The Center for Trade Union and Labour Services condemns in the strongest terms the escalating terrorist attacks that our country has witnessed in the last few days starting with the assassination of the Prosecutor General, a link in the chain of targeting the judiciary- and ending with the operations in Sheikh Zowaid and North Sinai. The Center extends its condolences to the family of Councilor Hisham Barakat and the members of the judiciary committees as well as the families of the victims among the soldiers, officers and civilians assassinated with the treacherous hand of terrorism and wishes all the injured a quick recovery.

The Center stresses that terrorism – regardless of who commits it – cannot be justified in anyway. It asserts however that terrorism represents a stark transgression on basic human rights foremost among which is the right to life and security of person and implicitly the viciousness of murder and its prevalence and the meanness of disregarding human life whether because of their person or their jobs or those who are affected by blind terrorism by coincidence or are considered a scapegoat for the achievement of terrorist goals.

The Center stresses the right of all Egyptians in a safe life. Our collective duty is to defend this right and protect it. It asserts the duty of the state in confronting terrorism and taking the necessary serious and effective measures. In this regard it sees that it is necessary to call for and stress the following:

That facing terrorism –in particular- with its escalating waves lately necessitates the mobilization of the energies of Egyptian society as a whole and calling onto all its live powers to positively interact with the ongoing war. Mobilizing energies and calling onto powers does not only mean its invitation to declare agreement or blackmailing it that there should not be a voice louder than the battle.

Calling onto the energies and powers of society is not achieved except by opening up the public domain not closing it… without allowing adequate space for the participation in decision making a real contribution in fighting terrorism. All political powers and civil society organizations have to be invited to participate in confronting terrorism. But participation is not through opening phone lines on satellite channels for voices calling for vengeance and death sentences.. it is also not just an advertisement phone numbers on television to receive reports about explosives and suspects.

No one can deny the importance of the security dimension in confronting terrorism. None of us Egyptians would not stand by the Egyptian army.. with the Egyptian officers and soldiers against a terrorist organization that seeks to control Sinai. But confronting terrorism – as everyone is tired of repeating- does not only take security procedures. In this regard individual procedures or reactions however violent or strict are useless and a comprehensive strategy that is political, economic, social, intellectual and security related, is needed. It is a comprehensive war to dry up the sources of terrorism and securing the surrounding environment and depriving terrorism of any incubator whatever its status.

The reactions of the government to the assassination of the public prosecutor rise reasons for worrying. Not only because it is directed to the quick issuance of a terrorism law and a hurried amendment of the criminal procedures law. they also appeared as if they offer the wrong answer to the question posed.

The demonstration law that came out around two years ago – regardless of our reservations about it and the waste of freedoms that it implied – is the effective answer to how to prevent demonstrations regardless of rights and the standards of human rights and also regardless of its consequence that is the animosity with large numbers of youth and the rift it created in a wall that was sturdy until that moment since your goal was to prevent demonstrations at any cost.  

But you are presenting the wrong answer if you believe that the effective way to end terrorist organizations is to threaten to hasten the executions that have been sentences. Does execution scare a person who wraps a belt of explosives around his waist and blows himself up imagining that he will spend the night in heaven!!

Effective justice is demanded.. Yes… But are we lacking an amendment in laws… amending laws or actually “patching” laws did not stop throughout the past decades until we are now facing a jungle of intertwining jurisdictions that have increased in the past two years. Terrorism is defended in Egyptian law in a way that cannot be superseded. Its penalty is deterrent enough. Effective justice is demanded but amending laws which always seems like an easy solution is not a solution. It is the comprehensive development of the judicial system. Modernizing courts and the way they function, careful and fair investigations and complete case papers that allow the court to issue their fair verdict.

Effective justice is required but it cannot be achieved if there was a disruption of the right of defense or a wasting of the right to defense or a waste of grades of litigation. We have forgotten that when discussing the Egyptian constitution we have sought to increase the litigation grades in criminal cases to three grades – and we ratified the directive to achieve this in the coming years after modernizing the judiciary and increasing the number of courts. We have even forgotten that the committee for legislative reform was formed to present its suggestions concerning the review of the forest of intertwining laws that are sometimes contradictory with the new constitution – only to find ourselves faced with even more overlapping and contradicting.

Amending the law of criminal procedures does not only affect crimes of terrorism. It concerns all defendants including many who are innocent. Its amendment –under pressing need and desire to punish terrorists- may include a transgression on the rights of millions of Egyptians for whom this law organizes important affairs of their life.

The state of law is a state that is able to confront terrorism.

We do not need exceptional or stricter laws. The most dangerous thing that could happen in the transgression in restriction and strictness that exceed perpetrators of terrorist crimes to large sectors of the Egyptian people. The most dangerous thing that could happen in transforming large sectors of the Egyptian people to neutrality.. or rather to spectators watching a battle between two sides without aligning with either of them. The shortest road to danger is in more doing away with civil and political freedoms and restricting the rights to organization and freedom of expression. This restriction and tightening of laws is a punishment against the Egyptian people and not the perpetrators of terrorism against it.

No one can deny people the feelings of anger and rejection that following the assassination of the prosecutor general. But the strategy to confront terrorism cannot be built on calls for vengeance and revenge – even when assuming no ill intentions in these calls and voices. They are also not consistent with the refusal of every questioning of shortcomings or demands to specify the responsibility, accountability and transparent investigation and revealing of the real perpetrators of the crime.

Finally we call again for a serious and transparent societal dialogue about the escalating rate of terrorism and the threat it represents as well as the strategy to face terrorism. A truly successful strategy that does not exclude any of the sector of the Egyptian people. On the contrary it should call onto the Egyptian society with all its energies and live powers to a real democratic participation.

The  Center for Trade Union and Labour Services

Wednesday 2/7/2015