Egypt widens state of emergency

2008-05-26 12:46

Cairo - Egypt on Monday extended a controversial decades-old state of emergency by two years despite pledges it would be replaced by new legislation, in a move slammed by rights groups and the opposition.

Parliament passed the law after a brief debate following a decision by President Hosni Mubarak to extend the state of emergency from June 01, a parliamentary official said.

The state of emergency was imposed in 1981 after the assassination by Islamists of president Anwar Sadat, and had been repeatedly renewed since then despite protests from rights groups and regime opponents.

Last year, Judicial and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mufid Shehab said the state of emergency would end in 2008, even if the new anti-terror law meant to replace it was not ready.

'We reject the extension'

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights' Hafez Abu Sada said: "The state of emergency has for decades been one of the main causes of human rights violations in Egypt."

"The state of emergency is by definition put in place when the country is going though a period of danger such as a war or a natural disaster, which is not the case" now, he said.

Egypt's authorities had used the state of emergency to clamp down on political opponents, including the country's largest opposition movement, the banned Muslim Brotherhood, whose members sat in parliament as independents.

"We reject the extension of the state of emergency because there is no constitutional justification," Brotherhood political bureau member Essam al-Aryan said.

"We have been living under a state of emergency ever since Mubarak came to power. It's been part of our daily life since the assassination of Sadat despite the fact it's an emergency law."

Renewing state of emergency

He said the Brotherhood would now start a public awareness campaign about the law.

On Tuesday, the state-backed National Council of Human Rights said there was no longer any basis for renewing the state of emergency.

"Nothing any longer justifies the extension of the state of emergency, all the more so as Egypt is experiencing a period of stability," said the watchdog headed by Boutros Boutros Ghali who was his country's foreign minister before becoming United Nations secretary-general in the 1990s.

Earlier this month, two-dozen independent human rights groups also called for the emergency to end, saying it "flies in the face of the comprehensive social, economic and political reforms under way in Egypt.

"We call on President Mubarak to keep the promise he made during the (2005) presidential election campaign and abolish the state of emergency," the rights organisations said in a joint statement.

- AFP