By Saad Eddin Ibrahim

The quarter century from 1974 to 2001 saw important breakthroughs for freedom around the world. From Portugal to Indonesia, country after country made peaceful transitions away from dictatorship. Precisely at a time when the worldwide battle for democracy and self-determination seemed on the verge of final victory, came 9/11 to set us back immeasurably. Now, we are told that the important battles are military and that the war on terrorism is to be fought worldwide. We are urged to join in a global coalition to defeat the evil menace of “international terrorism”. Or so we are pressured to believe.

As in all purported wars, we are asked not only to be vigilant, to give our material and moral support, but also to persevere believing in the rightness of the cause while young solders give their lives. But we are also asked to sacrifice something much more valuable. That is a measure of our own freedom and some of our civil liberties, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

Understandably, terrorism, whether narrowly or broadly defined, is the most deplorable violation of the most fundamental of all human rights – the right to life and security. 9/11 shattered that right for Americans in the most brutal manner, though Americans tend to forget that millions of people around the world have never known real security or freedom from fear.

The fact that this attack happened at the hands of a score of aliens, to the people of the richest and strongest country on Earth, compounded the shock and horror with a deep sense of irony. Somehow, for the strongest to feel vulnerability is unbearable. It scarred the present generation of Americans and left them with a deep-seated sense of insecurity.

The sudden experience of insecurity among the American people that enabled the Bush Administration to impose draconian measures to 'combat terrorism' at home, measures which violate many of America's cherished civil liberties. The same Administration asked for and was granted a blank cheque to fight terrorism abroad--first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq. Both wars remain open-ended.

Here is what strikes us as outside observers: While resistance to America’s wars abroad is apparent and steadily growing, the resistance to harsh measures at home appears quite weak. But I have faith in the cyclical ability of Americans to reformulate their political life and to reverse the excesses of a previous regime. We around the world can only hope that it will not take too long. That it will come to pass as an aberration in the history of America as McCarthyism once was.

The trade-off between security and freedom has bedeviled thinkers and writer on Western civilization for the past five centuries. Among the prominent Social Contract theorists, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) most forcefully articulated the case for security over individual freedom. All powers were to be vested in a Sovereign without checks or accountability to the community. The Hobbesian world of “the war-of-all against all” has been used as a fear-arousing approach, invariably employed by rulers to justify their absolute powers to prevent chaos. They promise to maintain law-and-order –to restore “security” to individuals -- in return for suspension of their basic freedoms. In the process these individuals devolve from “citizens” to “subjects.”

But John Locke (1632 – 1704), Jean-Jack Rousseau (1712-1718) and Montesqeau (1689-1755) were contrarians to Hobbes. They articulated the case for a citizenship-based government that is accountable under the rule of law, and the separation of powers, with proper checks and balances.

The march of Western civilization during the last five centuries has been partly one of the struggle for security without sacrificing freedom. There were aberrations, setbacks, and reversals, some of them costing millions of lives, but they were relatively brief – Bonapartism, Nazism, Facism, communism, and McCarthyism. We hope that the current American obsession of security at the expense of liberty will not amount to a lasting damage or reversal to the march of human rights at home and in the world at large.

Tyrannical regimes which had felt the mounting world pressure to ease their despotic practices after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Bloc, suddenly revived after 9/11. They have taken the American emergency measures, Patriotic Act, as encouragement and vindication for their own draconian practices. Their respective ministers of Information and Interior welcomed the American measures with glee, saying something to the effect that “finally the U.S. should understand why we have been doing all along to those who threaten our state security.” U.S. measures such as indefinite detentions at Guantanamo without indictment, and proper and fair trial is now frequently invoked to justify emergency laws and state security military courts of civilians in countries like Egypt. Thus despots around the world feel that they have a license to continue “repression as usual,” under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

Bad enough as they are, the state-controlled media of those authoritarian regimes exaggerated, and often out of contexts, many of the American measures since 9/11. Such exaggerations aim to challenge conventional U.S. contentions vis-à-vis other countries observance of human rights. Their argument is that “America no longer commands a moral high ground in the sphere of human rights and basic freedom. Its teaching and preaching have begun to lack credibility. It smacks of yet another double-standard”.

The American war on terrorism has been emulated out of context and out of all proportion in places such as Palestine, Chechnia, and the Philippines. The morally reprehensible and politically shortsighted suicide attacks on civilians by so-called resistance should be condemned in all cases without exceptions – i.e. whether in Palestine, Iraq, or Indonesia. But so should the wholesale strafing, bombing, and destruction of entire communities which is now conducted with impunity in the name of security and self' defense against terrorism.

