The Project Coordinator will be responsible for managing and implementing ECWR's activities for the FGM Regional Media Task Force Partnership and our Stop Sexual Harassment Campaign.

Egypt's independent and opposition newspapers were not published on Sunday (July 9) to protest against a draft press law which the government bills as a reform but journalists say puts new limits on press freedom. The government-drafted bill, which won preliminary approval in parliament on Saturday 8 July, eliminates imprisonment as a penalty for some media offences, but continues to allow judges to impose jail terms for journalists in many others.

Egypt has announced a series of initiatives intended to strengthen its scientific research and higher education sectors, reports SciDev. In the latest move, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak this week (3 July) approved a 15-year strategy for higher education whose aims include increasing the proportion of students who study at scientific institutions from 40 to 60 per cent.

The Federation of Arab Journalists has re-iterated its determination to continue to campaign against prison sentences imposed throughout the Arab world against media workers. The federation said in a statement it was opposed to Egyptian draft legislation, related to publication laws.

The International Secretariat of OMCT has received with concern information from reliable sources concerning violent eviction from land of Egyptian farmers, false charges against farmers, the holding of farmers wives as hostages, the arrest of children and the immanent trial of several persons, including women, on fabricated charges. Twenty three farmers are reportedly being detained waiting trail before Damanhour court on the 19th of June 2006 as a result of the violent invasion of their land described below. Further, it is reported that wives of farmers are still being held hostage by police to force their husbands to surrender.

A new report released by the Egyptian coalition opposition group Kifaya on 4 July says that corruption has infiltrated all aspects of Egyptian society and stands in the way of further social and economic development. "This report deals with corruption in the inclusive sense," says George Ishaq, Kifaya spokesman and coordinator. "It is diverse and includes that which is seen and that which is covered up. It includes the political and the cultural as well as the economic and the social. Corruption has become a social law."

As the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) moves towards elections, political scientist Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja talks to Pambazuka News about the strategic importance of the DRC. A strong state in the Congo would threaten western control over the resource-rich countries in the sub-region, namely, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe. Moreover, he argues, the DRC has enough arable soil, rainfall, lakes and rivers to become the breadbasket of Africa, and enough hydroelectric power to light up the whole continent from the Cape to Cairo.

Pambazuka News: What is the strategic and economic importance of the DRC, both for Africa and internationally?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: The best answer to this question is a quote from the late Jacques Foccart, the éminence grise of Gaullist Africa policy under Presidents Charles de Gaulle, Georgess Pompidou and Jacques Chirac, when the latter was Prime Minister under President François Mitterand. Asked by a journalist who was writing Foccart’s memoirs about his thoughts concerning the DRC, the old man had this to say:

You asked me what was France’s interest. On this matter, there is no ambiguity. Congo-Léopoldville, Zaire today, is the largest country in Francophone Africa. It has considerable natural resources. It has the means of being a regional power. The long-term interest of France and its African allies is evident (Emphasis mine. Jacques Foccart and Philippe Gaillard, Foccart parle: entretiens avec Philippe Gaillard, Fayard/Jeune Afrique, Paris, 1995, p. 310).

What is evident is that France and its allies, African as well as non-African, do not wish to see the DRC become a regional power in Central Africa, and thus constitute a threat to French hegemony and Western interests in the sub-region. A strong state in the Congo will not only threaten French control over the resource-rich countries in the sub-region, namely, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe.

Moreover, the DRC has enough arable soil, rainfall, lakes and rivers to become the breadbasket of Africa, and enough hydroelectric power to light up the whole continent from the Cape to Cairo. While its mineral resources are so abundant that a young Belgian geologist declared the country a geological scandal at the beginning of the last century, the real scandal of the Congo include the facts that its uranium was used to build the first atomic bombs in the world and its wealth has since the days of King Leopold II been used not in the interests of its people but to the benefit of its rulers and their external allies.

Pambazuka News: Given this importance, how does this play out with regards the looming election?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: The forthcoming election means more to the international community, which is spending heavily on it and even sending in European Union forces to supplement MONUC to ensure that it is being held, than to the Congolese people. The major powers of the world and the international organizations under their control would like to legitimize their current client regime in Kinshasa so they can continue unfettered to extract all the resources they need from the Congo.

