[Pnews] In the Dark Political Prisoners Wish for Light

[Prisoner News]

consortiumnews.com
<https://consortiumnews.com/2022/01/25/in-the-dark-political-prisoners-wish-for-light/>
In
the Dark Political Prisoners Wish for Light
January 25, 2022
------------------------------

*Vijay Prashad scans a world full of political prisoners and conveys a
message from one of them in Casa Blanca. *

Carelle Homsy, Egypt, “Liberté Egypte,” 2009.

*By **Vijay Prashad* <https://consortiumnews.com/tag/vijay-prashad/>
*Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research*
<https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/right-wing-offensive/>

*F*or over a decade, Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been in and out of Egypt’s
prisons, never free of the harassment of the military state apparatus. In
2011, during the high point of the revolution, Alaa emerged as an important
voice of his generation and since then has been a steady moral compass
despite his country’s attempts to suffocate his voice.

On Jan. 25, 2014, to commemorate the third anniversary of the overthrow of
Hosni Mubarak’s government, Alaa and the poet Ahmed Douma wrote a moving
epistle
<https://www.madamasr.com/en/2014/01/25/feature/politics/graffiti-for-two-alaa-and-douma/>
from
their dungeon in Tora Prison, Cairo.

This prison, which houses Alaa and other political prisoners, is not far
from the beautiful Nile and — depending on Cairo’s traffic —  not too far
from the Garden City office of *Mada Masr*, where the epistle was
published. In cities such as Cairo, the prisons where political prisoners
are tortured are often located in quite ordinary neighborhoods.

“Who said we were unequalled? Or that we’re an enchanted generation?” wrote
Douma and Alaa, reflecting on the idea that the 2011 uprising was somehow
exceptional. “We’re human,” they wrote, “but in the dark we wish for light.”

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information estimates
<https://www.anhri.info/?p=23376&lang=en> that there have been 65,000
political prisoners in Egypt since the 2013 takeover of the state by
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Alaa is being held on a number of charges,
but most of them stem from a frivolous and malicious accusation that he
organized a protest that lasted for about 15 minutes; for those 15 minutes
he has been imprisoned for much of the past decade.

Khaled Hafez, Egypt, “Forward by Day 1,” 2013.

How many sensitive people across the world are being held in prisons,
charged with ridiculous indictments? The reports that swim across the
internet — many of them from human rights groups based in the West — are
not completely credible since they ignore or downplay the record of Western
governments and pro-Western regimes.

*United States *

The United States government, for example, denies that it holds any
political prisoners despite the fact that there are international campaigns
to free people such as Alvaro Luna Hernandez <https://freealvaro.net/> (La
Raza), the Holy Land Five <http://freedomtogive.com/>, Leonard Peltier
<https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/> (American Indian Movement), Marius
Manson <https://supportmariusmason.org/> (Earth Liberation Front), Mumia
Abu-Jamal <http://www.freemumia.com/> (MOVE) and Mutulu Shakur
<https://mutulushakur.com/> (Black Liberation Army).

“These people are held without just cause, often because they peacefully
exercised their human rights — like freedom of expression — or defended the
rights of others. They may have organized an opposition party. Reported on
abuse and corruption. Taken part in a peaceful protest.”

Those are the words <https://www.state.gov/voices-of-political-prisoners/> of
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken from Dec. 7, 2021. In a stroke of
irony, his words apply to dissidents inside the United States as well as to
dissidents from U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Colombia.

On Dec, 20, 2021, less than two weeks after Blinken made these remarks,
Egypt’s State Security Court sentenced Alaa to another five years in prison
along with Mohamed al-Baqer and Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim, who were
sentenced to four years each.

At that time, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price said
<https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-december-20-2021/>
in
his weekly remarks that the U.S. was “disappointed” by these verdicts. A
few weeks later, Ahmed Hafez, spokesperson for the Egyptian Foreign
Ministry responded by saying, “It is inappropriate to comment or touch on
Egyptian court rulings.” That was the end of that.