I am concerned when no distinction is made between concepts of resistance to occupation -- sanctioned under the Geneva Conventions – , legitimate combat, and terrorism. In the current dominant discourse it seems that it only matters whom you are against, and to oppose the United States or its close allies is enough to be branded a terrorist. I suspect that many in the Bush administration know better. But it serves a convenient purpose to play on American fears by lumping all troublesome conflicts into one cauldron of seething 'terrorists'.

It is indeed a predicament for all of us in the human rights community. Like all moral and existential dilemmas, it demands the most careful drawing of the line between the right of life and security on one hand and that of freedom and civility on the other. We must begin to conduct that debate and to articulate clear, and universally applied principles. I hope that this important gathering at the Carter Center will be able to offer some guidelines for this task.

Of course the picture is potentially better in democratic countries with well- established traditions of checks and balances. In non-democratic or newly democratizing countries, the line between imperatives of genuine security and habits of the despotic heart are often ignored or deliberately blurred, if they existed in the first place.

In my country, Egypt, the tragic assassination of President Sadat necessitated the imposition of Emergency Laws in October 1981. In shock at the time, Egyptians acquiesced. Some 22 years later, those laws are still in effect—and under abuse--renewed, albeit against growing opposition, every year. But 9/11 emboldened the Egyptian government to request a three-year renewal of Emergency Laws, and its rubber stamp parliament swiftly approved.

It is these Laws which enable the President the broadest of unchecked powers to issue additional Military Orders which further curb basic freedoms of expression, peaceful demonstration, organizing, or collective protest. Under some of 60,000 of these and other laws, presidential decrees and orders, any Egyptian could be arrested and detained without charge or indictment for up to 15 days, renewable three times. Since 1981, we estimate that more than 200,000 Egyptians were arrested and detained without formal charges. Fewer than 10 per cent (about 20,000) were ultimately indicted and brought to trial on charges related to terrorism; and fewer than 8 per cent of those (1,600) were convicted over a 20-year period.

Arrest and detention on the slightest suspicion (or for personal grudge) has become the Egyptian State's way of life. Some individuals have spent up to 14 years in renewable detention without trial. Even among those convicted, many are kept behind bars long after completing their sentences. It is a Military Order that empowers the State Security Agency (SSA) to get away with these deplorable practices, even when there is no apparent need. It is this way of supposed continuous deterrence that has turned Egypt into a virtual “Police State”.

Under one of those Emergency Military Orders my house was raided in the middle of the night of June 30, 2000. Twenty- seven of my research associates in the ICDS and I were arrested and detained without charge for 45 days in the infamous Toura Prison. I was ultimately charged, tried and sentenced to seven years of hard labor. My defense lawyers asked repeatedly in court: Is this 62 year old ailing professor of sociology a "terrorist”, to be charged under Emergency Law and then tried before a High National Security Court? Their questions went unanswered in two different trials and two similar convictions. It took nearly three years before the case was ultimately referred to and tried by Egypt’s highest Court of Cassation. That court acquitted me and my associates of all charges on March 18, 2003.

In many ways I was fortunate. There are thousands in Egyptian prisons because of similar 'crimes of conscience' who take much much longer than three years to have their cases brought to the Court of Cassation, where most would obtain their deserved acquittal.

My case is one from which to draw several lessons pertinent to the issues before us at this conference. The relative speed with which I was able to move to my ultimate trial before the independent High Court of Cassation was due in large part to mounting worldwide attention – brought about first by human rights organizations, then by hundreds of editorials in leading international newspapers, and sustained support from many civil society organizations in all six continents.

Part of that attention was because of some twenty years of human rights activism. Many fellow activists knew me personally. So did many international journalists, diplomats, and academics who passed through Cairo in the past quarter of a century. Untold numbers of former students in North America, Europe, and the Arab world mobilized in ways unthinkable in the pre-Internet years. They bombarded not only the Egyptian Presidency with e-mails but also their own governments and parliaments to intercede on my behalf. Noteworthy here as well was the U.S. threat of withholding additional aid to Egypt in reaction to my second conviction.

