Why Mandela is missed: the world’s leadership lag

 

World mourns Nelson Mandela: scene from this week in Pretoria. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman.

What’s the difference between Rob Ford and Nelson Mandela?

Everything.

And that’s the problem.

 Ford is only this year’s most spectacular example of failure to live up to Mandela’s stellar example of promoting unity, consensus, leadership, honesty, decency, equality and governance in the public interest.

Here’s a shortlist of zeroes on the Mandela scale:

In the U.S., the Tea Party Republicans’ flaws are a titch less conspicuous than Ford’s, but their polarization politics, my-way-or-highway mindset, and poor-bashing policies put them on the bottom rung..

In Italy, former premier Silvio Berlusconi spared the country another few years of braggadocio and bunga-bunga by losing his latest power play when his party split and moved into opposition.He also lost his senate seat.  Bravo!

In Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovich, whose term has been described as a thugocracy,  reportedly spent more time enriching his family than the country.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai went through the motions of cleaning up corruption, but ended up spreading it. This year Afghanistan rated lowest on the Transparency International “corruption perception” scale.

In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe defied all of Mandela’s principles to take the country on a steady plunge into brutality, repression and economic ruin. Worse, the 89-year-old won another (widely disputed) term in office.

In Egypt, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi vowed to uphold democracy and instead deepened the country's political and religious fault lines by cracking down on anyone who defied his efforts to impose control. No Mandela moments here.

In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko gets little attention by virtue of obscurity. It’s his only virtue. Since his 1994 election he’s ruled with an iron fist. No wonder he won the satirical 2013 "Ig Nobel Prize" for making it illegal to applaud in public.

But what about the Western leaders who are paying tribute to Mandela this week?

President Barack Obama rates way less than 10/10 for his ever-expanding spy state, failure to close down Gitmo and hyperactive prosecution of whistleblowers -- not to mention running a drone program that delivers a death sentence without trial.

Nor does Prime Minister Stephen Harper rate top marks on the Mandela scale for his divide-and-conquer politics and “top down” democracy. His policies are reshaping the Canada that Mandela respected -- and not in a good way. The Senate? We won’t even go there.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East, South Asia and U.S., winning national and international awards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take Back The Streets: Report

Protesters opposing Quebec student tuition fee hikes demonstrate in Montreal May 20, 2012. GRAHAM HUGES / CANADIAN PRESS

Reports detailing the brutal suppression of street protests in Egypt, South Africa or Kenya does not come as a surprise. A national holiday in Egypt to mark the 40-year anniversary of the country's war with Israel ended last week with the deaths of 28 demonstrators.

In South Africa, mounting unrest over unemployment and lack of basic services have led to protests and violent confrontations with security services, including one where 34 striking mineworkers were gunned down by police.

There are daily reports about police and military brutality in the face of continuing protests that began in 2011 with the "Arab Spring" uprisings.

But a report released last week by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (which includes the Canadian Civil Liberties Association) not only highlights these abuses, but the increasing criminalization of dissent at home too.

The report's title comes from Toronto's G20 summit protests in June 2010 when a Deputy Police Chief Tony Warr issued an order to "take back the streets." Over the next two days more than 1,000 peaceful protesters were rounded up and detained.

"It is emblematic of a very concerning pattern of government conduct: the tendency to transform individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right – the right to protest – into a perceived threat that requires a forceful government response," notes an American Civil Liberties Union blog about Warr's G20 order.

The Canadian case detailed in the report focuses on the widespread street protests in Quebec over high tuition and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who became the face of the 2012 demonstrations that were dubbed "the Maple Spring."

The conclusion is worrying: "The student protests in Quebec were unusual for Canada in terms of their size, strength, and sustained nature," reads the report. "The governmental response – the enactment of a law that significantly curbed peaceful assembly and expressive activities – was highly troubling. The police response also gave cause for significant concerns and raised questions about the adequacy of oversight and accountability mechanisms in the province."

