.
Rather than improving since the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, the climate for free expression in Egypt has remained poor under SCAF rule, with ongoing assaults on journalists by security forces and prosecutions based on laws violating media freedoms. Violations of the right to freedom of expression have also included military trials of protesters and peaceful bloggers, interrogations of journalists and activists for criticizing the military, the suspension of new satellite television licenses, censorship of editions of newspapers, interruption of live TV programs, and the closure of an outlet of Al Jazeera television.
The Egyptian government has continued its campaign against civil society organizations that received foreign funding, including both international and local human rights and democracy groups. The Egyptian government’s actions against these organizations are a clear signal to civil society about the risks that they run if they do work on human rights, democratic reforms, or the rule of law. The root cause of the problem is Egypt’s decision to apply the Mubarak-era Associations Law against human rights NGOs. As long as this extremely restrictive law remains on the books, civil society organizations will face the difficult conundrum of whether to try to register with the state and live with the law’s restrictions (which would effectively prevent many organizations from doing their work), or risk prosecution. Under Mubarak many Egyptian organizations were prevented from registering under the Associations Law by security agencies that rejected their application.