The treat was a mixed blessing. On one hand it was hailed by the Western media and human rights organizations as an overdue act of moral courage. Not since the Carter’s years in the 1970’s had any American President taken such a bold step to uphold human rights. However, there was a snowballing effect in all the above. Initially, Egyptian civil society was shocked and paralyzed by the news of my arrest. They remained muffled for several weeks and months. It was only in the wake of growing world attention and strong show of solidarity, the set braver Egyptian intellectuals and human rights organizations began to raise their voices. By the end of the first of the three year ordeal, nearly all of the Egyptian advocacy civil society organizations had begun to speak out on the issues underlying the case –the right to have fair and free elections, to monitor the electoral process, minority rights, termination of emergency laws, the need for constitutional and political reform. These issues are still high on the Egyptian human right defenders’ agenda; and have become more pressing regionally since the War in Iraq.

Thus I conclude that multilateralism is the first imperative for upholding basic rights, both to security against terrorism and freedom against tyranny. We must strengthen the networks and linkages among our growing international movements.

Many of the modern-day terrorists contend that they are striking against injustice at home and abroad. While we should not concede the merits of such contentions on face value, we should not disregard them altogether either. For it is true that most of the suspects in the 9/11 tragedy were political refugees or fugitives. They came from countries that are politically undemocratic, culturally repressive, and religiously intolerant. The fact that the avowed belief system of those suspects is a mirror image of that of the regimes which drove them out of their native lands, only illustrates the trilateral challenge of combating terrorism, injustice, and tyranny. There is no place in the world today which epitomizes this case in point more than the Middle East.

What is to be done? I am not the first to make these observations of a global alliance of 'security' interests that are feeding on our fears and vulnerabilities. What has kept the middle classes in countries like Egypt and Algeria supportive of undemocratic regimes, if not the fear of an Islamic extremist alternative? It is the same motivation that silences civil libertarians in the US today.

I gave this matter considerable thought during my months in prison. A prisoner has nothing but time, and the predictable routines of prison life were conducive to reflection and writing. I would like to share my suggestions for concrete action with you today, out of a conviction that we must move from passive criticism of what we abhor to active engagement for solutions.

First, I believe that we must give peoples credit for rational self-interest. We must reach them directly with messages that defuse the fear tactics instilled by their rulers. Our voices must be raised in the national media, in legislative debates, everywhere that fear-mongering is unleashed. 9/11 should be recast in the popular consciousness for what it undoubtedly was – a despicable act of a small band of fanatics. That act must be thoroughly investigated as a criminal assault on life and property, and the guilty parties must be brought before a court of law. But to link these perpetrators with any national cause, such a Palestinian statefhood, or any government, even a hated one like that of Saddam Hussein, needs to be exposed for the lie that it is.

Then we need to assess our resources to fight emergency measures of all kinds, and build upon them:

. The international civil society as an emerging global conscience must be tapped to monitor and pressure states and non-state actors to respect human rights. Bonafide human rights organizations (HRO’s) have done a commendable job in defending individual and collective human rights for the past four decades. Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) have become household names around the world for years. Their remarkable success has encouraged numerous other initiatives to follow suit on the national and regional levels. More recently AI and HRW have been joined by the Paris-based International Human Rights Federation (I.H.R.F.), the NYC-based Lawyers Committee (now re-named Human Rights First), the Washington-based Freedom House, and the Atlanta-based Carter Center, just to name a few.

Though human rights was not their original focus, a growing number of professional organizations have established human rights committees with an international outreach. Prominent among these are the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Sciences and Engineering; the International Sociological Association, the International Political Science Association; and International PEN (the writers association). Each of these organizations has membership in the tens of thousands, commands tremendous material and non material resources. They have taken up the practice of e-mail campaigning, sending observers to attend trials of human rights activists, and demanding inspection of prisons and visitation rights to prisoners of conscience.

. Several national and regional parliaments have increasingly become vocal on human rights issues outside their respective countries. Among these are the Canadian, Belgian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, Parliaments. The 15-nation European Parliament has not only been outspoken on the issues, but has also established an annual award, named after the great Russian scientist and human right defender, the late Andrea Sakharov. It is given to like-minded men and women noted for their outstanding work and sacrifices in defense of human rights and basic freedoms. The Canadian Parliament recently established a similar prize. Along with that of Nobel Prize for Peace, these awards have given the defense of human rights activists unprecedented world attention, and placed the issue high on the international agenda. The fact that a Middle Eastern Muslim Woman human right activist, Sherine Abady won the 2003 Award should be an added symbolic incentive for maintaining the pressure on autocratic regimes in her region to bring about long overdue democratic reform.

