A blatant disregard for human rights: Prison conditions in Egypt.

Upon arriving in prison, its inmates discover what is such a vile living space that no one should be able to experience it (whether guilty of a crime or not).  What is immediately alarming is how overcrowded the cells are (even getting to point where one cell was housed by 147 men).  What’s even more alarming is that the fact a lot of the time the overcrowding problem was deliberate and not a result of too many prisoners.  A good amount of the time there will be an empty cell, which has obviously not been lived in for a long time, sitting next to an overcrowded one. The cells they live in are dimly lit to the point of not being able to see at all once the sun goes down.  Many cells had no windows, and if they did, they would only measure about 12 square inches.  The ventilation is inadequate for such a large mass of people; this forces them to be smelly, stuffy, hot and generally uncomfortable for anyone there.  In many instances, there are no toilets or running water inside the cells.  Prisoners are forced to use buckets in place of toilets and warm bottles of water instead of cold tap water.  If they did have running water, it ran irregularly and only for short amounts of time.  The Egypt legal system does not provide beds for the inmates: they sleep on the damp and cold cement floors of their cells.  Likewise, the prisoners eat their poor quality meals on the cell floors amidst the buckets used for toilets.  The amount of food presented is not enough for the amount of people there.  On top of all this, there are many exposed electrical wires in the cells.  In the past, this has lead to the death of inmates through electrocution.  For anyone to be put in a situation like this is an immediate human rights violation.  Universal human needs that everyone deserves are being neglected for the reason that the Egyptian government doesn’t feel the inmates serving time are worth paying attention to.  However, for a country who just sentenced two of its lead human rights defenders to at least seven years imprisonment, this type of disregard can’t be too surprising.  It is this mistreatment that is eventually going to bitter the inmates, and if they manage to get released, allow them to feel like committing further crimes would be okay.  Who would want to follow the rules of a system which just treated them as though they are worthless?  A more charitable approach should be taken to such a pitiful state of affairs if the legal system feels as though they have any chance of rehabilitating the inmates it’s mistreating.  

If the above conditions seem harsh, what prisoners are forced to experience for the first while of their stay is going to appear even worse.  It’s called Incommunicado Detention.  In a country like Canada, the main moral principle behind prisons is that the public feels that crime is rising and that our society is not as safe as it once was.  In Egypt, the principle is more based around the idea of punishing the criminals and making them feel worthless for what they’ve done.  Before they arrive at the prison, the arrested person is blindfolded so that they have no idea where they are going and handcuffed from behind so that they cannot fight off any harassment from the authorities.  This is done for the sole reason that the authorities feel that the humiliation of this will weaken them, and thusly, make the interrogation process easier.  They are than throw into an unventilated, barren room and are rarely given any food.  One past inmate remembers that “… one of the most difficult things was being blindfolded and handcuffed the entire time… when you eat, when you wash, when you go to the toilet”.  Once there, the inmates are consistently interrogated for as long as ten straight days.  If this doesn’t lead to the sort of confession the authorities are looking for, the prisoners are stripped to their underwear and brutally tortured until they confess what they have done (sometimes confessing something they haven’t done just so the torture will stop).  Types of commonly used torture in this atmosphere have included: beating and kicking (including with sticks and other hard objects), being forced to stand for long periods of time, suspending a person from the ceiling by their wrists, electrical shocking while being held to the floor by a chair, and psychological torture (used to elicit fear into the inmates). Not only does such a disastrous chain of events take away ones dignity, it takes away ones ability to be free of harm in what should be a safe environment.  Torture is a continuing problem within Egypt detention center’s and all signs look as though it will be systemically practiced for years to come. Yet again, the Egyptian government is taking what should be a humanitarian process and turned into a pointless violent turn-of-events.  It’s valuable that the legal system change in this respect as the likelihood of the prisoner complying the authority’s commands is much higher if they treat them civilly (as has been pointed out previously).  In fact, if the prisoners are at a point where they feel comfortable and at ease with these people, they may voluntarily give information that could be crucial to the case.  

While most people would assume that if you go to prison, you would be a given a certain amount of time to go outside, exercise and get fresh air.  A past prisoner in an Egyptian prison proves otherwise: “There is no air in this cell.  We never see the sun.  We asked so many times for one hour or even half-hour outside every day, but no way.  We got no exercise—all our muscles are atrophied.”  In Canadian prisons, inmates are normally given gymnasiums, outside exercise facilities, libraries, television rooms, chapels, infirmaries and cafeterias.  If the prisoners in Egypt were given any time at all outside their cell, it is rare that they would be allowed outside the building or even outside their cell at all for more than 10 minutes.  Most likely, they would be given a couple minutes to walk the corridors until they are forced to re-enter their crowded cells once again.  The conditions presented above are in direct violation of the minimum international standards, which require at least on hour of exercise in the open air daily for the inmates.  They key to a successful prison with inmates who actually want to follow the rules is making them happy through the smallest things.  In this case, a little fresh air and exercise daily.  The legal system is Egypt finds this too demanding a request and has clearly thrown any chance of this happening out the 12 square inches windows they so generously provides some inmates.  If they felt as though this was too generous any offer, why don’t the authorities force the inmates to physical labor that helps the community – but just do it outside.  This way, the prison will be doing something good by using their resources to help the area, while the inmates will be much more willing to follow the rules laid out before them if they have what they want.  

