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	UN human rights office deeply alarmed at mass imposition of death penalty in Egypt by UN Rights Office & agencies   25 March 2014   The United Nations human rights office said today it is deeply alarmed by the imposition of the death penalty against 529 people in Egypt on Monday after a “cursory” mass trial in which the majority of defendants were not present in court.   “The astounding number of people sentenced to death in this case is unprecedented in recent history,” Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), told a news conference in Geneva.   “The mass imposition of the death penalty after a trial that was rife with procedural irregularities is in breach of international human rights law.”   The 529 defendants were convicted of various charges, including membership of an unlawful organisation (the Muslim Brotherhood), incitement to violence, vandalism, unlawful gathering and the killing of one police officer.   All the charges relate to events in August 2013 after the Government of President Mohamed Morsi was ousted. Mr. Colville pointed out that this was several months before the Muslim Brotherhood was declared by the Egyptian authorities to be an unlawful organisation. The exact charges against each defendant are unclear as they were not read out in court.   Mr. Colville noted that a death sentence may only be imposed after proceedings that meet the highest level of respect for fair trial and due process standards, and only for the most serious crimes in accordance with international law.   “A mass trial of 529 people conducted over just two days cannot possibly have met even the most basic requirements for a fair trial,” he stated, while also noting that more than three-quarters of the defendants, reportedly 398 individuals, were tried in absentia.   “Membership of a political group or participation in demonstrations certainly does not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes’,” he added.   Defence lawyers say that they have had insufficient access to the defendants and that the court did not consider relevant evidence presented by the defence.   According to sources present at the trial, among other procedural irregularities, the judge did not call on each defendant by name; some of the defendants who were in detention at the time of the trial were not brought to the court; and the judge did not ask about the legal representation of the defendants.   30 January 2014   Freedom of expression and journalism under threat in Egypt, by Patrick Kingsley.   Egypt to charge al-Jazeera journalists with damaging country"s reputation. Rights groups says move to indict 20 employees of news channel marks escalation in state"s campaign against foreign media, Patrick Kingsley in Cairo for The Guardian.   Egyptian prosecutors say they will charge 20 al-Jazeera journalists, including two Britons, an Australian and a Dutch citizen, with fabricating news and tarnishing Egypt"s reputation abroad. The 16 local defendants are also accused of belonging to former president Mohamed Morsi"s now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.   The journalists include the Australian former BBC correspondent Peter Greste, and the al-Jazeera"s Canadian-Egyptian bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy, who has worked for CNN and the New York Times. The identities of the other defendants, including the two Britons, are not stated, and some of them are understood to have been accused in absentia.   In a statement, prosecutors said the defendants aimed "to weaken the state"s status, harming the national interest of the country, disturbing public security, instilling fear among the people, causing damage to the public interest, and possession of communication, filming, broadcast, video transmission without permit from the concerned authorities".   Officials, who wanted to remain anonymous, also claimed the US news network CNN had broadcast al-Jazeera"s reporting in an effort "to distort Egypt"s international reputation", though this allegation was not repeated in any official document.   Rights advocates said the charges mark a serious escalation in the Egyptian state"s campaign against foreign media. The government"s supporters claim international news outlets are biased in their reporting of human rights abuses against Morsi supporters and secular dissenters – and accuse overseas outlets of working in the Brotherhood"s interests.   Al-Jazeera has received by far the fiercest criticism because its owner, Qatar, is considered sympathetic to the Brotherhood. The broadcaster"s Arabic-language stations are considered particularly biased by the Egyptian government.   Conflicts between al-Jazeera and the Egyptian authorities after the Brotherhood"s overthrow in July forced the broadcaster to shut the offices of its Arabic and English divisions, and its employees to operate without accreditation – one of several charges laid against the journalists on Wednesday.   "This case is part of a violent campaign against the freedom of expression and journalism that we have never witnessed before, except during the dying days of the Mubarak regime, from October to December 2010," said Gamal Eid, a leading Egyptian rights lawyer, and head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI).   "This is taking legitimate journalists work and calling it terrorism," said Sherif Mansour, Middle East director for the Committee for the Protection of Journalists. "That"s the biggest distortion of Egypt"s image abroad – not the reporting the journalists were doing." The charges would have a chilling effect on the work of journalists in Egypt, according to Khaled Mansour, the head of a leading local rights watchdog, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).   "I have a very strong concern now for journalists, especially foreign journalists, who are trying very hard to create a balanced picture of what is going on in this country," he said. "The work of a journalist involves going to dangerous places and interviewing outlaws. But if I were a journalist in this country, I would now be very frightened of talking to the Muslim Brotherhood – even though they are an important part of the story.   "This will really have a very chilling effect on the work of journalists – and I would hope this government will make a distinction between a journalist doing their job and meeting people, and the charges that have been filed."   More than 40 international and Egypt-focused journalists – including CNN"s Christine Amanpour and the BBC"s Jeremy Bowen – signed a joint letter on the same subject two weeks ago.   Lawyers were unclear about whether charges referred to members of al-Jazeera"s Arabic channel who were arrested in August, or just al-Jazeera English journalists seized several months later. Al-Jazeera English"s Greste, Fahmy, and local producer Baher Mohamed have been detained since late December after state security officials raided their informal base in the Marriott, a hotel in central Cairo. In local media – whose coverage is highly skewed towards the government – state officials have described the trio as "the Marriott terror cell".   In a recent letter from prison, Greste called their incarceration "an attack not just on me and my two colleagues but on freedom of speech across Egypt".   Greste has been placed in a better-kept cell, but Fahmy has been denied medical treatment for a dislocated shoulder, which was injured shortly before his arrest. Fahmy and Mohamed are in a high-security prison reserved for suspected terrorists. They spend "24 hours a day in their mosquito-infested cells, sleeping on the floor with no books or writing materials to break the soul-destroying tedium", according to Greste.   Abdullah Elshamy, one of the al-Jazeera Arabic journalists detained without charge since August, has been on hunger-strike for nine days to draw attention to his plight. "I do not belong to any group or ideology, I belong to my conscience and my humanity," he said in a letter from prison on Monday.   "Even though the other journalists have been accused unjustly, at least they are going to be able to defend themselves," his brother Mosa"ab Elshamy, an acclaimed photographer, told the Guardian. "Abdullah hasn"t even been given that right – and his case is even more backward than the one referred today."   The fate of their younger brother is indicative of the harsh conditions facing journalists in Egypt. Mohamed Elshamy was arrested at a police checkpoint on Tuesday because his camera contained images of a protest. He was later released.   "It is not only that the violence has made it almost impossible to take close-up pictures at protests," said Mosa"ab Elshamy, "but it has become difficult to even carry a camera in the street."   Being detained by police or threatened by mobs is a common experience for journalists – and especially photographers – when reporting near large crowds. One German crew was reportedly hospitalised last Friday after a particularly vicious attack near the site of a bomb explosion.   The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented at least 24 abuses against members of the media in Egypt since Saturday. It says the level of attacks on and detentions of journalists in the months after Morsi"s overthrow was unprecedented in Egypt"s history.   23 December 2013   Egyptian court jails three secular leaders of 2011 uprising.   Three of the figureheads of Egypt"s 2011 uprising have been jailed for three years, the first secular activists to be sentenced in a crackdown that has previously centred on Islamist supporters of the former president Mohamed Morsi.   Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohamed Adel – all senior members of the 6 April youth movement that stirred dissent during the final years of the Mubarak era – were also fined for flouting a new law that rights groups argue severely curtails the right to protest. They were accused of organising an unsanctioned street protest deemed illegitimate by a controversial new law, and of assaulting a police officer.   