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SHARMED BY SOUL-LESS SHARM. TONY BLAIR TAKES YET ANOTHER HOLIDAY IN EGYPT DESPITE THE COUNTRY HAVING ONE OF THE WORST HUMAN RIGHTS RECORDS IN THE WORLD. Posted 20 December 2003. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has ignored protests from human rights activists and intends to holiday for a third year running with his family in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. And yet while he celebrates the New Year and provides a welcome fillip to Egypt's ailing tourist industry, hundreds of gay men remain in Egyptian prisons alongside Islamists and many other political activists detained without any pretense at real justice. Egyptian prisoners, many of them poor youngsters swept from the streets for no real crime except for their stigmatized status as "undesirables," are routinely tortured and imprisoned without any pretense of a fair trial. You can be certain that at this moment toyota pick-ups and vans are picking up youths from Luxor, Aswan and other poor cities who have come to Sharm to look for work and that they are currently being beaten and forced to sign confessions in the city's dingy police station. The soul-less city of Sharm, its' hideous concrete hotels scarring the Sinai's beautiful landscape, is now being cleansed of anyone who might give it any real human warmth. But that's not what the Blairs want. They welcome the brutal efficiency of the Egyptian police because it enables them to have a quiet holiday without any danger of prying journalists or of meeting ordinary Egyptians. While there have been no publicized mass arrests of gays in the last year, there are constant reports of continued arrests in the back pages of Al Ahram, Al Gomhuria and Al Akhbar - Egypt's heavily controlled government "approved" newspapers. Gays dragged into prison can expect constant beatings from their interrogators and to be raped by fellow inmates. Many ex-prisoners carry numerous burn marks - from cigarettes and also larger metal implements - and are sometimes crippled by "overzealous" beatings. Egypt has a vigorous policy of entrapment, deploying police both to known cruising grounds in the cities, and also using its' notorious "cyber cops" force to find, arrest gays and coerce them into confessions. No doubt none of this will disturb Blair's holiday. It is rare anyway that the Egyptian police ever arrest even foreign gays. They don't want to discourage visitors many of whom, both gay and straight, come to Egypt for sex holidays. So long as the cash keeps coming into the large hotels and government coffers, and the conservative elements of public opinion can be appeased by the detention of large numbers of Egyptians aspiring to the same freedoms which their visitors take for granted in Europe. NEWS ARCHIVE:x November2003x October2003x September2003x August2003x July2003x June2003x May2003x April2003x March2003x February2003x January2003x December2002x November2002x October2002x September2002x August2002x June2002x May2002x April2002x March2002x February2002x January2002x December2001xorx PreviousMonths. |
