Return of the police state?

Cairo: The news that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could be released from jail soon is, to some Egyptians, a symbol of the extent to which Egypt has abandoned the revolutionary change they dreamed of when they revolted in January 2011.

Signs abound of a return to the police state that existed under Mubarak: the government’s declaration of emergency law, mass arrests of Islamists, detentions of journalists, raids on television stations, and talk of disbanding the Muslim Brotherhood - all defended by the government as part of a “war on terrorism.”

Government and military leaders, say they are fighting a war against terrorism, and are simply taking the necessary steps to bring criminals to justice and protect Egypt. “Forces of extremism intend to cripple our journey toward pure bright future, aiming and willing to bring to the whole state into total failure,” said presidential adviser Mostafa Higazy in a press conference Saturday.

“This war will end. And we will end up triumphant, not only by security measures but also by the rule of law and in the perimeters of human rights, which we are adamant to maintain.”

Mubarak’s release from prison became a possibility Monday when a court dropped a corruption charge against him. The former president was convicted last year of allowing the killing of protesters during the uprising, and sentenced to life in prison. That conviction was overturned in January, with a retrial underway. His current detention is based on a charge of accepting illegal gifts during his presidency.

Mubarak has already repaid an amount supposedly equivalent to those gifts, and his lawyer told Reuters that he could be released “by the end of the week.” He has already spent the maximum amount of time in jail allowed under the law for someone not yet convicted. The arresting of Islamists comes on the heels of security forces’ bloody crackdown on two protest camps full of Mursi supporters August 14.

In a statement yesterday, Human Rights Watch called the police operation “the most serious incident in modern Egyptian history.” Karim Ennarah, a researcher on policing and criminal justice at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, points out that police’ excessive use of force continued after Mubarak’s ouster, including under the first military government and under Mursi, though he notes the levels have increased “massively” in the past week. But while police often responded with lethal violence to challenges in recent years, “the ability to control the political space is what they lost” after the 2011 uprising. “And given the current context, which is becoming more of a civil conflict … I am concerned about the return of the police state in the sense of their ability to control and close down political space,” he says.

One of the most worrying signs is the apparent public support for the crackdown. Television stations and newspapers repeat the government rhetoric of a “war on terrorism” and support arrests and police use of violence, and Egyptians are following suit. In the wake of deadly fighting between pro-Mursi protesters and pro-military civilians as well as police last Friday, citizen security forces sprang up in neighbourhoods. Armed with clubs and sometimes knives and guns, they stopped cars and passersby at checkpoints, much as they did during the January 2011 protests. At one such checkpoint in the Dokki neighbourhood of Cairo on Friday, men from the neighbourhood stopped a bearded man, bundled him into a van, and drove away with him. “Police seem to be comfortable in that there’s a certain level of support for the state,” says Ennarah.

“The context and the discourse of countering terrorism is a very difficult environment in which you can challenge this level of brutality by police. So as long as this discourse continues, as long as civilian on civilian violence continues ... I don’t know where this is going to go, but it’s looking bleaker and bleaker.”

As authorities rounded up Islamists, they also cracked down on journalists. Several journalists have been detained for short periods and released, while at least five journalists have been arrested and are still detained, according to Sharif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. Some have not yet been given access to a lawyer or their families.

Authorities raided the Al Jazeera Arabic office in Cairo and are currently reviewing the channel’s legal status, accusing it of “threatening stability and national security.” The detentions, says Sharif, are “definitely a tactic of silencing and censoring the press. Because for every journalist who’s detained, there is of course more risk for others to do their jobs without fear. The detentions are happening on a wider scale than we’ve seen before and are accompanied by a campaign of threats by the government.” Government officials have complained about coverage of Egypt, accusing foreign media of being sympathetic to the Islamists.

“Egypt is feeling severe bitterness toward some Western media coverage that is biased to the Muslim Brotherhood and ignores shedding light on violent and terror acts that are perpetrated by this group,” said a statement by the State Information Service Saturday. Rhetoric by government officials and on private television channels targeting foreign media has led to an increase in attacks by civilian vigilantes on journalists, in a situation similar to what transpired during the protests against Mubarak. On August 17, when security forces had a mosque full of Mursi supporters under siege, there were at least a dozen such attacks on journalists, some of whom had their equipment stolen or were beaten, says Mansour.