All three men were also targeted under Morsi"s presidency, and campaigned for his removal in July. Their custodial sentence on Sunday is proof that the current administration is seeking to stamp out secular as well as Islamist opposition, say fellow campaigners.   "The repression happening now to the movement and to other NGOs [non-governmental organisations] is even higher than what we experienced in [Hosni] Mubarak"s time," said Amr Ali – Maher"s successor as leader of 6 April. "Mubarak"s regime is trying to get power back, and there is a systematic approach of revenge against groups and movements that stood against it.   "Whoever"s ruling now is more or less depending on a policy of fear – under the name of fighting terrorism and fighting the Islamists."   Dozens of other secular activists await sentences for similar charges, including Alaa Abd El Fattah, another figurehead of the 2011 uprising. The Egyptian Centre for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) – a prominent NGO run by a former presidential candidate – was the subject of a violent raid on Thursday, after the group angered the security establishment in recent months by giving legal support to striking workers and jailed Syrian refugees.   For many campaigners, the imprisonment of the three activists highlights the extent of the Egyptian police"s resurgence. Police brutality was a major cause of the 2011 uprising, and its continuation under Morsi contributed both to his downfall and to the institution"s loss of prestige. But the interior ministry – which runs the police – returned to popularity by backing Morsi"s deposition, and appears to believe it has a mandate to crush any kind of dissent, say observers.   "There"s nothing new about the police behaving this way, and there"s nothing new about them going after activists," said Heba Morayef, Egypt director at Human Rights Watch. "But for me what is significant, and what makes this so ominous, is the sense of entitlement the ministry of interior now has. They"re going after the figureheads of the 2011 revolution, and they"re trying to erase the gains made since January 2011."   But while the trio"s sentencing has angered Egypt"s revolutionaries, it is unclear how much the move will effect the Egyptian street. Maher told the Guardian in November that people were beginning to realise the oppressive nature of Morsi"s successors. But he also admitted that many ordinary Egyptians – exhausted by the economic chaos and violence that followed Mubarak"s overthrow – were tired of the revolution and were now willing to trade freedom for a government that could bring them political and economic stability.   "I"ve been out of work for three years, and I just want this country to get better," said Adel Saleh, a bus driver. Visit the related web page
	India has become a dystopia of extremes by Guardian News, agencies   As the Indian election moves into its final weeks, our expert panel reflect on the state of inequality in the country, and why it is curiously absent from political campaigns.   Saket Mani, children and youth representative, United Nations, Pune, India.   Make inequality a political campaign issue: Despite being important to the electorate, inequality is absent from major political campaigns. Inequality clearly matters in Asia. A recent poll found that 82% of Indians see it as a major problem. It doesn"t take an economist or a sociologist to know that such sharp inequalities are unsustainable. But curiously, in the loud political discourse that assaults us non-stop in the run-up to the general elections, none of the major parties has made fighting inequality a real issue in their campaigns.   Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.   Introduce land reforms and raise taxation for the wealthy: We should work towards reducing asset inequality through redistributive land reforms but also through inheritance taxes, preventing monopoly of control over water, forests and mineral resources and reducing financial concentration. The equality of opportunity needs to be increased through good quality and universal public provision of essential amenities and social services. We can raise the public resources for doing all this by taxing the wealthy more and by increasing the effective taxation of corporations, which have benefited greatly from the boom and more than doubled their share of national income, but not been taxed accordingly.   Give a voice to oppressed groups: We can tackle bias against caste and gender first of all by recognising the value and dignity of all work (including unpaid work) and all workers (including those in the most difficult arduous and degraded occupations). We should also provide a greater voice to traditionally oppressed and suppressed groups, including by enabling unions and association, and making public and corporate private activity more transparent and accountable to the people generally.   Improve the balance of mass media: The media in India plays a role in sustaining inequality. This is becoming an urgent problem. We must take measures to reduce corporate takeover and manipulation of mass media.   