Egyptian Bedouin Rights Activists Released

By Alyxandra Stanczak
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

Mosaad Abu Fagr, Bedouin activist, was released from detention this past Tuesday. (Image by Amnesty International)

Photo: Mosaad Abu Fagr, Bedouin activist, was released from detention this past Tuesday. (Image courtesy of Amnesty International)

EL ARISH, Egypt – This past Tuesday, July 13, 2010, Bedouin rights activist and blogger Musaad Suliman Hassan Hussein, also known by his pen name Musaad Abu Fagr, was released from Abu Zaabal Prison. Hussein had been detained without trial for approximately three years under Egypt’s Emergency Law.

On the day of Hussein’s release, Ibrahim al-Arjani and Mohamed Isa al-Manai, also activists for Bedouin rights, were released from the same prison. Together, these three activists were accused of organizing protests among the 200,000 Bedouins living in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

Bedouins residing in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula have faced high unemployment in recent years and continue to face labor inequities. Although the Sinai Peninsula is Egypt’s main region for oil drilling and processing, most oil-related jobs go to workers from the Nile area, instead of local Bedouins. 

Bedouins have protested this selective employment, saying that it is tantamount to government discrimination. Protests in the area have led to thousands of arrests since 2004. In addition, Bedouins in the area have not shared in the increased revenue derived from the booming tourism industry in the Sinai Peninsula area.

Hussein, al-Arjani, and al-Manai blogged bout the disparate treatment of Bedouin in Sinai Peninsula before their respective arrests. Hussein was arrested three years ago, charged by the government with the possession of unlicensed firearms, driving a car without a licence, and provoking unrest.

Each time a court issued an order for Hussein’s release in the past three years, the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior would intervene and block his release pursuant to Egypt’s Emergency Law. The Emergency Law, which was been in place since 1981, was renewed for a two-year period in May 2010.

The Emergency Law gives the Egyptian  government the power to arrest people without charge, detain prisoners indefinitely, limit freedom of expression and assembly, and maintain a special security court.

For more  information, please see:

Amnesty International – Egypt releases bedouin rights activist – 14 July 2010

Los Angeles Times – Egypt: Government shows goodwill toward Sinai Bedouins – 14 July 2010

BusinessWeek – Egypt creates Sinai oil jobs to quell Bedouin unrest – 13 July 2010

Reuters – Egypt releases three Bedouin activists in Sinai – 13 July 2010

New York Times – Egyptian emergency law is extended for two years – 11 May 2010

Child Slavery In Haiti Expected To Double From 300,000

By Erica Laster
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Despite being the first country to abolish slavery in the Americas, the recent earthquake leaving Port-Au Prince in ruins has increased fears of a soar in child slavery.  Jean-Robert Cadet, a Haitian advocate an author suspects that the number of child slaves will double from its previous number of 300,000 in the country.  The 10 Americans caught at the Dominican border with 33 Haitian children in February only serves to fuel these concerns.

Restavek Child Scrubs Pots In Haiti
Restavek Child Scrubs Pots In Haiti, Photo courtesy of ABC News

ABC News reported that according to UNICEF, there are approximately 300,000 child slaves in Haiti, also known as “restaveks”, a Creole term meaning “stay-with.”  Haiti’s restaveks are part of a hundred year system which impoverished families use, sending their children away to wealthier Haitian families, who often subject the children to verbal, physical and sexual abuse the Dissident Voice reports.  Poverty forces many Haitian families to sell their children for money or material goods in order to survive.  Some however, simply give their children away without payment, an action taken to save on the cost of feeding and caring for their child.  

Despite Haiti’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on December 29, 1994, little progress was made in eradicating the problem of child slavery in the country.  Now, many people may seek to capitalize on the desperation of families and the inability of children to find and re-unite with their families.  With poverty on the rise in this country devastated by an earthquake with quickly depleting resources, these same children may escape to richer countries, but only to serve as slaves.

“Once children enter the family, they become a domestic slave and they are at the mercy of everyone in the house. The only thing worse is if the child is a girl, because there is sexual abuse and the risk of pregnancy once she reaches puberty,” says Jean-Robert Cadet, advocate and author of “Restavek.”

According to Cadet, 80% of the slaves are girls.  Cadet himself was given to a Haitian family as a restavek at the age of 4 after the death of his mother. In the 1970’s, the family moved on to the United States.

After killing more than 300,000 people, the earthquake has left countless more homeless, with children at great risk for survival, violence and kidnapping.  Cadet leaves for Haiti on Monday to monitor the tent camps of earthquake victims and restavek children’s treatment.

For more information, please see:

CNN Child Slavery a Growing Problem In Haiti, Advocate Says  11 July 2010

BBC News Haiti’s hidden ‘child slaves’  20 March 2007

Dissident Voice Child Slavery In Haiti 3 February 2010

North Korea Health Care Crisis: Starving Population

By David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

HAMGYONG, North Korea – Human rights group calls on international community to help end regime’s ‘systematic neglect’ and prevent humanitarian disaster.  North Korea is failing to provide the most basic healthcare needs for its people, Amnesty International warns.  Barely functioning hospitals, poor hygiene and epidemics made worse by widespread malnutrition was revealed from human rights watch dog.  An investigation by the human rights watchdog found many people were also too poor to pay for treatment.

Many children in North Korea are at risk of serious malnourishment
Many children in North Korea are at risk of serious malnourishment

The state’s failure to feed its people has produced a generation where nearly 50% suffer from stunted growth, where the hungry eat poisonous plants and pig feed, amputations are conducted without anesthetic and doctors are paid in cigarettes.

“If you don’t have money you die,” said the woman, who left North Korea in 2008.

Pyongyang spends less than $1 (£0.65) per person on healthcare a year, less than any other country, according to World Health Organization figures cited in the report.

Amnesty’s report, The Crumbling State of Health Care in North Korea, is based on interviews with more than 40 North Korean health professionals, who left the country between 2004 and 2009.

“The government’s failure to provide basic education about using medication is especially worrying as North Korea fights a tuberculosis epidemic,” said Catherine Barber, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Asia Pacific.

Pyongyang says it provides free healthcare for its people, but witnesses told Amnesty they had to pay for all services for the past 20 years.

One 20-year-old woman from North Hamgyong province said: “People don’t bother going to the hospital if they don’t have money because everyone knows that you have to pay.  Poor hygiene at medical facilities and a dire lack of medicines were threatening the lives of many, Amnesty warned, with people routinely trading cigarettes, food and alcohol for treatment.

A 56-year-old woman told Amnesty that her appendix was removed without anaesthetic.  “The operation took about an hour and 10 minutes. I was screaming so much from the pain – I thought I was going to die.

North Korea faces critical food shortages following famine in the 1990s which killed up to one million people and relies on international aid.

A botched currency re-evaluation in 2009 almost doubled the price of rice overnight, and one non-governmental organization cited in the report said thousands of people starved to death in January and February this year in one province alone.

Politically the North finds itself isolated – it has withdrawn from international talks over its controversial nuclear programme.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Amnesty warns of healthcare crisis in North Korea – 15 July 2010

Business Week – North Korean Health System “Dire,” – 15 July 2010

Guardian.co.uk – North Korea facing health and food crisis – 15 July 2010