Rights activists denounce Egypt’s new anti-terrorism law as draconian

In a significant leap toward harsher authoritarian rule, Egypt has enacted a draconian new anti-terrorism law that sets a sweeping definition for who and what could face a harsh set of punishments, including journalists who don’t toe the government line.
The far-reaching new law adds provisions to protect security forces from prosecution, establishes stiffer prison sentences for terror-related offences, as well as heavy fines for those who publish “false news” and a special judicial circuit for terrorism cases.

Authorities claim the measures will halt attacks by Islamist militants and stop the spread of their ideology, but the new restrictions have prompted concern from lawyers, rights groups, the opposition and even some Egyptian politicians and senior judges.
The 54-article bill, signed into law late Sunday by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and announced Monday, establishes an extremely broad definition of terrorism, describing it in one article as any act that disturbs public order with force. Some charges, such as leading or organizing a terrorist group, carry the death penalty.
The law also prescribes heavy prison sentences for a range of crimes, including promoting or encouraging any “terrorist offence,” as well as damaging state institutions or infrastructure, such as military or government buildings, courthouses, power and gas lines, and archeological sites.
Egyptians lived under so-called “emergency laws” for decades that gave police extensive powers, encouraging a culture of excess and brutality among security forces, something that partially inspired the 2011 uprising against long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The law was suspended after his overthrow.
Constitutional law expert Nour Farahat, who helped set up guidelines for the first post-Mubarak constitutional amendments, said the government had ignored all advice concerning the new law’s constitutional flaws.
“This is because the Interior Ministry wants that, and the Interior Ministry is now ruling Egypt,” he wrote on his official Facebook page. “Emergency laws were in place in Egypt during Mubarak times for 30 years. Did it eradicate terrorism? I fear for a nation where truth is lost.”
Rights activists say the new anti-terrorism law is even more draconian than the earlier emergency laws and that police under Mr. el-Sissi have already begun to act with the impunity of the Mubarak days, torturing detainees and denying them basic medical services in overcrowded prisons and police holding cells.
The government denies the allegations, insisting that offenders do not go unpunished, though policemen rarely face prosecution and even fewer serve time.
Mohamed Zaree, Egypt program manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said the government has already been acting without restraint in its crackdown on dissent. He described the new law as “a covert emergency law.”
“Now they can go after anyone. The law will have an effect on the public sphere and peaceful opposition activities more than terrorists and violent groups, who don’t care anyway and disregard the laws,” he said.
The law sets heavy fines of $26,000 to $64,000 (U.S.) for publishing “false news or statements” about terrorist acts, or news that contradicts the Defence Ministry’s reports. It also sanctions, with a minimum of five years imprisonment, the “promotion, directly or indirectly, of any perpetration of terrorist crimes, verbally or in writing or by any other means.”
Mohamed Fahmy, a Canadian journalist branded as a terrorist by the Egyptian government, said the new laws makes it likely that other reporters will meet the same fate.
Mr. Fahmy and two of his colleagues with Al Jazeera English were jailed for more than a year after the Egyptian government accused them of supporting a rival political organization and undermining national security through their media coverage.
He said his imprisonment and two trials were governed by a set of unwritten rules that have now become official Egyptian law.
“It’s very clear that if you don’t toe the government line, you will be prosecuted,” Mr. Fahmy said in a telephone interview from Cairo, where he is free on bail while awaiting a verdict in his case that an appeal court sent for a new trial. It is currently scheduled to be handed down on Aug. 29.

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Egypt is now a dictorship, just as it was under Mubarak, only worse.  Any government that tortures, terrorises and executed journalists for doing their job is a tyranny.

I love how people question something whilst sat back away from the problem not experincing it. What is the alternative? Yet another Syria and Iraq where then millions are displaced and yet more people dying in bloodshed. I do not back the prsent governement but its easy to condemn something when the alternative is yet another Arab nation falling to extremism.

You mean you support Sisi, just because he is secular, when he is heaping terrorism on his own people, including the secular protestors and is the worst thing that has ever happened to the Egyptian people. 

So you support internal terrorism?

Wrong again I do not supoort Sisi, but out of the lesser of two evils in charge, I would pick him over any extremist group like ISIS
You really are so clueless to the worlds issues

Now that really is going round the houses.  It's not a Sisi/ISIS choice.

Indeed, your militant anti-theism is so strong that you would rather a tyrant that terrorises his people, religous and secular, than anyone attached to a religion.

But here's the rub.  Sisi has a religion.  It was nothing to do with a standard of morality, his religion is Power with a capital P.   But I do realise that is a little deep for you.

ISIS backwards is Sisi.

Yes it is the situation or the other worse evil, that of the Muslim brotherhood.
So he is the lesser of 3 evils.
I would prefer a democratic secular nation over everything but again religion holds sway.
I think anyone with a rational mind would place secular government over Theocracy.
So you back myths to rule people now sassy, which actively discrminates against groups of people like women, homosexuals, apsotates etc?