Rikke Nöhrlind, executive director, International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN)   Eliminate caste discrimination: Caste discrimination is still all pervasive. Discrimination based on caste status is a root cause of the high poverty levels that caste-affected people experience. Most Dalits, live below the poverty line, earn less than the minimum wage, have no access to education, experience segregation in access to housing and suffer from numerous diseases, not least because of lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation. This inequality is exacerbated by the lack of implementation of existing laws to protect the Dalits.   Arun Kumar, state team leader, Futures Group International, Bhubaneswar, India.   Harness the power of technology: Policymakers should not forget that technology has helped in reducing some of the access barriers in India, particularly in relation to access to information. Policymakers should focus on making technology cheaper and deepening its penetration.   Avinash Kumar, director of policy, research and campaigns, Oxfam India, New Delhi, India.   Widen access to quality basic services: A two-tier system has been created, with largely privatised quality education and health care for those who can pay, and a large population left to fend for themselves with very poor quality public services.   Make women more visible in public life and institutions: It is shocking to see that in India women make up only 5% of the total police force, just two out of 24 supreme court judges and as we are going through polls right now, only 11% of the last parliament are women.   Akhil Paul, director, Sense International India, Ahmedabad, India.   Ensure that India"s growth is for the benefit of the many, not the few: India is a place of increasingly stark extremes in wealth. In the same India where millions use smartphones, millions live in poverty. Within India, there are many different countries. One is high-flying and tech-savvy, with people driving flashy cars in and out of top-starred hotels and clubs. Another is white-collared middle class, and another is still struggling to survive.   Make development inclusive of those with disabilities: As far as India is concerned, we might score very highly in terms of growth of physical infrastructure, but most of the public places are inaccessible to people with disabilities. As per the 2011 census, India has about 2.7 million people with disabilities, and only a handful of those enjoy education and/or employment.   Asha Kowtal, general secretary, All India Dalit Women Rights Forum (Aidmam), New Delhi, India.   Challenge the growth agenda: Beware of phrases like "inclusive growth" and "growth with a human face". These concepts are not helpful and basically serve the purpose of hiding the structural violence and poverty in India.   Ensure that all groups and communities can express their voice without fear: While they may have the vote, Dalits in the past experienced election violence. In the last election the National Dalit Election Watch (NDEW) recorded 263 incidents of election violence against Dalits, formally known as untouchables, in India. The violence manifests in several forms with Dalits being threatened, abused and prevented from voting and also violently attacked after the polls.   Niheer Dasandi,research fellow, developmental leadership programme at University College London, UK.   Stop the blame game: Instead of addressing the actual causes of inequality, we indulge in a blame game. Both the middle classes and political leaders have a tendency to blame the poor for their poverty, rather than to consider broader structural issues. When visiting Anand in Gujarat last year, Narendra Modi blamed the huge problem of child malnutrition in the state on the parents of the children. There is a very strong tendency among the middle class to treat poverty and inequality as natural and inevitable.   http://www.csrindia.org/ http://csrindia.org/blog/ http://infochangeindia.org/ http://www.lawyerscollective.org/   India has become a dystopia of extremes, by John Pilger.   In five-star hotels on Mumbai"s seafront, children of the rich squeal joyfully as they play hide and seek. Nearby, at the National Theatre for the Performing Arts, people arrive for the Mumbai literary festival: famous authors and notables from India"s Raj class. They step deftly over a woman lying across the pavement, her birch brooms laid out for sale, her two children silhouettes in a banyan tree that is their home.   It is Children"s Day in India. On page nine of the Times of India, a study reports that every second child is malnourished. Nearly 2 million children under the age of five die every year from preventable illness as common as diarrhoea. Of those who survive, half are stunted owing to a lack of nutrients. The national school dropout rate is 40%. Statistics such as these flow like a river permanently in flood. No other country comes close. The small thin legs dangling in a banyan tree are poignant evidence.   