This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Walid el Houri.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Walid el Houri.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Walid el Houri.

In fact, since he started studying at the Central European University in September 2019, he has been questioned by Egyptian security every time he has visited Cairo. Their questions would focus on the reasons for his trips abroad and the nature of his studies. On his last trip in December 2020, Ahmed was questioned at the airport.

When he first appeared in front of the SSSP prosecutor, Santawy was asked about his studies and academic background, including his research findings in relation to Islam and abortion, Baoumi said.

Souheila told us how much Ahmed loves knowledge: “He always has a book with him, in his small bag that he carries on his shoulder everywhere.”

Condemnations

Concern for Ahmed is growing.

Amnesty International raised concerns about him due to “COVID-19 outbreaks in Egypt’s overcrowded and unhygienic prisons.” Michael Ignatieff, the rector of Central European University, has called on European authorities to raise his case with the Egyptian government, saying that his university had already brought the case to the attention of UN and EU human rights bodies.

“We encourage universities… in Austria, Europe and around the world, as well as students’ associations everywhere to join us in calling for Ahmed’s immediate release,” Ignatieff added.

Baoumi said that the Egyptian legal system is unlikely to offer Ahmed justice without outside intervention: “The reality of the situation is that it is an extremely arbitrary system.”

“Ahmed will be released,” he said, “when the Egyptian authorities realise that the international community refuses the unfounded allegations against him and will not accept doing business as usual as long as Egypt continues to arbitrarily imprison peaceful researchers like him.”

In November 2020, when three Egyptian human rights advocates were arrested, pressure from European and North American governments succeeded in securing their release.

For Baoumi, it’s time for the UN to start monitoring the situation. He said that Western governments need to stop letting their firms sell to the Egyptian regime the weapons it uses to repress its people.

“The international community must stand up for Ahmed,” said Baoumi. “It is vital that Austria, where he was living, publicly call on the Egyptian authorities to release him.

“It is important to see media coverage of Ahmed’s situation globally and to see more mobilisation around his case.

“The international community must come together to ensure that Egypt’s human rights violations are not ignored.”

And Souheila agrees. “We ask you all to stand up and spread the cause as wide as possible,” she said.

The country has long been suffering from a devastating financial and economic crisis, primarily caused by corruption, mismanagement and incompetence. The local currency was sent into free fall over a year ago and has lost more than 80% of its value since October 2019.

The Beirut explosion and the COVID-19 pandemic have only worsened the situation , exposing the deadly incompetence of the political elite. Unemployment and poverty have reached unprecedented levels. In August 2020, the United Nations warned that half of Lebanon’s population was at risk of going hungry by the end of the year.

While the country’s rich and powerful are funnelling their money out of the country, regular people who had money in the banks have lost access to their savings and are living with the anxiety that they will not get them back unless the government comes up with a real solution to the crisis.

Nothing new

Lebanon continues to be ruled by improvisation, incompetence and impunity as a result of the sectarian power-sharing agreement that followed the 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. The country’s warlords put on suits and became the country’s politicians. A general pardon was issued and the state’s coffers became a lucrative cash cow to be divided among the major political and financial players who were now running the state.

The financial crisis since 2019, the pandemic, and the Beirut port explosion are only the most spectacular examples of the failures of the state and those who run it.

Last week’s protests in Tripoli are not new, nor are the reasons behind them. People, especially in the north of the country, have beendemonstrating without fail since 17 October 2019, demanding accountability for corrupt elites and solutions to their many economic and social woes.

Protesters have been met with violence from official forces such as the army and police, as well as from the thugs of various political parties. Meanwhile their demands for change have been ignored – so much so that on the first anniversary of the 2019 protests, which brought down the government of Saad Hariri, he was reappointed as prime minister by Parliament and tasked with leading a new government, which he has yet to form.

People are fed up with the political deadlock caused by personal feuds and power-sharing agreements between political parties, who repeatedly accuse one another of corruption but always end up sitting together in the same governments.

No trust

The lack of trust in state institutions makes it hard to imagine any way out of the crisis. People have little faith in new promises, especially after witnessing first-hand both the incompetence and the violence of the state.

Since last year, medical supplies have been running low, not only because of the pandemic but also because of the severe financial crisis. Yet while people suffocated to death for lack of oxygen machines, a field hospital donated to Lebanon by Qatar, containing 50 respirators and 500 beds, was left unused for months because the two major Shiite political parties, Hezbollah and Amal, could not agree on where to set it up to get credit for it.

In the twelve months since protests lit the country, Lebanon has fallen head first into a spiral of accelerating events, led by an incompetent, corrupt, elite that has yet to take responsibility for any of its countless crimes.

A year ago, a buildup of state failure, economic hardship and loss of faith in the political establishment ignited the demonstrations across the country. Anger mixed with hope to produce the ‘October revolution’. Real change seemed possible.

Today, the anger remains. Hope, less so.

Given the choice to implement reforms – even if minimal – or curtail corruption – even if temporarily – to prevent the complete destruction of the country’s economy and people’s lives, Lebanon’s establishment has found an alternative: repression.

Not with a whimper, but a bang

For decades the ruling kleptocracy ran a Ponzi scheme by relentlessly borrowing to pay for an ever growing national debt so they could keep embezzling from the state. Inevitably, the bubble eventually burst. The Lebanese pound had been fixed at 1,500 to the dollar since 1997. In August 2019 the exchange rate started fluctuating, and a few months later there were 6 different dollar rates. The official one remains at 1,500. But in the reality of the black market, it reached nearly 9,000.

Being a dollar economy and relying heavily on imports, many in Lebanon have dollar accounts, but banks have blocked access to them while large depositors smuggle billions abroad. Today, one UN agency estimates 55 percent of people struggle for bare necessities – almost double last year’s rate. And this was all happening before the pandemic hit.

Then, in August, a massive explosion at the port of Beirut destroyed a sizeable part of the capital. Over 200 people were killed, thousands wounded. Countless are homeless, including many migrant workers and refugees with little or no access to support as they battle Lebanese racism.

A crime of that size could not conceivably be ignored. But as yet, no one has been held responsible. The investigation – mired by distrust in an authority that has shown time and again its incompetence and corruption – is lagging.

Figures of the Lebanese political establishment were absent from the ground as they probably knew that the people’s anger at them was too great. They were, however, very present on local TV stations, racing to justify themselves or make empty promises on political talk shows.

While people were clearing the rubble, assessing structural damage of buildings, protecting property, and scrambling to find and save survivors, the army and the internal security forces were busy attacking angry demonstrators.

The accused as investigators

To add insult to injury, an official investigation committee has been formed, composed of the very people who are responsible for the neglect that caused the explosion. The interior minister has refused calls for an international investigation because, he said – with no irony intended: “We are qualified to hold our own investigation.”

These were the words of a minister in a government that has not been anywhere to be seen, nor has it spoken to its people to explain a recovery plan or even to account for the damage and loss of life or count the missing people.

Meanwhile, the Beirut governor, a day after the explosion, had already calculated the cost of the explosion at between US$3 and 5 billion. A day later, it became US$10 to 15 billion. No one knows how the governor reached these figures, considering that no official body has been seen on the ground surveying the damage.

Corruption kills

Corruption in Lebanon has always been one of the biggest causes of death. Tuesday’s explosion however, took this to the level of carnage.

The only public official to dare walk the streets was French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited the site of the crime amid the sound of the crowds chanting insults against his much-hated and conspicuously absent Lebanese counterpart, Michel Aoun. Aoun’s reign has been arguably the most catastrophic in the modern history of the country.