Pambazuka News: What is the emancipatory role of the DRC with regards Africa’s development and what does self-determination mean in the context of this election?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: The DRC cannot play a positive role in Africa’s development as long as it remains a dependent territory with approximately 60 percent of its national budget, over US$400 million for its national elections and virtually all of its development policy decisions coming from external sources. Elections, in this context, are not an exercise in self-determination but a ritual designed to justify external control through weak and non-patriotic elements of the political class. To play an emancipatory role with respect to Africa’s development, the DRC must complete its transition from colonialism to genuine independence as a sovereign nation with its own social project and capacity to make and implement its own development policies.

Pambazuka News: Historically, since independence at least, DRC has had strategic importance for the US as a result of the Cold War. Have the new dynamics associated with the war on terror changed this, and how?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: On the contrary, the U.S. obsession with Islamic Fundamentalism as a potential source of terrorism makes the DRC a strategically important country because of its proximity to Sudan, its own small but significant Muslim population and its ties to East Africa, and the fact that persistent instability in the northeast is likely to provide opportunities for drug trafficking, the proliferation of small arms, money laundering and other criminal activities likely to be exploited by terrorist groups to their own advantage. The U.S. stake in the DRC is clearly evident by Washington’s involvement in the management of the current transition through CIAT (the International Committee to Accompany the Transition).

Pambazuka News: How has/does the historical legacy of Leopold 11 and Belgian colonialism impact on the country?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: At the present time, Georges Forrest, a Belgian businessman, runs a big mining empire in the Katanga province, with obvious support from the Belgian state. Louis Michel, the EU Commissioner for Development and former Deputy Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister of Belgium, is one of the most powerful decision makers on the fate of the Congo. While it would be an exaggeration to put them on the same level as the agents of either King Leopold’s Congo or the Belgian Congo, the legacy of Belgian domination is kept alive through their enormous influence on Congo’s economy and politics.

Pambazuka News: What are the links between colonial rule, Mobutu and the rule of the late Kabila and now his son?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: The main linkage between colonial rule, Mobutu and the two Kabila has already been underlined above, in that they each represent a predatory regime in which the enormous wealth of the country is being monopolized by the rulers and their external allies instead of serving the basic needs of the Congolese people.

Pambazuka News: You’ve written a book: ‘The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History’ in which you say that Congolese people have fought throughout their oppressive history to establish democratic institutions at home and free themselves from foreign exploitation. This is perhaps something that’s often missed in a discussion of the Congo, with a focus on war and resource extraction making it seem as if the DRC’s people are helpless in the face of these forces. Can you elaborate on your argument and how this fight has played itself out?

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: In January 1959, the popular masses arose against colonial rule in Kinshasa and by the end of that year, parts of the country had become totally ungovernable, leading the Belgians to conclude that they had to respect the Congolese people’s call for “immediate independence.” In 1963, faced with the evidence that independence did not meet their deepest aspirations for freedom and material well-being, peasants in the western part of the country came up with the new slogan, that of a “second independence,” and this became the rallying cry of popular insurrections led by the followers of the former and assassinated Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, which succeeded in taking over nearly three quarters of the national territory. These insurrections were defeated by a counter-insurgency effort coordinated by the United States and Belgium, and which included the use of white mercenaries from Europe and Southern Africa.

In 1990, the rejection of the Mobutu regime through the popular consultations that the dictator himself had initiated for a verdict on his rule opened the process of transition to multiparty democracy. Had it not been for the erosion of Mobutu’s power through his repudiation by the public and which the Sovereign National Conference endorsed in 1992 through the election of Etienne Tshisekedi as Prime Minister of a transitional government, Laurent Kabila and his Rwandan allies would not have been able to march from Goma to Kinshasa in 7 months without a significant military challenge from Mobutu’s army.

Unfortunately, all these episodes of popular resistance to tyranny in search of democracy and social progress have ended in failure for lack of a political leadership that would put the people’s interests ahead of the narrow class interests of self-serving and corrupt politicians.

Pambazuka News: Any predictions for how the coming election is going to play itself out?

Georgess Nzongola-Ntalaja: Since the current transitional government has not fulfilled the requirements laid out in the Sun City/Pretoria accord for free and fair elections, the ritual of 30 July is likely to confirm Joseph Kabila as President, but it will not change the political situation of the country for the better. Violence will continue in the northeast, and corruption and incompetence will remain the most salient features of a government with an externally-driven agenda.