Each year, the U.S. government provides
<https://www.amcham.org.eg/information-resources/trade-resources/egypt-us-relations/us-foreign-assistance-to-egypt>
Egypt
with $1.4 billion in aid, most of it for the military; each year, the U.S.
makes
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-hold-130m-egypts-military-aid-over-human-rights-sources-2021-09-14/>
a
big fuss of withholding a little more than $100 million of this money on
the grounds of defending human rights, although the money is later released
to Egypt on the basis of “national security.” There is a lot of huff and
puff about “human rights,” but no real concern for the throttling of
democratic processes within the country. “In the dark,” Douma and Alaa
write, “we wish for light.” But in the dark, arms deals and “national
security” set aside considerations of democracy and human rights.

Slimen El Kamel, Tunisia, “Wolves,” 2016.

The Arab Spring – whose center was the stone slab in Tahrir Square – lies
in ruins. Tunisia, where the entire process began, struggles with a
government that has suspended its democratic institutions in the hope of
tackling the social crisis that predates the Covid-19 pandemic but has been
exacerbated by it.

*Tunisia*

On Jan. 14, the anniversary of the overthrow of President Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali in 2011, the Workers’ Party of Tunisia led a march
<https://madaar.org/%d8%ac%d9%8a%d9%84%d8%a7%d9%86%d9%8a-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%87%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%85%d9%8a-%d9%84%d9%80-%d9%85%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b1-%d9%82%d9%8a%d8%b3-%d8%b3%d8%b9%d9%8a%d9%91%d8%af-%d9%88%d8%b6%d8%b9-%d9%8a/>
from
Tunis’ Republic Square to the Central Bank with the slogan “No populism, no
fundamentalism, no reactionaries.” They opposed the old regime of Ben Ali,
the Islamists and now the “populist” presidency of Kais Saied. The Workers’
Party made the point that the economic crisis, which was exacerbated by the
International Monetary Fund and that provoked the 2011 revolution, remains
unaddressed. The United Nations has also expressed
<https://www.tap.info.tn/en/Portal-Politics/14099005-ohchr-expressed> its
concern about the use of internal security forces in Tunisia to crack down
on basic political rights.

*Morocco*

In Morocco, the situation is dire. The political regime centered around
King Mohamed VI is called the Makhzen (a term that means “warehouse,”
referring to the place where the king’s subordinates would be paid).

The king is worth between $2.1 billion and $8 billion in a country where
nearly 1-in-5
<https://www.ondh.ma/fr/actualites/webinaire-sur-la-dynamique-de-la-pauvrete-au-maroc>
people
live below the poverty line and where social distress has increased
<https://madaar.org/%d8%b3%d8%b1%d8%af%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b9-%d9%81%d9%8a-%d8%ad%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b6%d8%b1-%d9%88%d9%85%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b4%d8%b1-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ba%d8%b1%d8%a8-%d8%a8%d9%8a/>
during
the pandemic. In 2015, after the February 20 movement had shaken up society
in 2011, I visited the Rabat office of the Moroccan Association for Human
Rights <http://amdh.org.ma/contents/display/487> and heard a realistic
briefing about the lack of basic political freedoms in the country. Like
brave human rights advocates in other countries, the Moroccans I met listed
the names of people who had been unjustly arrested and laid out a picture
of the difficulty of building “a state of truth and law” in the country.

Mohamed Melehi, Morocco, “Pink Flame,” 1972.

At the time, I heard about the case of Naâma Asfari, who had been detained
in 2010 and was serving a 30-year sentence for his activism over the
occupation of Western Sahara. His case and that of Khatri Dadda, a young
Sahrawi journalist arrested in 2019 and sentenced to 20 years, caught the
eye of Mary Lawlor, the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human
rights defenders. In July 2021, Lawlor said
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27244&LangID=E>
,

“Not only do human rights defenders working on issues related to human
rights in Morocco and Western Sahara continue to be wrongfully criminalized
for their legitimate activities, they receive disproportionately long
prison sentences and whilst imprisoned, they are subjected to cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment and torture.”

