Egypt: Human Rights

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Williams, has vast experience and is absolutely right to emphasise the significance of what has happened to journalists. This is very sinister, as the whole concept of the freedom of the press is essential to a stable, secure society and to the cause of democracy itself. I hope we can send a very strong message of support from this debate to the journalist community. I take second place to nobody in having to be peeled off the ceiling sometimes because of things journalists say. However, whatever our frustrations, we ought to be congratulating journalists and encouraging them in the crucial role they play for the things we believe in.

I warmly endorse the observations and analysis of the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger. I was greatly heartened by what she said; she ticked off the points one after another. I would like to add and re-emphasise a couple of things. First, I have rather admired the way that the Foreign Secretary has—without qualification—advocated his total conviction on the importance of human rights and the rule of law. It is very important for the Minister to convince and reassure us this afternoon that the Government’s position on Egypt is absolutely consistent with that approach because it would be a tragedy if, by default, the credibility of what the Foreign Secretary is saying was undermined.

It is also important to look at the harsh realities; they have been mentioned but I must repeat them. We have spoken of journalists, but how can the mass trials and death sentences be reconciled with the rule of law and with justice as we understand it? What about the disappearances? When I was rapporteur to the Council of Europe on the conflict in Chechnya, I found this in very real terms. I kept saying to myself: “Think of the mass concern in my country if one child or young person disappears”. People in large numbers are just disappearing. Imagine what that means for ordinary families and people throughout Egyptian society. There is also ruthless, cruel, sadistic torture and all the implications for women of what is happening.

As an old man, I have come to the conclusion that there comes a time when the niceties have to be put in perspective. At the moment, our basic message should be one of solidarity with the Egyptian people. We do not want any rationalisation about how we must be reasonable and so on. What happened in Egypt was, in fact, a military coup. There is no other way to describe it. I was in Cairo when the demonstrations were on. What worried me then was that a number of people with whom I spoke said, “All that matters is to get rid of the Muslim Brotherhood”. I said, “What are you going to replace it with? First, you should not be doing it this way but building up to the next election when you deal with these things.” They said, “That does not matter. We must just get rid of it”. There is a great need for some investigation by historians into what the riots were really about, who orchestrated them and who stirred up the passion there. I think there are some very ugly realities there. I detect the hand of the old guard. I am absolutely certain about that. I suspect the military were very much involved, too.

To conclude, I again emphasise that if we are worried about extremism in the world—I am very worried about it—the one thing we must forgo at all costs is direct or indirect counterproductivity. To try to apologise for or find ways to accommodate the military regime is direct provocation to the cause of extremism and militant behaviour in the Islamic community. We have to be even-handed. I am very uncomfortable about a situation in which we have an inquiry going on about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood while we may find all sorts of rationalisations for our behaviour on other fronts with Egypt. That is just not even-handed. I look to the Minister to reassure us on these issues.

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[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I was fortunate to be added to the second visit of the all-party group to Egypt two weeks’ ago on the grounds that on the previous visit it was suggested that it would be helpful if someone with a military background joined the delegation.

I was particularly interested to have, first, a two-hour meeting with Mr Sisi—he was very much Mr, not Field Marshal, Sisi. We all came away impressed with the grasp that he had of the issues that were facing the country and some of the ways in which he said he was approaching them. He said that Egypt was embarked on a road map which had three main ingredients—two of which had been completed and the third was to come. The first was the writing of the constitution by the committee of 50. Like my noble friend Lord Hylton, I was extremely interested in the exposition of this by Mr Amr Moussa, a wise man. It was interesting that the scope of the people included in the 50- person committee was very wide. I definitely share the impression he got that the Muslim Brotherhood was not to be excluded from future discussions because it was very much part of Egypt.

The second part of the road map, of course, was the election of the president. Although people think that he had a vast majority in the votes cast, we were left under no illusion that the general feeling was that it was of votes cast and did not represent that percentage of the population of Egypt. I was gratified to hear that, knowing of the number of people who deliberately abstained, particularly from the Muslim Brotherhood, because that meant that he would not claim it.

The third part, of course, is the election of Parliament. Quite a lot of time was spent on that. Not least, we were interested to learn that guaranteed numbers of women and Christians would be appointed to that Parliament. Although it sounded extremely complicated, there was a kind of first past the post representation all over Egypt. There was then the production of party lists, which had to contain a number of people of different kinds. Then there was a presidential addition of 20. It all seems complicated but at least it is based on a constitution. Certainly I came away feeling that the jury was out and we would be unwise to be too critical of everything that is in train until it has actually happened and we can see what part it can play in the development of Egypt.

