By Mai Shams El-Din
CAIRO: A vibrant discussion on how to restructure the Ministry of Interior resounded Wednesday in Tahrir Square nearby the sit-in that entered its sixth day, criticizing the government’s unwillingness to reform security.
The issue was the topic of choice at this week’s Tweet Nadwa, a series of seminars inspired by the atmosphere of the social networking website Twitter, with the participation of members of the Police with Integrity Coalition, journalists and human rights activists.
“Our national initiative called ‘Police for the Egyptian Nation’ was presented in Egypt’s First Conference and was revised by rights activists and lawyers to restructure the interior ministry,” said rights activist Alaa Soueif, one of the organizers.
The initiative includes short-term reforms primarily focusing on the swift prosecution of officers involved in the killing of protesters and others involved in rights violations and torture, restructuring the interior ministry, and judiciary supervision over police officers, especially from the prosecutor general.
The long term reforms included revising the job description of police officers, forming a new pact of legislations to limit the authorities of the Ministry of Interior and reform inside the police academy.
“The reshuffling movement declared by the Minister of Interior is not a punishment for officers involved in violations during the revolution, but rather a reward for them,” said Mohammed Abdel Rahman, police officer and member of Police with Integrity Coalition.
“The ones whose services were terminated will get an end of service package worth over LE 1 million, ending police service for them is a reward after all those violations after the revolution, and they are also getting compensated,” he added.
Abdel Rahman explained that because those officers were not investigated by the ministry, they have the full right to apply for a license to work as lawyers from the Lawyers’ Syndicate because they have a law degree.
Had they been fired and investigated, they would not get this license.
“The low ranking officers who will be working in administrative jobs are usually paid more, their monthly salary reaches more than LE 7,000 so they are now being rewarded not punished,” said Mohammed Abdel Mahfouz, former police officer and member of the coalition.
Other attendees recounted stories of torture by police and shared their views of security reform in Egypt.
Journalist and blogger Noura Younis explained the experience of Georgia after the Rosy Revolution, when the 27-year-old female Deputy Minister of Interior sacked 18,000 police officers in one day.
“Those officers were working for traffic police, of course a vacuum happened in the traffic but no accidents occurred because of the help of the public,” Younis explained.
“The restructuring process was very similar to the initiative proposed by the panel now, but what was unique about this experience is that they hired civilians in the police forces,” she added.
Meanwhile, lawyer and head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) Gamal Eid stressed the importance of having an independent prosecution and political will for reform, since the reform initiative was an up-down initiative, unlike Egypt, where the government and the ruling Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) seem to ignore the public demands to restructure the interior ministry.
“I presented a memo to the ministry including 14 immediate reforms on top of them an official apology for the violations under the past regime, it has been a week since I met with them, and nothing happened,” Eid elaborated.
He said that the trails of police officers killing protesters are not serious, explaining the case of Alexandria where only four police officers are accused of killing 92 protesters killed in different locations.
“Not all the officers involved in the shooting are tried, if I were a judge I would clear all of them because they cannot kill all these protesters who were shot in different locations,” Eid said.
Lawyer and founder of Hisham Mubarak Law Center Ahmed Seif said that press freedom is the main tool to reveal all the violations committed by security forces.
“Police violations occur all over the world, but the difference between us and other democratic countries is that those countries have the tools enabling them to expose those violations to the public,” explained Seif.
“The people will be the only guarantee for exposing those violations, do we have the determination to collectively protect our dignity? This is the question,” Seif added.
Younis recounted a personal incident of violation by police on Jan. 25, 2005 in a protest to condemn the referendum on constitutional amendments recommended by Mubarak.
“There were many women in the protest and the police officer asked us to gather away from men to be protected and after putting a security cordon around women, they let thugs sexually harass us,” Younis remembered.
“They were targeting women participating, just like what military police did last March when they performed virginity checks on female protesters, to hinder their political activeness,” Younis added.
