By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 16/05/06):
President Hosni Mubarak's enforcers have a particular way of dealing with female demonstrators: they sexually humiliate them. The case of journalist Abir al-Askari is but one example. When she arrived at Cairo's high court last week for a disciplinary hearing against two pro-democracy judges, she was grabbed by several men."They drove me to Sayyida Zeinab police station. I screamed and resisted and they beat me and pulled my hair and my veil," Ms Askari said. "Right in front of the police station they kicked me. When people gathered and told them to stop they replied: 'She's been committing adultery."
Ms Askari told Human Rights Watch investigators that she was taken to a room where three female activists from the Kifaya reform group had previously been abused. "'Nobody will know where you are,' the officer said. 'You are lost.' They tore at my clothes, my shirt buttons. They continued to slap and punch me ... I was lying on the floor. He placed his shoe on my face." She was later released.
Ms Askari's ordeal recalled a similar outrage in May last year when women protesters were assaulted and groped by plainclothes security men as police looked on. That incident was especially embarrassing for Mr Mubarak. Under US pressure, he had just promised a new era of democratic reform and announced Egypt's first contested presidential election (which he later won by a landslide). He ordered an investigation. But no charges have been brought.
So far last week's sexual assaults, which were less widely reported, have not been deemed worthy of an official inquiry. Nor have the beatings, arrests, and continuing detention without trial of hundreds of mostly male pro-democracy activists from the banned Muslim Brotherhood and other groups in Cairo and elsewhere. Officials at the Egyptian embassy in London were not available for comment yesterday.
The two judges at the centre of the protests and ensuing repression, Mahmud Mekki and Hisham Bastawisi, alleged vote-rigging in last year's parliamentary polls and were accused of bringing the judiciary into disrepute. This strikes government critics, including other members of the pro-reform Judges' Club, as ironic. They claim Egypt's judiciary is mostly controlled by the ministry of justice and the two were performing a public service.
"The political and economic reforms needed to achieve democracy and restore public faith in government can be achieved only under an independent judiciary," Mr Mekki and Mr Bastawisi wrote in the Guardian last week.
But Egyptians and outside commentators accuse Mr Mubarak, spooked by rising Islamism, sectarian tensions and renewed terrorism, of ditching the reform agenda as US pressure has relaxed. Hated emergency laws were recently renewed. "The government is apparently determined to stamp out peaceful dissent. Mr Mubarak sees growing popular support for the reformist judges as a real challenge to his authoritarian ways," said Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch.
"There is no prospect of significant political reform in Egypt in the foreseeable future. It's dead in the water," said Hugh Roberts, a Cairo-based analyst. "Western efforts to shape reform in Egypt have been a fiasco."
The state department said it was "deeply concerned" by last week's violence and politely reminded Egypt that it receives $1.9bn annually in US aid. But Bush officials recently told congressional budget watchdogs that Egypt was a key Arab ally, providing support on Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan and allowing Suez Canal transit shipments and overflights to US forces in Iraq.
Washington fears the rise of the Muslim Brothers as much as it deplores the success of Hamas in Palestine. The implication was that democracy could wait.
That is not a conclusion shared by Egypt's opposition. The hearing of the judges' case has been rescheduled for Thursday. That is also the day set for an appeal by Mr Mubarak's jailed presidential opponent, Ayman Nour. More protests and more brutal abuse may be on the way.