The second point that President Sisi made to us very clearly—as has already been pointed out by my noble friend Lord Williams of Baglan—was that Egypt comes first. As far as he was concerned, gender and religion did not matter. Provided that you put Egypt first, then Egypt welcomed you, but if you put something above Egypt, that was where you parted company. That is where—he did not say as much but others mentioned it—the Muslim Brotherhood had appeared to go wrong, because they had put something above being Egyptian. He went on to criticise the British for our involvement in Iraq and in Libya, and for leaving Libya so soon. Others added a little dagger with the two names of Sykes and Picot, who had successfully mucked up that part of the world. Our status was not as high as we would like .

However, President Sisi said several times that task number one was to put food on everyone’s table, so there was a feeling of reality in all these discussions. The person who most concerned me was the Minister of Defence, not least when he suggested that the internal security situation in Sinai was 85% under control. I did not get the chance to ask him about the other 15%. As a soldier, I have never been able to measure internal security situations in that way. I was interested in the co-operation with Israel over this because, not surprisingly, Israel has as much interest in any terrorism based in Sinai as Egypt has.

The other group which interested me enormously were groups of students, in a meeting arranged by the British Council. I was grouped with a wonderful team of about 15 male and female students from the old Egyptian university in Cairo. Had any of them voted in the presidential election? The answer was no. Were any of them going to vote in the parliamentary election? Again, the answer was no, because they were disillusioned with politics. This was rather sad, because they are the coming generation. They were bright and one just hoped that there was more from that.

So what did I conclude from all this? I declare an interest as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. When I look at the world and consider the national security interests, I look at the geopolitical position of Egypt, the junction between Arabia and Africa and that immensely important waterway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. We have a very long connection with Egypt. Despite all the human rights problems, I think that the attitude of critical friend is the one that we should adopt.

Finally, the most interesting person we met quite apart from the political scene was the Grand Mufti. I had not realised until he spoke to us that when all these death penalties are passed in the courts, that does not mean that they have been passed. Every death penalty that is imposed then comes to the Grand Mufti and he looks at it from the Islamic point of view. It then goes to the appeal court, then back to the Grand Mufti, then to the president. So I suspect that there is quite a long way to go. That is not to say that I support any of this, but I am interested that there are checks and balances in the system. These ought to be allowed to work through before we damage our position in the eyes of a country which is one with which we ought to maintain friendship—albeit a critical one.

[Lord Judd]

Before the noble Lord sits down, may I just ask him one question? It would be interesting to hear his research. In this House he is renowned for his stand on the implementation of justice and the penal system. Did he make any inquiries about what was happening within the penal system?

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I did not. I would dearly liked to have done so. However, the 62,000 my noble friend Lord Hylton mentioned are out of a population of 90 million, while we have 84,000 in prison with a far lower population.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this Question asks us to assess the human rights situation in Egypt. I have to say that it is poor, and at the moment is getting worse. We all recognise that and the severity of the situation. We also recognise, as the right reverend Prelate said, the conflict between interest and values in foreign policy. Egypt is one of the most important countries in the Arab and Muslim world. It is also an important player in the world economy because of the Suez Canal, and in regional order, because it is Israel’s neighbour and part of the key to Gaza. So we have a complex number of interests there.

I recall that when I first started studying international relations, Egypt was in those days the largest and most important player in the Arab world and the source of influence on other countries. That is less so now because the Egyptian economy is in an extremely weak position and has gone backwards sharply over the past three years. The poverty of Egypt, in contrast to the wealth of the oil-producing states, has to some extent altered the balance. We have to start by recognising that the countries which now support the Egyptian economy and are perhaps helping to rebuild it are the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which gives them much more direct influence on what is happening in Egypt than we have.

We also have to recognise that Egypt has, after all, the origins of the Muslim Brotherhood—an important Sunni player. The Muslim Brotherhood, in a sense, was one way in which to reconcile traditional Islam and aspects of modernity. As such, it is seen by a number of other Governments in the Gulf as being a threat to their rule. The Saudi Government declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in March this year; that was very much because of its history within Saudi Arabia, in the sense that it is a challenge to the nature of the Gulf regimes.