What’s scary is what happens if they don’t follow the rules.  “I was beaten once.  I was taken out into the big hall and about forty soldiers encircled me.  I turned and they hit me with electric sticks.  The sticks were about forty to fifty centimeters long, black with plastic.  It lasted for about ten minutes.  They hit me on the head and I collapsed.  This is called ‘the beating force’”.  This is an example of a punishment and inmate can experience if he/she doesn’t comply with any of the rules.  This kind of treatment is permitted by Egyptian law and is acceptable if taken out on even juveniles and women.  Although they are clearly in violation with international law, the above actions are written in the Egyptian Constitution as the proper method of dealing with defiant prisoners.  Offenses that could lead to punishment include: disobeying the orders of the prison commander (even if they don’t speak the same language), lack of respect for employees, cursing, immortal gestures, creating noise and urinating anywhere but your bucket.  It is rare that the authorities will tell the inmates of these rules during their stay in the prison and even rarer for them to explain why they are being punished if they break one of them.  While the information depicted above is all completely authorized, it’s not uncommon for unauthorized punishment to be taken out on prisoners for whatever reasons the authorities feel necessary.  These measures could include being beaten and whipped in the nude while being forced to grovel to the prison commanders, spraying toxic liquids into their eyes so they cannot see, breaking their feet and forcing them to run, and even starvation to the point of near-death.  Such methods put the Egyptian prison system at the same level of barbarians: completely and needlessly brutal, ambiguous to any form of human rights, harsh to a degree no one on earth should be forced to experience such appalling circumstances.  With this information, it is no surprise that in the past two decades, there have been over 1,000 formal complaints laid against the prison system by inmates who were unlawfully tortured.  There is no respect whatsoever from the prison commanders and this is what is going to push inmates to commit further crimes if it gets to the point where they are released.  Instead of being taught to follow a particular system of laws (like they should be able to do in a regular society), they are learning that the answer to all of life’s problems is violence and that rules hold no real power on anything.  For anyone to learn such a thing is a huge problem and one that will plague Egypt’s prison system until the problem is fixed for good.  At the rate it’s currently going, that problem is likely to never be fixed.  

What the above essay has presented is a case of blatant human rights violations.  Prisoners of Egyptian jails are being thrown into what is a depiction of unconcealed disregard for human lives and the standards by which they live.  Accused people are taken to prison in what is the most alarming of fashions.  When they are there, they are put through a humiliating series of interrogations.  They are placed in the most unsanitary, revolting state of living conditions imaginable.  They are beaten.  They are harassed.  They are even killed (67 men and women lost their lives in 2001 at the hands of the authorities).  They are deprived of every possible factor that makes being a human so great.  What they should be offered is a second chance.  What inmates get instead is a drive to hate both themselves and the world around them.  Egypt’s prison system is not rehabilitating its prisoners into better citizens like it should be by allowing them to learn from their mistakes, it’s only digging a further hole for them.  It’s turning them into even worse visions of what a good citizen should be.   All the solutions in the world can be suggested in order to improve this state of affairs, but what it comes down to is the willingness of the Egyptian prison system to change what they believe to be a perfect method of going about this.  With such a state-of-mind coming from Egypt, it’s unlikely that anything will change for a long time.  However, as citizens of a country with a far better prison system, it’s important to remember that what seems to be an awful place within our own country is much worse in other countries.  All faucets of the Egyptian prison system represent something that could be handled in a much more humanitarian approach.  It’s with that belief that we, as a separate nation, can hope that one day this will happen; both for the benefit of the inmates who are put through it and the integrity of the country itself.  

Bibliography

Amnesty International Report 2002. Egypt.  . 2002.

Canada’s School Net.  Prisons. . 1998.

CIA Fact File.  Middle East Directory: Egypt. .  2003

Sick, Gary.  Prison Conditions in Egypt: A Filthy System.  United States of America: Human Rights Watch, 1993.  

Sick, Gary.  Behind Closed Doors: Torture and Detention in Egypt.  United States of America: Human Rights Watch, 1992.  Pg 69-77.

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