Match your words with action

[Briar]

Nice idea - but it looks as though Clarke and Bliar aren't listening:

Match your words with action

Britain can help expand human rights and political freedom in Egypt, but only if it leads by example in its anti-terror campaign

Hossam Bahgat


Egyptians go to the polls today for what are - theoretically, at least - the first-ever contested presidential elections in the country's history. However, President Hosni Mubarak's government has refused to allow international monitoring of the process and has excluded all vocal judges from supervising polling stations.
The presidential elections commission, which he appointed, has ignored last week's court ruling allowing local human rights and civil society organisations to observe the elections. All of these are indicators that the regime, as usual, is up to no good.

Since Britain assumed the European Union presidency in July, it has been called on repeatedly to put Europe's own human rights foreign policy guidelines into practice. So far the guidelines have largely amounted to ambitious pledges, with little concrete impact on countries such as Egypt, which signed an association agreement with the EU that came into force last year. These agreements include a human rights and democratisation clause, but this will only be transformed into measurable improvements through the mechanism of agreed bilateral action plans.

...

Tony Blair's proposed package of anti-terror measures will not only be detrimental to Britain's long history of civil rights, but will also kill any chance for the UK to have an impact on the human rights situation in Egypt during its EU presidency. Mubarak has chosen to campaign on a new anti-terror law that we have every reason to expect will be the worst news Egyptians have received since the state of emergency was announced in 1981. British diplomats will not be able to prevent this negative development if their Egyptian counterparts can shame them for their own politically opportunistic response to terrorism.

Blair was right to emphasise the importance of dealing with the root causes of terrorism in the wake of the London bombings. An important way to achieve this is through strengthening the EU's role in human rights protection at home as well as abroad. The EU's record on encouraging human rights improvements in our region since 1995 is not one to celebrate. The political will has been lacking. Britain has the responsibility - and the motivation - to overcome this failure in the months ahead.

· Hossam Bahgat is director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights


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http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1564157,00.html