The full report can be found here: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/global_protest_suppression_report_inclo.pdf

 

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of "Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recipient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Canadians John Greyson and Tarek Loubani release video saying thanks

Canadians John Greyson and Tarek Loubani, who are waiting in a Cairo hotel while the Egyptian bureacracy decides to finally let them leave the country, have posted a short YouTube video expressing their thanks to supporters:

 

Protesting Egypt's crackdown

Amnesty International activists hold up masks of Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti as they demonstrate against violence in Egypt on Monday in front of the Egyptian embassy in Berlin. Amnesty International denounced the "utter carnage" in Egypt, after clashes between security forces and supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi killed hundreds across the country in the past week. (AFP PHOTO / JOHN MACDOUGALLJOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

A friend shouts "Allah is the greatest" during a burial service for Ammar Badie in Cairo on Sunday, Aug. 18, 2013.(AP Photo/Manu Brabo)

As the death toll in the Egyptian military’s bloody crackdown nears 1,000, aside from any criticisms of human rights violations and the crushing of civil liberties, questions are being raised on a more pragmatic level: Has military suppression of political Islam ever worked?

That’s the provocative issue raised by Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, whose Informed Consent blog is one of the most widely read Internet sources for comment and insight on the Middle East.

“It doesn’t work in the long run,” Cole concludes.

He notes that Saddam Hussein in Iraq attempted to crush Shiite religous parties such as the Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party, including making membership in the party punishable by death and executing thousands. Now the prime minister is from Da’wa and he in turn is fighting a bloody resurgence of  Sunni fundamentalists. 

In Tunisia, dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali tried to crush the Renaissance (al-Nahda) Party but it surged to power in the 2011 elections.

The Baath Party in Syria tried to wipe out the Muslim Brotherhood back in the 1980s – but now, a civil war in that country sees radical Islamists tightening their grip in the parts of the country.

In Iran, Cole points the despotic Shah for decades tried to repress political Islam  -- but the Ayatollah came to power in 1979 and his followers still rule.

In Turkey too despite attempts to “forcibly secularize” the country, what Cole describes as the “Islamically tinged” Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 and has ruled ever since. 

“Algeria’s generals did in the 1990s to The Islamic Salvation Front exactly what [Egypt’s] Gen al-Sisi plans to do to the Muslim Brotherhood. 150,000 or more died, and the generals largely prevailed,” Cole says – but Islamist forces remain present, as recent terror attacks have shown.

Of course, in Egypt itself, the government banned the Muslim Brotherhood in 1948. But despite decades of jailings, repression and assassinations, “it always came back.”

“It seems to me that the preponderance of the evidence suggests that religiously based political movements are almost impossible to eradicate by force,” Cole writes. 

“So the Egyptian generals are likely trying something that can’t be done in the long term, and can only be accomplished in the short term by genocidal techniques.”

___________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigatuive reporter with the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher.

"Girls married 60 times before 18" - Egypt's Child Sex Tourism

 

YouTube video from the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood promotes women's political rights in Egypt. The NCCM says women's inequality is reflected in sham marriages for teenage girls that  are a form of child prostitution.

 

As if we needed more discouraging news out of the turmoil in Egypt, a shocking report says that thousands of teenage girls are being sold by their parents to wealthy Arab male tourists under the pretext of marriage in a barely-disguised form of child prostitution.

 “The sham nuptials may last from a couple of hours to years,” says a story entitled "Underage Girls are Egypt's Summer Rentals" by Cam McGrath from the Inter Press Service News Agency. 

“It’s a form of child prostitution in the guise of marriage,” Azza El-Ashmawy, director of the Child Anti-Trafficking Unit at the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood told the IPS.

“Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18," she said. " Most ‘marriages’ last for just a couple of days or weeks.”

McGrath explains that temporary marriages allow the male buyers to get around Islamic restrictions on pre-marital sex.