Therefore, alongside the pressures that we are putting on the Egyptian Government, we also have to recognise that others have different priorities, which are not ours. Her Majesty’s Government have a close and continuing relationship with the Egyptian Government. We speak frankly to them. We have issued a number of statements about the numbers who have been imprisoned and, in particular, about the recent condemnation of the journalists and the liberal activists with whom we were in indirect contact. We have made, and continue to make, our position entirely clear to the current Egyptian Government.

Some participants in this debate have suggested that there are chinks of light. The new constitution has elements guaranteeing the rights of women. If we are to believe President Sisi, he sees his role as being to provide a gradual transition to democracy. We all know that such a transition can be extremely gradual; that is part of the problem we have to bear. The European Union has some influence. Egypt is part of the southern neighbourhood with which we work. We, and others, through, in our case, the Arab Partnership Participation Fund and a number of European Union funds, have been working with bodies in Egypt which want to promote a more open, liberal and equal society.

That is not easy under the current conditions. In the Chamber not long ago, some of us were debating whether foreign NGOs and other organisations are recognised as legitimate in other states. Egypt is as conscious of sovereignty as any other state in this regard. The Egyptian Government’s response to Secretary of State Kerry’s condemnation of the punishment of the journalists demonstrates how difficult it is to get one’s influence through.

That being said, the Government will maintain their dialogue and their strong condemnation of the direction in which Egypt is going. To be honest, we have to recognise that Egypt, like Turkey until recently, has a deep state which is the military—linked to military control of aspects of the economy, the intelligence services, the police and the judiciary. I never entirely understood what was meant by the phrase “the deep state” until I worked on the Cyprus problem many years ago. After funny articles and various bits in the press started getting published attacking me, I met somebody in Istanbul who told me how that had been arranged. There are parallels between Egypt and Turkey. They are not entirely dissimilar regimes, although Turkey is a great deal more developed than Egypt.

Moving the Egyptian regime on from the current privileged position of the military within the state apparatus and the economy is going to be extremely difficult. We have to recognise that, in doing so, we will not be pushing them in the same direction as Saudi Arabia or the Emirates. Thus the Europeans and, to an extent, the Americans will have a hard task to get their messages through. What we saw with the Arab spring in Egypt, as in a number of other countries, was the emergence for the first time of an urban middle class. There is a similar one in Tehran. Iran, after all, has all the tensions between rural elements and educated urban elements that we now see in Egypt, although, again, Iran is much more economically developed than Egypt.

There is a very long way to go in Egypt, and I have not yet touched on the treatment of minorities, the Coptic Church and other elements which we also have a great deal of concern about. We recognise that what happens in Egypt matters for the whole of the Middle East, for the Sunni dimension of the Middle East, in particular, and for the relationship between the Middle East and Europe as a whole. We therefore must maintain our dialogue and our criticism. We need to speak on the rights of minorities and the role of women, as well as the need to accept that the media must be allowed to criticise and that foreign media play a legitimate role in contributing to the national debate. All those messages, which the current Egyptian Government do not wish to hear, have to be repeated on a regular basis.

I think I have covered all the points. I accept what the noble Baroness said about mass arrests, torture, the role of the remarkably untrained and over-independent judiciary and all the problems that we see in that society. We are attempting to train a small number of Egyptian judges but that is also a very large task. The experience we have gained in helping to move the states of eastern Europe through transition shows just how difficult this can be. I recall going to Budapest in about 1995 and meeting my noble friend Lord Lester, who said: “We are having great difficulty in explaining to the judges here that they can rule against the state.” If that was the case in a country as developed as Hungary, the problems are much larger in less developed states and those with no tradition of democracy.

The right reverend Prelate said that Egypt is currently narrowing the space for democracy. Egypt has not yet been a democracy for any sustained period. As we all now understand in this country, democracy is a frail concept which we have to cherish. It is very easy to lose and very hard to build. It will take a long time to build it across the Middle East but we must work as hard as we can, through all the means and with all the allies we have to promote it. I assure him that the Government will continue to make their views clear as we continue a close, frank dialogue with the Egyptian Government.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, the noble Lord has been emphasising positive engagement and dialogue. Before he sits down, can he give us a specific assurance that the Government’s representations will include the dangers of counterproductivity and the hard-headed argument that what is happening within the penal system plays right into the hands of the extremists?

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, I did not hear the Minister address my question about whether the loosening of arms licences is envisaged, in the light of the recent statement by the US Secretary of State.