It took the murder of an Italian PhD student to focus the world's attention on just how unconscionable the security apparatus is, writes Shannon Ebrahim.
Torture of political opponents in Egypt has never been more gruesome or widespread than it is today. Torturers carving letters into the flesh of their victims is a well-documented practice of the Egyptian police, according to human rights organisations.
This is exactly what Egyptian security forces did to 28-year-old Cambridge PhD student Giulio Regeni when he was carrying out his field research in Cairo earlier this year.
But despite all the gross human rights violations of military strongman Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi’s dictatorship, the country was rewarded by the International Monetary Fund this week with a $12 billion (R172bn) bailout programme.
Strange. The IMF has refused to bail out Burundi’s economy, which has already collapsed, due to the torture and killing of its political opponents. Does that make the lives of Egypt’s political opposition less valuable in the West's calculations? It probably has more to do with the billions of dollars in trade Egypt does with the West and its geopolitical significance.
Following Sisi’s coup in 2013, his regime has detained an estimated 40 000 political prisoners, according to Egypt’s Al Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence. The centre also documented that just last year there were 281 extra-judicial killings, 119 murders of prisoners in detention, 440 cases of torture in police stations and 335 forced disappearances. Those are just the cases that the centre could find evidence of, not nearly representing all of Egypt’s excesses. To silence the centre, the Sisi regime forced it to shut down at the end of last year.
But these are just figures, and they fail to bring home the reality of how horrific these crimes are. It took the torture and killing of an Italian PhD student from one of the best universities in the world to turn the spotlight of the world’s headlines to just how unconscionable the torture tactics of Egypt’s security apparatus really are.
Regeni had been conducting his PhD field research on labour unions in Cairo in January this year when, according to news reports, he was picked up by Egyptian police on January 25. That also happened to be the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square, which saw the ousting of president Hosni Mubarak.
Regeni was taken to a police station for 30 minutes, from where he was transferred to a Homeland Security compound, as confirmed by six independent anonymous sources who spoke to Reuters.
The next time he was seen, it was his lifeless body dumped in a concrete channel beside the road from Cairo to Alexandria. It took a second autopsy in Italy, which included CAT scans and tissue analysis, for the truth to come out.
Regini had been tortured for six or seven days before his death on February 2. His body was covered in cuts and burns, his hands, feet, teeth and neck were broken, and he had been repeatedly hit on the head. His torturers had carved an X into his left hand and other marks into his back, above his right eye and on his forehead. As his mother later said: “They used him like a chalkboard.”
I read about the results of the Italian autopsy only after attending a lunch hosted by senior officials of the Egyptian embassy in Pretoria, who offered some of South Africa’s top journalists at the table free trips to Egypt and football tickets.
Only eight months after Regeni’s death did Egyptian prosecutors admit he had been under surveillance.
Independent labour unions are a particularly sensitive topic under Sisi as they were the galvanising force in the 2011 revolution against Mubarak. The first independent trade union was launched only in 2009, and more than 1 000 unions after the fall of Mubarak.
Regeni’s PhD research was specifically focused on the recently formed independent union of street vendors. This is a sector of society of particular concern to the government as they are difficult to control, and at least a quarter of Egyptian families depend on their income.
Regeni’s support for the independent trade union movement is what ultimately led to his demise.
In an article he penned in Italian under a pseudonym prior to his death, Regeni had said: “In the repressive context of the Sisi government, the fact that there are popular and spontaneous initiatives that break the wall of fear is significant.”
The wall of fear is now more robust than ever, and the Sisi regime successfully managed to exact its revenge on a young and idealistic Cambridge academic.
Before the tragic story of Regeni fades completely from international discourse, it is hoped that powerful trade union federations like Cosatu will raise their voices in defence of the independent trade union movement in Egypt and condemn the gross human rights abuses that Egypt carries out with impunity.
Needless to say, I had already declined the football tickets and won’t be taking any free trips.
* Ebrahim is Independent Media’s Foreign Editor.
The Star