When the Egyptian government announced last month that it had dissolved 57 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — all accused of having links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood — it was just the latest step in a process which, under the guise of anti-terrorist policy, is tearing apart the carefully woven fabric of Egyptian society.
The war on civil society has come in two forms, with the main target being the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2012, after the elation of the 2011 revolution, former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood became the nation’s first-ever democratically elected leader. However, after the army removed him from power in July 2013, the new government moved swiftly to clamp down on both the Muslim Brotherhood and its civil society activities.
An extra-judicial announcement by the interim Cabinet in December 2013 declaring the Brotherhood “a terrorist organization” was followed by a court ruling. These moves have, to date, resulted in the seizure of 1,300 Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated NGOs, whose assets were frozen, their premises confiscated by the state and management taken over by the Egyptian Ministry of Social Solidarity.
Illustration: Yusha
By July, the number of civil society organizations shut down for allegedly belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood had reached 434, according to official statements. Some of those worked with some of the poorest people in Egypt’s poorest provinces.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Medical Association, for example, served 2 million sick patients and thousands who were in need of kidney dialysis, all unable to pay for medical treatment. Their charitable, self-sustaining network constituted a parallel welfare system that often surpassed the “free” government educational and health services in both quality and efficiency — hence the group’s mobilizing capacity.
However, early this year the association was taken over, its board of directors replaced by pro-regime figures from the Egyptian Ministry of Health and a new chairman appointed: former grand mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa — notorious for his anti-Brotherhood rhetoric.
The Muslim Brotherhood has not been the only victim of the regime’s crackdown on NGOs. Over the years, the Egyptian government has capriciously targeted other NGOs with a slew of laws effectively criminalizing their activities. It has particularly singled out organizations calling for social reform, political liberalization and respect for human rights and workers’ rights.
According to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, while Egypt’s NGO law is one of the most restrictive in the world, the “effect of the restrictive legal framework ... has not been to ban civil society outright, but rather to give enormous discretionary powers to the Ministry of Social Solidarity.”
All civil society must register with the government, while — as in other countries — counterterrorism legislation is also invoked against “any association, organization, group or gang” that attempts to “destabilize the public order or ... endanger social unity.”
As a result, organizations and individuals crossing certain red lines are “increasingly forced to operate in a climate of fear, limitation and uncertainty,” and intimidated by ad hoc security probes.
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies researcher and lawyer Mohamed Zaree said that the law practically equates what they do at the institute — raising awareness of civic rights, or calling for group action in the form of peaceful protest or strikes — to what the Islamic State group is doing on the border.
“We, too, can be accused of ‘endangering social unity’ or ‘threatening national peace,’” Zaree said.
The real objective of these laws and the related character assassination media campaigns targeting civil society activists is to close the public space and restrict it to official government activity or pro-regime voices, Zaree said.
“Basically, they are created to terrorize people like us, to terrorize press freedom advocates, workers’ unions and even political parties. They will have no effect on someone who has no problem blowing himself up,” he added.
Refusing to register in response to the government’s recent ultimatum, the Cairo Institute is now under investigation — sharing the fate of other organizations such as the Hisham Mubarak Law Center — for receiving foreign funds.
“The regime has no issue with foreign funding, they have an issue with what we are doing,” Zaree said.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of the most respected and influential human rights organizations in Egypt, has taken a different tack, deciding to register to cut the red herring of their legal status out of the debate, which has initiated a long-winded cat-and-mouse process. In the meantime, they have had to downsize from 80 staff members to 40 and limit the foreign funds they are receiving.
“The model we built [relying on foreign funding] was unsustainable,” Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights executive director Gasser Abdel Razek said. “We had a golden opportunity to capitalize on millions who called for human dignity in 2011... We have a huge following and this is what we need to build on.”
Razek is now seriously examining the option of crowdfunding through membership contributions.
The registration deadline not only sent shockwaves across civil society circles, but also forced donors to hold off on supporting organizations that have hitherto survived under the radar, circumventing government oversight by registering as non-profit organizations.
A development worker employed at a foreign state’s donor agency said that even donors with no controversial political agenda in the region have made no disbursements directly to human rights programs in the past year.
Funds have been given to support UN or EU projects in the safe areas of women’s rights and female genital mutilation eradication, but anything beyond that has become risky, the development worker said.
“It is dangerous for them to receive money,” the worker said.
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