Pictures of these two men and countless others are often found in the
offices of human rights organizations and lawyers who work tirelessly on
their behalf. These are people like Alaa and their comrades in similar
struggles as far away as Colombia and India.

During the past few years, the Makhzen has tried to strangle Morocco’s main
party of the left, the Democratic Way. It has repressed and defamed
Democratic Way activists who try to organize in public, and it is preventing
<https://annahjaddimocrati.org/ar/7931> the party from using public
premises to hold its fifth Congress this year.

Despite the obstacles, Democratic Way activists have started the new year
by calling <https://annahjaddimocrati.org/ar/7931> for a united struggle of
popular forces and has demanded that freedoms and human rights be respected
and that political prisoners be released, including members of the Rif
Movement
<https://www.newsclick.in/moroccans-take-street-protest-jail-sentences-rif-movement-leaders>,
which has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to demand social rights
and justice after a fish vendor was killed by a city trash compactor in
2016. The Democratic Way also opposes the repressive Makhzen and supports
the self-determination of the Sahrawi people.

Since 1975, the Moroccan state has annexed
<https://panafricanvisions.com/2022/01/morocco-drives-a-war-in-western-sahara-for-its-phosphates/>
Western
Sahara, but it has little legal basis for this occupation. In August 2020,
the U.S. government inked the Abraham Accords
<https://www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords/>, which meant that Morocco and
the United Arab Emirates recognized Israel (and effectively the permanent
occupation of Palestine) in exchange for arms deals and U.S. recognition of
Morocco’s seizure of Western Sahara.

The Polisario Front (the Sahrawi people’s liberation movement) opposed
these accords as tensions
<https://madaar.org/%d8%aa%d8%ad%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d8%b2%d8%a7%d8%a6%d8%b1-_-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%85%d8%ba%d8%b1%d8%a8-%d8%aa%d9%81%d8%a7%d8%b5%d9%8a%d9%84-%d8%a3%d8%b2%d9%85%d8%a9-%d8%aa%d9%87%d8%af/>
grew
along the Morocco-Algeria border. The Democratic Way also took a courageous
stand against the accords that earned it increased repression from the
Makhzen.

Reporters Without Borders ranks
<https://rsf.org/en/morocco-western-sahara> Morocco
as 136 out of the 180 countries on its 2021 World Press Freedom Index. One
of the reasons for this poor measure is the violation of the freedom of
expression of Moroccan journalists and writers like Omar Radi, Maati
Monjib, Hicham Mansouri and Abdel-Samad Ait Ayyash. Fatima al-Afriqi wrote
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/05/04/world-press-freedom-day-tyranny-is-not-destiny-freedom-has-to-be-achieved/>powerfully
about the threats that she faced: “The message received, O guards with your
machine guns behind sandbags of memories and dreams of my skull … I
understood you who inspect my weaknesses and possible mistakes. I raise the
white flag and declare by defeat, and I will withdraw from the
battlefield’. She continues her brave vigil.

Omar Radi, like Alaa, sits in his cell in Oukacha Prison in Casablanca. He
sends us a message
<https://peoplesdispatch.org/2021/05/04/world-press-freedom-day-tyranny-is-not-destiny-freedom-has-to-be-achieved/>
:

“Tyranny is not destiny; freedom has to be achieved, even if it takes a
long time. Besides, if my time has come to pay the price on behalf of this
wretched new generation, which was born before the Old and the so-called
New Regime, then I am ready to pay it with all courage, and I will go to my
fate with a calm, smiling heart with a relaxed conscience.”

Omar, Alaa, Fatima, Ahmed, and other political prisoners around the world
will not go to their fate. We will stand up beside them. We are here. As
long as we are alive, we will stand.

*Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, journalist and commentator, is the
executive director of* *Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research* *and
the chief editor of* *Left Word Books.*

*This article is from* *Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research*
<https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/right-wing-offensive/>*.*

*The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of **Consortium News.*
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