Interview conducted by email. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja's book, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, is published by Zed Books, 2002. Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is Facilitator for the Africa Governance Institute (AGI), a project of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York. He has also served UNDP as Director of the Oslo Governance Centre in Oslo, Norway, from 1 August 2002 to 31 July 2005, and as Senior Adviser on Governance to the Federal Government of Nigeria in Abuja, Nigeria, from March 2000 to May 2002.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) expresses its deep concern regarding the ruling issued by al-Warraq Misdemeanor Court yesterday morning against Journalist Ibrahim Eissa, editor-in-chief of ed-Destour and Sout el-Ommaha newspapers. Ibrahim Eissa, Sahar Zaki (an editor at ed-Destour) and Saed Mohamed Abdullah (citizen) were sentenced to one year in prison with labor, a bail of L.E. 10 000 and L.E. 2001 as temporary compensation.

Are you people only out to 'get' governments (The tragedy of Mustafa Mahmoud Park, Summary of report from Force Migration Review
)? The main culprit in all of this was UNHCR. It is, in my view, disastrous for refugee/government relations that only the Egyptian government gets the bad publicity when they had remained patient for threelong months. It is very well-known, certainly to UNHCR, who called for the demonstrator to be removed, that the security in Egypt is not trained for a peaceful break-up of demonstrations. Had UNHCR simply allowed other refugees to attend their offices from another direction and kept 'in business', the refugees would not have believed their sit-in to have been so successful.

In a 15 June 2006 communiqué submitted to the public prosecutor, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information holds the Interior Ministry totally responsible for the life and health condition of blogger and prisoner of opinion Mohammad Al-Sharqawi. HRinfo demands that the public prosecutor require the Interior Ministry to allow Al-Sharqawi to be admitted to hospital, where he could receive necessary medical care for injuries resulting from torture, particularly injuries to his hips and left arm.

The Art Of Flight is a guerrilla documentary that was shot illegally in Egypt on camcorders and a laptop. The film serves as a back story to the 2006 massacre of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. The filmmaker was nearly arrested three times during the course of shooting. This feature-length film tells the story of three people – a refugee from southern Sudan, a human rights activist from northern Sudan and an American journalist in self-imposed exile – all living in Cairo.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has condemned the unjust detention of free speech bloggers and journalists in Egypt. Alaa Seif Al-Islam, a seasoned blogger and APC colleague, is one of four Egyptian online diarists being held in detention for criticising the current regime.

President Hosni Mubarak should immediately order an independent judicial investigation into last Thursday’s severe beatings by security agents of political activists Karim al-Sha`ir and Mohamed al-Sharqawi, Human Rights Watch says. Police also sexually assaulted al-Sharqawi, according to a written statement he smuggled out of prison.

Today (25 May), on the first anniversary of the attacks made on referendum day, 24 Egyptian NGOs announced that the African Commission for Human and Peoples' Rights, of the African Union, has decided to take on the lawsuit that organizations have raised against the Egyptian government over the physical and sexual harassment of a number of female journalists and political activists.

Egyptian police allegedly tortured two protesters - sexually assaulting one of them - after a peaceful demonstration in support of pro-reform judges, a lawyer and an opposition group said Friday (26 May). Activist Mohammed el-Sharkawi, 24, was sodomized "using a rolled up piece of cardboard for nearly 15 minutes," his lawyer Gamal Eid told The Associated Press. "Almost all of el-Sharkawi's body is bruised, swollen, or cut," Eid said. "I haven't seen such brutality and sadism since 1995," he added, referring to a period when the state mounted a crackdown on Islamic militants.

Despite promises of liberalization, repression is continuing against human rights reformers in Egypt, and U.S. annual aid to Egypt of some $1.7 billion is expected to continue at the same level in the next fiscal year. In addition to critiques from international human rights organizations, Egyptian bloggers are increasingly prominent in disseminating critique of the regime in both English and Arabic.

The Nile treaties have always been an aberration. In no other continent have there been strictures imposed on countries exploiting their natural resources the way those surrounding Lake Victoria have been through a treaty none of them was involved in signing. But now things seem to be about to change with the news that the 1929 treaty will be reviewed to allow the East African countries to exploit the lake waters for irrigation, reports the Daily Nation.

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.

The European Union has pledged to fund 200 new "girl-friendly" schools countrywide, in a joint bid with the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM) to work towards a greater inclusion of females in education.

Public sexual harassment against women has become a pervasive problem in Egypt and presents a significant obstacle both to women's well-being and their participation in public life, which in turn impacts the course of democratic progress in Egypt.