He reports that the trade has increased since Egypt’s 2011 revolution ushered in a period of economic collapse along with crumbling law enforcement.

McGrath describes the scene in  El Hawamdia, an impoverished town 20 kilometres outside of Cairo.

Well-dressed Arab men "troll the town’s pot-holed, garbage-strewn streets in their luxury cars and SUVs" as "fixers" run alongside offering them apartments -- and underage girls -- for rent.  

A NCCM survey of 2,000 families in three towns near Cairo  found that "the hefty sums paid by Arab tourists was the main motive for the high rate" of so-called “summer marriages” in these areas.

Three-quarters of the respondents said that they knew girls involved in the trade and that the number of marriages was increasing.

According to the survey, more than 80 percent of the male “spouses” were from Saudi Arabia, 10 percent from the United Arab Emirates, and four percent from Kuwait.

The IPS story says that since sexual relations with minors is illegal in Egypt, brokers forge birth certificates or substitute the identity card of a girl’s older sister.

 It says a "pleasure” marriage can be arranged for as little as 800 Egyptian pounds (about $120 Canadian dollars). 

Sandy Shinouda with the Counter-Trafficking Unit of the  International Organisation of Migration in Cairo told IPS that  most of the young girls come from large families for whom marriage to a wealthier foreigner offers an escape from poverty.

"The family considers her as a commodity,” she told the IPS. “The girls know their families have exploited them…they can understand that their parents sold them.” 

______________

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and invetsigative reporter for the Star and be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher.

 

 

 

Egypt's other revolution: rebelling against rape

Egyptian women chant slogans against President Mohammed Morsi during a demonstration in in Tahrir Square in Cairo last month. (AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)

Egypt’s rebooted revolution was all about freedom and democracy, no?

Not if you’re a woman.

Since the protests that led to the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi began in late June, says Rebecca Chiao, women have been subjected to a staggering 186 sexual assaults. .

Chiao, who co-founded HarassMap in Cairo, works to prevent sexual harassment and violence by re-educating men, who see hassling women as something of a birthright. But during a frenetic two weeks of recent demonstrations in Tahrir Square, her group plunged into a riskier new venture – rescuing women who were being violently attacked.

The shamelessness of the assaults and the inertia of the onlookers convinced Chiao that a massive public awareness campaign was needed to convince Egyptian men that assaulting women is not only unacceptable, but uncool. So her group has launched its first fundraising campaign for a game-changing media blitz .

Q: This recent surge of sexual violence was horrifying. How do you explain it?
A: There are political and social elements. From what our team has seen on the ground, there’s organization behind these mob attacks. People are paid to instigate them – just as happened in Mubarak’s time. We don’t know who exactly is behind them, but it seems to be a tactic used to scare away women and distract men from the protests.

Q: Are all the attackers paid?
A: No, just a small percentage. That’s the political element. The other element is social. The “bystander effect” is the one we’re most concerned with. If the hundreds and thousands of people standing by while attacks happen – or joining in the assaults – wouldn’t participate, this wouldn’t be happening. For the men who join in, it’s a crime of opportunity.

Q: And what about the people who just stand by while women are savagely attacked?
A:  They have all sorts of excuses. The woman “deserves it” because of the way she’s dressed. Or maybe she “really wants it.” The men are poor, or they “just can’t help themselves.” It all comes down to blaming the victim or letting the harassers off the hook.

Q: What kinds of women are attacked?
A: There are victims of all ages, backgrounds and styles. We’ve even heard from men that they sometimes choose more conservatively dressed women – wearing a face veil and full length (burqa) – because they are less likely to retaliate.

Q: How did the rescue operation work?
A: We partnered with a coalition called Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault. They had four teams working at once. A hotline alerted the intervention team that women were being attacked, an intervention team was on the scene equipped with flares and Tasers, a safety team took the women away and doctors were ready to treat them because some of them had been raped with blades and needed surgery.  The intervention team didn’t use violence, they just fired flares and Tasers into the air, which broke up the assaults. Out of 186 cases, 105 women were rescued.