The leviathan once known as Bombay is the centre for most of India"s foreign trade, global financial dealing and personal wealth. Yet at low tide on the Mithi river, people are forced to defecate in ditches, by the roadside. Half the city"s population is without sanitation and lives in slums without basic services. This has doubled since the 1990s when "India Shining" was invented by an American advertising firm as part of the Hindu nationalist BJP party"s propaganda that it was "liberating" India"s economy and "way of life".   Barriers protecting industry, manufacturing and agriculture were demolished. Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, Monsanto and Rupert Murdoch entered what had been forbidden territory. Limitless "growth" was now the measure of human progress, consuming both the BJP and Congress, the party of independence. Shining India would catch up China and become a superpower, a "tiger", and the middle classes would get their proper entitlement in a society where there was no middle. As for the majority in the "world"s largest democracy", they would vote and remain invisible.   There was no tiger economy for them. The hype about a hi-tech India storming the barricades of the first world was largely a myth. This is not to deny India"s rise in pre-eminence in computer technology and engineering, but the new urban technocratic class is relatively tiny and the impact of its gains on the fortunes of the majority is negligible.   When the national grid collapsed in 2012, leaving 700 million people powerless, almost half had so little electricity they barely noticed. On my last two visits, last November and 2011, front pages boasted that India had "gatecrashed the super-exclusive ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] club", launched its "largest ever" aircraft carrier and sent a rocket to Mars: the latter lauded by the government as "a historic moment for all of us to cheer".   The cheering was inaudible in the rows of tarpaper shacks you see as you land at Mumbai airport and in myriad villages denied basic technology, such as light and safe water. Here, land is life and the enemy is a rampant "free market". Foreign multinationals dominance of food grains, genetically modified seed, fertilisers and pesticides has sucked small farmers into a ruthless global market and led to debt and destitution. More than 250,000 farmers have killed themselves since the mid-1990s – a figure that may be a fraction of the truth as local authorities wilfully misreport "accidental" deaths. In one district of Maharashtra, farmers die by the dozen every week.   "Across the length and breadth of India," says the acclaimed environmentalist Vandana Shiva, "the government has declared war on its own people". Using colonial-era laws, fertile land has been taken from poor farmers for as little as 300 rupees a square metre; developers have sold it for up to 600,000 rupees. In Uttar Pradesh, a new expressway serves "luxury" townships with sporting facilities and a Formula One racetrack, having eliminated 1,225 villages. The farmers and their communities have fought back, as they do all over India; in 2011, four were killed and many injured in clashes with police.   India has become a model of the cult of neoliberalism – almost everything must be privatised, sold off. The worldwide assault on social democracy and the collusion of major parliamentary parties – begun in the US and Britain in the 1980s – has produced in India a dystopia of extremes that is a spectre for us all.   Jawaharlal Nehru"s democracy succeeded in granting the vote (today, there are 3.2 million elected representatives), but it failed to build a semblance of social and economic justice. Widespread violence against women is only now precariously on the political agenda. Secularism may have been Nehru"s grand vision, but Muslims in India remain among the poorest. According to the 2006 Sachar Commission, in the elite institutes of technology, only four in 100 students are Muslim, and in the cities Muslims have fewer chances of regular employment than the "untouchable" Dalits and indigenous Adivasis. "It is ironic," wrote Khushwant Singh, "that the highest incidence of violence against Muslims and Christians has taken place in Gujarat, the home state of Bapu Gandhi."   Gujarat is also the home state of Narendra Modi, winner of three consecutive victories as BJP chief minister and the favourite to see off the diffident Rahul Gandhi in national elections in May. With his Hindutva ideology, Modi appeals directly to dispossessed Hindus who believe Muslims are "privileged".   In the face of these dangers, the great popular resistance that gave India its independence is stirring. The gang rape of a Delhi student in 2012 has brought vast numbers on to the streets, reflecting disillusionment with the political elite and anger at its acceptance of injustice and extreme capitalism"s pact with feudalism.
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