You really have sunk to the bottom haven't you.

Cuchulain wrote:Yes it is the situation or the other worse evil, that of the Muslim brotherhood.
So he is the lesser of 3 evils.
I would prefer a democratic secular nation over everything but again religion holds sway.
I think anyone with a rational mind would place secular government over Theocracy.
So you back myths to rule people now sassy, which actively discrminates against groups of people like women, homosexuals, apsotates etc?

It's not your democratic choice.

But you're so arrogant that you think you know better. That's an imperialistic attitude.

Here we go again not able to answer points but more pathetic excuse by deflecting.
Theism is not a means to govern and the main reason for that is it has no evidence and is steep in discrmination.

So try answering and stop offering claptrap

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

Cuchulain wrote:Yes it is the situation or the other worse evil, that of the Muslim brotherhood.
So he is the lesser of 3 evils.
I would prefer a democratic secular nation over everything but again religion holds sway.
I think anyone with a rational mind would place secular government over Theocracy.
So you back myths to rule people now sassy, which actively discrminates against groups of people like women, homosexuals, apsotates etc?

It's not your democratic choice.

But you're so arrogant that you think you know better. That's an imperialistic attitude.

How is it a democratic choice when many have know other knowledge of anything else but what they have been indoctrinated from birth with Islam?
That is not democracy but people who have little knowledge of other choices.
It was the same in the west for years where people tried to deny free thinking which religions always censor.
So spare me your babble again about democracy when people know of nothing much better in the main.
It took the youth to rise up against religious bable and they were butchered by the religious zealots for this.

I should also add that around 16 million are illiterate, so thjey can only go by why people indoctrinate them with which happenned in the west where for years mainly the clergy could only read and write.
So do noty even claim democacry, when the people have little comprehension of choices.

Cuchulain wrote:

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

It's not your democratic choice.

But you're so arrogant that you think you know better. That's an imperialistic attitude.

How is it a democratic choice when many have know other knowledge of anything else but what they have been indoctrinated from birth with Islam?
That is not democracy but people who have little knowledge of other choices.
It was the same in the west for years where people tried to deny free thinking which religions always censor.
So spare me your babble again about democracy when people know of nothing much better in the main.
It took the youth to rise up against religious bable and they were butchered by the religious zealots for this.

This is what I mean by your imperialistic arrogance.

Whether anyone likes it or not, the Muslim Brotherhood were democratically voted in after the Arab Spring.

The U.S. and Israel didn't like it and installed General Sisi. Against the choice of the Egyptian people who you think are all brainwashed by religion. You're a bigot, plain and simple.

Cuchulain wrote:I should also add that around 16 million are illiterate, so thjey can only go by why people indoctrinate them with which happenned in the west where for years mainly the clergy could only read and write.
So do noty even claim democacry, when the people have little comprehension of choices.

Your comment smacks of "White Man's Burden". The same imperial bigotry the West used to "civilise" the rest of the world.

Fuzzy Zack wrote:

Cuchulain wrote:I should also add that around 16 million are illiterate, so thjey can only go by why people indoctrinate them with which happenned in the west where for years mainly the clergy could only read and write.
So do noty even claim democacry, when the people have little comprehension of choices.

Your comment smacks of "White Man's Burden". The same imperial bigotry the West used to "civilise" the rest of the world.

Racist drivel.
No I speak the truth, how can many people when such a view is indoctrinated from a young and even more a view that to leave is a crminal offense have the ability to form differening views. It is no different to how for years in the west, people have been fighting for equality where relgious bodies have attempted to deny them. When are you going to understand that a belief system is just an ideology and when that ideology is indoctrinated from an early age it most certainly denies choice. Religions should be a personal belief not something imposed on others.
Everyone should have equality within the law, that does not happen with the Abrahamic faiths when they are the bases for law..

didge appears not to know of the secular youth who are and have been, rising up against Sisi and are being butchered, never mind the thousands he has already killed.

sassy wrote:didge appears not to know of the secular youth who are and have been, rising up against Sisi and are being butchered, never mind the thousands he has already killed.

Yes I am very supportive of the youth but then they are a minority with no hope at present of having enough support to form a secular democracy in Eygpt. This was abundently clear when the Muslim Brotherhood imposed further Theocracy and tried to create more powers for the President.
Again you offer nothing to the debate and go off a group persecuted by the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists within Egypt.

Oh right, you are supportive of them but wont condemn the man who has been killing and torturing them willy nilly, because he's not religious.  I suppose in a tortured 'brain' like didges that makes perfect sense.

Cuchulain wrote:I love how people question something whilst sat back away from the problem not experincing it. What is the alternative? Yet another Syria and Iraq where then millions are displaced and yet more people dying in bloodshed. I do not back the present governement but its easy to condemn something when the alternative is yet another Arab nation falling to extremism.

For those who need to go to specsavers