Q:  HarassMap has been successful in changing men’s attitudes by going to the sites of incidents and convincing people not to support harassment. Can a mass marketing media campaign work?
A: It has in the past. Right now, people subconsciously accept harassment. Men think it’s cool and manly. Or funny and flirtatious. We want them to know that it isn’t. Like smoking and littering and hate speech, it’s just plain disgusting. We want to change the conversation.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to South Asia and the Middle East, winning national and international awards. A film based on her work on trafficking of South Asian women, The Selling of Innocents, won an Emmy.

To donate to HarassMap’s public awareness project, email [email protected]. Website is   http://harassmap.org/en/

"Airing lies" - Al Jazeera journalists resign in protest

 

Al-Jazeera YouTube video reports on the arrest of its staff members by the Egyptian military.

 

As many as 22 journalists have resigned from  Al Jazeera in protest over what they say is the influential Arab network's alleged pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias, according to reports from rival media outlets in the Middle East.

The Gulf News website reported  that Karem Mahmoud, the anchor of Al Jazeera's Egyptian station, announced that the staff quit because of  “biased coverage” of the events in the country, where a military coup last week drove the Muslim Brotherhood and its elected president from power.

“I felt that there were errors in the way the coverage was done, especially that now in Egypt we are going through a critical phase," Mahmoud told another rival network, Al Arabiya.

 Al-Arabiya quoted Al Jazeera correspondent Haggag Salama, who accused the station of “airing lies and misleading viewers"  and said that four Egyptian members of editorial staff at the network’s headquarters in Qatar had resigned as well.

Some other media reports put the number of departing journalists at only seven.

In a statement on its press website, Al Jazeera acknowledged “some Al Jazeera ... staff have decided to leave" but blamed them for holding "partisan political opinions,” according to Al- Arabiya.

It is no secret that Al-Jazeera's owners, the royal family of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, have been vocal supporters of deposed Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi and his Brotherhood party.

That has led to a backlash against the network by the Egyptian military and repression against its journalists in recent days.

The army raided Al Jazeera's offices and arrested its news director.  and arrested other staff members. Al Jazeera complained that as many as 28 of its staff in Cairo were detained.

The  tensions appear to have spread to fellow journalists.

The Associated Press reported  last week that reporters from Al Jazeera were unceremoniously kicked out of a military news conference held in the wake of the army's shooting of pro-Morsi supporters. One journalist demanded the Al-Jazeera people leave and they departed to the chants of "Out! Out!" from the other reporters.

The embarassing resignations from Al Jazeera come as its English-language  network is about to gain "an important foothold in the United States," the  Washington Post reports.

(The network has been available on Canada on the three major cable providers since 2010.)

Al-Jazeera America will debut next month in about 50 million cable homes in the U.S., with several high-profile American journalists including former Soledad O’Brien, the former CNN host and reporter.

________
 

 Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter for the Star and can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @juliansher. 

 

 

Luxor loses lustre for wary tourists

Karnak temple in Luxor,  one of Egypt's most popular tourist sites.  Photo: Bob Wong 

Boring ads, annoying ads, just plain stupid ads.

The promotional onslaught that makes you want to close your eyes never ends. But ads that make you want to weep are rare indeed.

This one is from Hany Nasry, general manager of the Gaddis Hotel at Egypt’s fabled archaeological site of Luxor:

“You all may know how economic crisis and political hard situations are affecting our business in Egypt, specially here in Luxor,” he writes. “That is why I am sending this message wishing that we all share our opinions, efforts and thoughts to get better business that helps all.”

Nasry’s sad plea shows exactly how hard times are in Egypt’s once-lucrative tourist meccas these days.

Tourism has always been a huge part of Egypt’s economy, bringing in around 12 per cent of its revenues each year. Until the 2011 revolution, when plummeting security was followed by a nosedive in visitors.