. International corporations have become effective players in contemporary global affairs, with impact far beyond their strict business of making profit. Out of enlightened self-interest, a growing number of these corporations have earmarked some of their staff energy and resources to community development, environmental activism, and other civic activities. Long criticized for their profit obsession, often at great cost in human suffering and environmental damage, a new breed of corporate leaders has emerged since the 1992 Rio’s Earth Summit. British Petroleum has, for example, stopped the practice of paying off-the books 'facilitation fees' to any official for a service or contract. These long-practiced bribes encourage corruption and undermine corporate commitment to play by the rules.

Some of these business leaders and their giant corporations can be persuaded, I believe, to join the ranks of civil society and enlightened democratic governments in the defense of human rights, rule of law, and accountability. At the end of the day, these very values, norms, and practices are good for business as well.

. Related to corporate responsibilities in this area is revenue watch in developing countries. Various human rights and environmental organizations documented how in recent years the theft of natural resources from third World countries was often a joint cynical practice of multinational corporations and despotic rulers. Oil, diamond, and timber have been prime examples. These revelations (of naming and shaming) brought together activists from three hitherto unconnected movements: human rights, environment, and transparency. This budding coalition has been embodied in a new world-wide campaign, “Publish What you Pay”, which has exposed the link between some of the worst human rights offenders, pillage of people’s resources, and big corruption. The three networks involved have created a synergy that ought to be emulated by human rights defenders in the creation of network of networks. This being practiced at present in the Iraq “Revenue-Watch” – an initiative undertaken by the Open Society Institute (OSI).

One of the latecomers to human rights defenders have been enlightened elements of the religious establishment, especially the Catholic church. Starting with the “Liberation Theology” in Latin America four decades ago, the practice spread to South Africa during the struggle against Apartheid, then to the Philippine against the Marcos dictatorship, then to the solidarity against Communism in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. This great spiritual resource, religion, had long been manipulated by oppressive rulers. But as the cases just mentioned show, the human rights movement can and should reclaim religion back from authoritarianism and fanatism. The World Council of Churches (WCC) has issued recent proclamations against war and injustices in troubled areas of the Globe – e.g. Palestine, Iraq, Sudan, the Balkan, and Africa’s Great Lakes region. This trend must be encouraged and extended to other councils of other religions.

More specifically, this gathering should not disband without translating these and other ideas into more concrete policy recommendations. Let us draft an “Atlanta Declaration” warning against the menace of emergency laws passed in moments of real crises but perpetuated by sustaining contrition of fear-arousal and xenophobia. Let us call on all governments, parliaments, media, religions, businessmen, and civil society leaders to demand the abolition of state of emergency and all its legal and extra-legal derivatives. Let the proposed declaration call for a total ban on torture, put strict and clear limits to administration detention and secrecy in interrogation of suspects.

As part of that call, let us require a mandatory review of emergency measures that circumvent constitutional or other basic protections on a semi-annual basis. There should be a mandatory sunset clause written in all such measures. This review should be highly publicized and can be overseen/enforced by the UN Human Rights Commission. It should be monitored by the NGO’s community by drafting and publishing shadow reports for any government that declines to participate – and the US would be no exception. I hope you will join me in thinking of other concrete measures we can take.

Several years before the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dissident Kana’an Mekiya published his book The Republic of Fear. It details one thousand-one ghastly ways and means employed by the Baathist regime to not simply control a country, but to render a whole nation in a perpetual fear. A dictator does not have to physically torture millions of people to create and perpetuate that state of fear but only few thousands or even hundreds. As in cyberspace, fear has a tremendous diffusable quality.

The world may still have only few regimes as brutal as that of Saddam Hussein. But the world still has many republics of fear. They come in varieties of sizes, shapes, and colors. Some are so subtle that may go undetected by the outside world for years. They wrap their violations of human rights in thick legal masks. They muster an elaborate arsenal of laws, decrees, and procedures that can render any person at any time guilty of a criminalizable act and hence liable to arrest, detention, trial, and conviction. And it is all “legal” on the face of it. For the lack of a more appropriate name, this may be called “Velvet Despotism”.

I pray that what has been happening since 9/11 does not slide America into a Republic of Fear for some of its citizens, due to their national, religious, or ethnic background, nor into a velvet despotism, so seemingly comfortable that good citizens fail to speak out against it. Let an Atlanta Declaration re-invent a fresh universal Bill of Rights. Let it be a constant reminder of what Benjamin Franklin outcry in 1759: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither”.