Cairo- Still supporters 25 January reveloutionIn January 2011, on its 13th anniversary, they are searching for the rights of victims, and awaiting the implementation of the paths of reparation and accountability by activating the transitional justice article in the constitution, according to observers who spoke to Al Jazeera Net, criticizing the government’s neglect of implementing the constitutional entitlement.
Article 241 of the country’s constitution, issued in 2014, stipulates that “the House of Representatives shall, in its first session after the entry into force of this Constitution, commit to issuing a transitional justice law that guarantees revealing the truth, holding accountable, proposing frameworks for national reconciliation, and compensating victims in accordance with international standards.”
Successive parliaments after the revolution failed to approve the law, but its first comprehensive draft appeared in 2016, through former MP Mohamed Anwar Esmat Sadat and others, while the government refused to discuss it.
Brown Egyptian hands are distinguished by their distinction
Stretched amidst the roar, the frames are broken#25 January reveloution #Egypt ❤️🇪🇬 pic.twitter.com/TGWi03ZmbM— Ibrahim Zayat (@IbrahimAZayat) January 25, 2024
Disrupted birth
Opposition politician Mohamed Gamal Heshmat, representative of the Foreign Relations Committee in the first parliament after the January 25 revolution, justified the House of Representatives’ failure to issue a transitional justice law after the revolution by what he considered “running out of time” under the pressure of the political crisis that ended with the overthrow of the late president. Mohamed Morsy.
Heshmat told Al Jazeera Net, “I participated in discussions within the corridors of Parliament from the first moments about the features and details of the transitional justice law, but we did not have time to pass it, which would have held the killers accountable, brought justice to the victims, and transferred… Egypt From the stage of killing without accountability to the stage of reckoning without obstacles.”
It is expected that the law will not see the light in the current period due to the current regime’s inability to convict itself of being among those accused of targeting the January 25 revolutionaries, which is something that the Egyptian authorities usually strongly deny, according to his statement.
Al Jazeera Net learned – from a private source – that state institutions have currently closed the transitional justice law file completely, and refuse to discuss it in the House of Representatives, and consider the timing of the transitional justice article in the constitution indicative and not mandatory, and that the country’s circumstances are unbearable now.
The former Minister of Transitional Justice, the late Counselor Muhammad Amin Al-Mahdi, had previously stated that this law would be approved in the House of Representatives during 2015, but Cairo The Ministry of Transitional Justice was abolished in the same year, less than a year after the Constitution was passed.
The former Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs, Magdy Al-Agati, also stated in 2016 that the Egyptian government had three readings in the transitional justice law, but the final form of the project had not been reached.
A need and a right
For his part, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives confirmed Ali Abdel-AlAt approximately the same time, he said that this law needs broad societal dialogue, and that its approval requires extensive discussions before it can take place within the corridors of Parliament.
For his part, Yasser Siddiq Hussein, the media spokesman for the Board of Trustees of the January 25 Revolution (a popular group supporting the revolution), believes – in his speech to Al Jazeera Net – that the difficulty in activating transitional justice at the present time and that the only way to implement it is to wait until the arrival of a government that is not in conflict with 25 January reveloution.
Hussein asserts that the victims of the revolution are still in need of justice after 13 years, and that transitional justice is their right, but the crisis is that “these victims are criminals in the eyes of the current authority, and the cause of the country’s ruin,” as he put it.
A study issued in May 2023, entitled “A Victim-Centered Approach to Transitional Justice in Egypt,” considers that Cairo’s failure to provide justice to victims since the January 25 Revolution is due to its failure to establish a mechanism for generalizing accountability and revealing the truth through the process of transitional justice.
The study issued by the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation, an alliance of 9 international organizations, stressed the need to adopt a victim-centered approach that pays attention to their needs and experiences, and involves them in determining their priorities and needs, and in both planning and implementing transitional justice strategies and mechanisms.
Doubts
Jurist and lawyer Muhammad Abu Al-Azm, speaking to Al Jazeera Net, explains that the fair and impartial implementation of transitional justice gives priority to the interests of victims over political or partisan interests, and includes comprehensive fact-finding and disclosure, holding perpetrators accountable, compensating victims, and acknowledging and apologizing for the past.
It also includes addressing the psychological dimension of victims, leading to making changes in existing laws and restructuring state agencies and institutions to achieve tangible results.
Abu Al-Azm expressed his doubts about achieving transitional justice in light of the current conditions in Egypt, saying that the post-revolution transitional phase was marred by many defects, and was turbulent and violent, in which power struggles prevailed, the absence of a common vision, the loss of trust, and the lack of cooperation between the various political actors, which led to Thwarting the country’s progress towards democratic transition and transitional justice.
In turn, the Executive Director of the Egyptian Network for Human Rights, Ahmed Al-Attar, told Al Jazeera Net that Egypt is obligated under international law to provide justice for victims of human rights crimes and violations, including the martyrs of the January 25 Revolution, through transitional justice mechanisms to uncover the truth, hold perpetrators accountable, and provide full and effective compensation to the victims, with Assessing clear guarantees that prevent the recurrence of crimes.
Al-Attar feels “regretful” that the government does not believe in the importance of establishing a transitional justice law, despite the constitutional entitlement since 2014.
He stressed that state institutions did not truly uphold human rights and linked themselves to the regime of the former president Hosni Mubarak Who was overthrown by the revolution, preventing the opening of victims’ files for more than 13 years, despite the fact that former President Mohamed Morsi referred to the Public Prosecution the files of an official committee he formed to investigate the facts that convicted the police of violence against demonstrators from January 2011 until June 2012, but without Feasibility.