The election of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi as president went some way to restoring faith in Egypt’s stability and last year the tourist trade bounced back.

Then Luxor was again knocked off the bucket list of millions of travelers by rebooted protests that spread throughout the country, leading to a military coup and outbreaks of violence.

Meanwhile, in a bizarre “what was he thinking?” gesture, Morsi foisted an Islamist governor on Luxor -- Adel el-Khyat, a member of a terrorist-linked group whose associates were accused of killing at least 58 tourists in a 1997 massacre.

El-Khyat said he had “no intentions that would harm tourism.” But his ultra-conservative faction favors a strict Sharia code that would include banning alcohol and “immodest” dress for women.

After furious protests from the already battered local tourist industry, El-Khyat resigned. But shortly afterward dozens of Luxor archaeologists went on strike to protest the firing of its antiquities director Mansour Breik by Morsi’s outgoing antiquities minister.

Worse, sectarian clashes broke out in villages near Luxor, leaving four Coptic Christians dead, 32 injured and 27 of their houses burnt.

Luxor will likely weather the latest mayhem, as it has for millennia. Named for the spectacular palaces and temples built along the Nile from 1390 BC, the site saw the great dynasties of Egypt rise and fall. It boasts ancient Coptic ruins and remnants of Alexander the Great’s empire.

But that’s cold comfort for those with empty hotel rooms and hungry families. Their future depends on convincing the world that in the midst of turmoil, some things never change. 

“Come as a guest and leave as a friend,” says Nasry. “Just let us realize your dream.”

Olivia Ward has covered the former Soviet Union, Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.

  

Muslim Brotherhood's winner takes all mentality alienated Egyptians

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ousted: A sand sculpture of president Mohammed Morsi in a beach in Puri, India Reuters/Stringer

Egypt is in unchartered waters. The region and the world is watching to see how the Muslim Brotherhood reacts to one of its own, president Mohammed Morsi being thrown out of office by the army. So far, three supporters have been killed in protests.

How the Brotherhood reacts will have huge ramifications for other Islamist groups ranging from Hamas to, a lesser extent, the Taliban in Afghanistan who may finally come in from the cold.  This is because Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest and best organized Islamist organization in the Arab world. It is a model for other such political groups in terms of how they win credibility and support from the public: a combination of social work and steering clear from violence. In Mubarak-era Cairo, for example, Brotherhood volunteers were often the only ones organizing garbage collection in poor neighbourhoods.

However, one reason for Egypt's current crisis is that the Brotherhood overreached itself after Morsi became president. The country's first freely elected leader may have been an Islamist but it did not mean Egyptians of all political and religious stripes supported him.  In the 2012 presidential election Morsi did not win with a clear and resounding majority. During the first round, he received 24 per cent of the vote. His 12 opponents were mostly a smattering of secularists, nationalists and leftists. They split the vote among them. There was a second round with a secular candidate, Ahmed Shafiq, a former prime minister in Hosni Mubarak’s administration. Morsi narrowly won with 51 per cent. 

In a mature democracy a new administration would recognize the need to proceed slowly and build consensus among all groups before introducing legislation. Instead, as the International Crisis Group points out, he tried to sideline the judiciary and co-opt the security services.

“The current crisis to a large extent is the product of a fundamentally flawed political transition. Political actors were unable to reach basic agreement on rules of the game or the desired political system, instead proceeding with a winner-take-all mentality that was sure to alienate – and frighten –losers.”

It added: “Instead of consultations and consensus-building, elections and referendums – in which an organisationally superior Muslim Brotherhood excelled – became arbiters of an ever-more polarised political stand-off. As Egypt moved from one electoral contest to another, Islamists perceived their successive, though sometimes narrow, victories as mandates to shape the nascent polity as they deemed fit, overlooking the need to share power.”  

READ MORE:  Olivia Ward on why economic troubles are driving Egypt's crisis

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour