Image 1: Bus stationed in Frontera Comalapa, Chiapas, Mexico in expectation of a journey to the U.S.-Mexico Border. – Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

Mexicans ride these buses, but Central Americans also seek to blend in. At the southern border, a history of cross-border marriage, social networks, and refugee flight and return during the height of Guatemalan counterinsurgency conflict (1980-1981) make distinguishing Mexicans from Guatemalans difficult. Mexican adults in the region told me that most could not trace their families any further back than their parents or grandparents to Mexico. They all had Guatemalan roots. Yet Mexico’s official attitude towards such fluid identities is anything but. In this region many poor residents lack documents and the border has been historically porous. Meanwhile, at the southern border, the municipality of Frontera Comalapa has developed into a hub to purchase any document you want. Official surveillance in this context often takes on ethnic and classist tones. I asked one immigration official how she could ascertain the difference between Mexicans and Guatemalans in this context. In addition to dress and dialect, she mentioned, “we can often detect by the smell.”

One February day in 2007, I purchased tickets for this trip at a “Travel Agency” in Frontera Comalapa. I was not planning to travel until the end of March; advance purchase did little to secure my reservation. When my husband and I attempted to travel north on one of these buses one March Wednesday morning, many buses refused to let us board. Operators claimed they were full. While some buses were hired directly by maquilas, or border assembly plants, at the northern border, it was also clear that many were neither full nor contracted. What I learned from the one company that allowed me to ride was that many were wary of human rights reporters. I had bought my tickets to Tijuana, where I intended to visit contacts from field research in 2004. While many people said they were going to Tijuana, in reality few buses had Tijuana as their destination. The drivers told immigration agents they were headed for Caborca, Sonora. Only as we approached the border did I learn that the bus was destined for the desert border town of Altar, Sonora. Why were these buses so openly advertised, yet also disguised? A Mexican bus operating in Mexican territory should be free to operate without fear. The tourism or travel label was partly designed to get around Mexican bus companies’ monopolies over particular routes. Yet this label also disguised the purpose of the journey since a deeper suspicion of illegality surrounded the buses due to their destinations and passengers. This bus ride from Mexico’s southern to northern border provides a window into how Mexico is implementing border security through interior checkpoints, as well as to how the U.S.’s security agenda casts a specter of illegality over these buses and their passengers even within Mexican territory.

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This piece focuses on the problems of trying to prevent undocumented migration to the U.S. by investing more resources and assistance into Mexican border policing in order to fulfill a U.S.-designed security agenda. Mexico has recently escalated border enforcement to stem what the U.S. termed a “border crisis” of undocumented Central American youth arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2014. In July 2014, Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto implemented Programa Frontera Sur (Southern Border Program[1]) to improve border security and to protect migrants entering Mexico. To solve this crisis, according to many politicians and dominant media renderings in the U.S., Mexico must enforce its own southern border. U.S. assistance is implicit and explicit in this solution as the U.S. embraces Mexico as a key partner for establishing hemispheric security (Benítez Manaut 2003). Alan Bersin, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security recently stated, “The Guatemalan border with Chiapas is now our southern border” (Isacson et al 2014: 5). Recently, Mexico’s Secretary of the Interior Miguel Angel Osorio Chong similarly articulated Mexico’s “new” approach to the border, “Never before has Mexico announced a state policy on the border… now [it is] absolute control of the southern border” (Archibold 2014). Yet these statements are somewhat misleading while they also lack historical depth. The southern border has never been consistently well patrolled, but periodic crackdowns have been common throughout Mexico’s recent history.

This article reveals the historical continuity that the discursive construction of a “border crisis” has played in justifying increased, yet often ineffective, counterproductive, and perhaps even destructive, border enforcement. As recently argued by Gabriella Sanchez (2014), the construction of a “border crisis” is a powerful narrative to justify the escalation of criminalization, militarization, and violence.[2] It entrenches the political status quo: fear of a “crisis” derails immigration reform and justifies more resources for controversial U.S.-backed Mexican and Central American security initiatives. In this narrative, enforcement, rather than human rights, the right to mobility, and the failures of broken immigration and labor systems, becomes the dominant policy and media focus.

The justification of heightened security to combat a purported border crisis has older roots. The suspicions and surveillance surrounding this bus’ journey, for example, highlight Mexico’s subservience to the U.S. border agenda seven years prior to the 2014 crisis. To claim that a crisis has simply emerged obscures the ability of historical analyses to temper current approaches and to offer alternative solutions. Specifically, the crisis discourse, and the enforcement policies it legitimizes, shares much in common with the U.S. approach to the U.S.-Mexico border, which became especially prominent during the 1980s War on Drugs and the 1990s border enforcement built up.[3] Peter Andreas identifies the similar power of the narrative of “loss of [border] control” at the U.S. Mexico border. According to Andreas (2000: 7):

The stress on loss of control understates the degree to which the state has actually structured, conditioned, and even enabled (often unintentionally) clandestine border crossings, and overstates the degree to which the state has been able to control its borders in the past…it obscures the ways in which the state itself as helped to create the very conditions that generate calls for more policing.

In the historically porous Mexico-Guatemala borderlands, the rhetoric of border security has intermittently risen to the fore to justify increased surveillance; state officials have often used ethnicity and dialect to signal otherness and exclusion.[4] Mexico first militarized its border with Guatemala to contain the refugee flow during the Guatemalan conflict in the early 1980s (Cruz Burguete 1998). More recently, Mexico intensified border enforcement and interior inspection points in line with a U.S. post-September 11, 2001 hemispheric security agenda. In July of 2001 under Plan Sur,[5] Mexico signed onto a U.S.-backed plan to not only strengthen its southern border with Guatemala, but also to implement militarized internal checkpoints. According to Miguel Pickard (2005), “the measure had the effect of ‘displacing’ tasks of the U.S. southern border to southern Mexico.”[6] Plan Sur increased migrant vulnerability as migrants sought out more dangerous routes and sophisticated smugglers to avoid the checkpoints (Birson 2010). Migrant desperation has become lucrative for cartels and criminal gangs who bribe their way through the bolstered security system (Birson 2010).

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On the bus, the mood was light as passengers joked with one another, music switched somewhat seamlessly between Mexican Norteña bands and Britney Spears, and passengers requested different DVDs. Some DVDs were bootleg copies of comedies; bus passengers laughed when the amateur bootlegger also captured audience members walking in and out of the theater when trying to film the actual movie. Most of the DVDs did not even have Spanish subtitles. However, most passengers seemed content to focus on something else besides the barren hillsides. The bus journey, however, was impeded by multiple checkpoints staffed by immigration, customs, the police, or the military. Checkpoints were more frequent at the southern border in Chiapas and again, as we neared the U.S.-Mexico border. At each checkpoint, the atmosphere shifted as passengers were instructed to get off the bus and to file into separate male (over 40 individuals) and female (4 individuals) lines as their papers, faces, and ways of talking were inspected.

Outside of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, we came to a temporary inspection point in the form of a tent set up on the side of the road with a small plastic table for food and a television. An immigration agent boarded the bus yelling, “Gather of your belongings [when you get off]. Please gather all of your belongings.” She didn’t give anyone time to speak. We were never given a reason why three men were kicked off the bus after the agents inspected every passenger. The agents suspected that the men were Central Americans. One passenger, who others referred to as their “guide” or “boss”, urged people who knew the men to defend them, but many people were afraid that this would render them suspect as well. One passenger told me that he was traveling with five friends, but that two were from Guatemala. The men told officials at the Mexican checkpoints that they were traveling separately because, as the passenger explained, “I don’t want to be accused of being a coyote [human smuggler] if they [Guatemalan friends] are caught. We don’t want to be associated.” He continued, “Sometimes Mexicans are being taken [off the buses] at the checkpoints while some Guatemalans pass fine. They [officials] will confuse [Mexicans] as being Guatemalan. It is very strict now.” Sometimes people were unsure if others were Mexican or Central American. The above passenger was uncertain, “They are from Guatemala, but have lived in Mexico for a long time. They are more Mexican.”[7] The “guide” believed that the men were Mexican and that the immigration officials “just want money. They often behave badly. If they have money, the [officials] will let them pass. They [officials] don’t have the education to know who is Mexican and who is not. They also don’t seem to care.” He continued to explain that people “often do not know how to defend themselves…Even when they are Mexican, the migra [immigration agents] will remove them [from the bus].” The three men had been taken off of the bus, but at later checkpoints, officials instead collected money from individuals or from the bus drivers who then collected from the corresponding passengers. Some men told me they believed that people who anticipated a problem could sometimes pay an advance fee to the bus drivers to help them through checkpoints. One man told me that he refused to succumb to this practice; “If you don’t pay, they take you off the bus…[But] I am Mexican and I would rather get off the bus than pay.” When this man was stopped for further questioning at one checkpoint, he related, “They asked for everything, all my documents…” He laughed…“And then, what are my parents’ names, how old are my parents, where was I born, how old am I, what day was I born, why did I leave? …If you answer just one question not to their liking, they take you off the bus.”

Ironically, Grupo Beta,[8] a Mexican unit dedicated to protecting migrant rights in Mexico, stopped the bus a few miles after the men had been removed from the bus by immigration. As they delivered pamphlets addressing the right of Mexicans to travel freely within Mexico, we recognized the terrible irony that the men had just been kicked off the bus. A Grupo Beta representative inquired if any immigration agents had asked for money from anyone or if anyone had been kicked off of the bus. They told the passengers that no one should be able to infringe on their rights to travel as Mexicans or to take money from them; if this occurs, then they should report it. Yet, the passenger who identified as a “guide” explained, “If you are Mexican you can go to human rights, but it’s often too late. They [human rights] should be watching the migra since it is complicated to denounce them. But they [human rights] are often located where they cannot do anything to resolve anything. Then you lose time and money.” When passengers mentioned that three men had just been kicked off of the bus, the Grupo Beta representative responded, “If you know they are Mexican… from your communities, defend them.” Yet the representatives also admitted that this could lead to problems since they knew that many people carried false documents and “if you do not know, you can be accused of being a coyote.” The potential for illegality rendered all passengers vulnerable to the whims of authorities operating under a U.S. security lens that is suspicious of all travelers heading north. Surveillance in northern Mexico is often racially marked against not only Central Americans, but also against southern Mexicans and the indigenous, who northern Mexicans have historically stigmatized as backwards and as posing a potential threat to the socioeconomic order (Vila 1999: 80).

As we approached the U.S.-Mexico border, the bus drivers gave gifts of DVDs and cigarettes to immigration inspectors to ensure a smooth passage through various checkpoints. The drivers knew the agents well; then the agents would wave, “see you next week.” As we neared the border, the bus drivers also urged passengers to hide their cell phones in overhead compartments. They knew officers might confiscate phones since they suspected they would be used to call coyotes waiting at the border. Some passengers had made the journey to the U.S.-Mexico border in groups and planned to call coyotes to help them with the long trek through the desert into the United States. Less experienced passengers were accompanied by the Mexican “guide” on the bus, whose task was to deliver them at the U.S.-Mexico border to a partner more familiar with the next leg of the journey. When we arrived in Altar, Sonora, everyone got off the bus and seemed to disappear into the desert dusk. My husband and I entered one of the few taquerias in an otherwise desolate town to wait almost two hours for a bus to Tijuana.

The bus journey illustrated the unpredictability of surveillance and the anxieties, as well as opportunities, this generated for passengers. Immigration agents might detain and deport someone, collect a bribe, or choose to ignore or fail to recognize false documents. While many bus passengers were apprehensive about the journey, more experienced migrants knew that they would eventually succeed. One passenger who was friends with the men who had been kicked off the bus received a phone call from them as we approached the U.S.-Mexico border. His friends would be joining him at a hotel in Altar, Sonora to wait for their coyote.

The Mexico-Guatemala border has long been selectively and unpredictably enforced. The actual official border is often easy to cross. At an official inspections post at Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, Mexico and La Mesilla, Guatemala, I often found confused tourists wondering where to get their passports stamped when they crossed the border. Border officials generally remain in their offices as people easily walk across the border and board vans to their destinations. However, semi-permanent, as well as unpredictable, checkpoints increasingly break up interior highways. Makeshift checkpoints may emerge overnight and vanish the following day. However, at the same time, a lack of sufficient and trained personnel, historically porous flows, the necessities of trade, and the fact that border security is costly and often counterproductive, lead the government to promote one image—of total control—while the reality is otherwise. As one customs official explained, “There are only 30 fiscal inspectors in all of Chiapas. Look…[he beckoned out of his office window to the expanse of mountains that constituted the international border]. This is a big state. With only 30 [inspectors] what are we supposed to do?” Unpredictability at once engenders fear and hope, which fuels the ability of corrupt state officials and smugglers to take advantage of migrants. Meanwhile, an image of control, rather than its actual implementation, enhances state legitimacy by demonstrating the state’s commitment to border management (Andreas 2000: 11; Nevins 2002). Similarly, at the U.S.-Mexico border, Peter Andreas (2000: 9) argues, “successful border management depends on successful image management, and that does not necessarily correspond with levels of actual deterrence.”

One customs official in Chiapas explicated the function of the image of control:

What the government wants to do most is show an image of control…but of course…if you actually see, you know that isn’t true…To actually exert control costs…the government is often not willing to spend the money…The government has sent more forces, but they are the same….They could send ten more units and it would be the same.

This disjuncture between image and reality has proven true in the past; when Mexico created a new border police force (Policía Estatal Fronteriza-State Border Police) in 2007, border residents I knew soon realized that many of the officers were the same men they knew from the state police force. The officers had received new uniforms, but otherwise nothing had changed. This buildup of the border security apparatus is a product of the state’s desire to show a public presence of force, while simultaneously realizing the inability, and impracticality of, fully controlling the border (Andreas 2000).

Recently numbers of undocumented migrants at the U.S. border have declined and the rhetoric of crisis in the U.S. media has subsided. However, Mexico continues to confront much of this flow. A priest who works with the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala told me in 2007, “To work for immigration is dirty work…Bush asked Mexico to help detain migrants going north and Mexico is doing its dirty work.” According to Migration Information Source, Mexico has deported over 30,000 Central Americans in 2014 (Archibold 2014).  Can this really be termed a successful solution to a crisis? When migrants are caught within Mexico’s web of enforcement, they’re more likely to be preyed upon by gangs, officials, and cartels, especially in border cities where migrants may desperately wait, become stranded, or try to gather funds to try again or return home. The hostel worker related, “And from these same migrants the officials feed themselves, taking their money and then they are allowed to proceed.” One migrant described the symbiosis between migrants and officials, “If there weren’t migrants, the migra [immigrant agents] would not have jobs. The migra are corrupt, they take your money and beat you.” To him, officials and bandits belong on the same continuum. He was deported because he had no more money to pay officials-the maras gangs had already taken everything.[9]

Mexico recently committed to patrolling the freight train called “La Bestia”/ “the Beast”, which migrants jump on and cling to as they attempt to make the journey north.

Image 2: Flyer warning migrants of the dangers of “The Beast” if they decided to travel north. Translation: “If you go… ‘the dignity and human rights of migrants do not have borders.” – Photo Credit: Photo taken by Rebecca B. Galemba at the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala.

In Tapachula, Chiapas, I met double amputees whose limbs were crushed by “the Beast” when they fell from the train. Yet for many the risks of “the Beast” were preferable to alternative routes, where they believed they would encounter more official corruption and criminal groups.[10]Amputees at the Albergue Jesus El Buen Pastor in Tapachula, Chiapas, a shelter for injured migrants, have fashioned wheelchairs out of plastic chairs.[11] One man, a double amputee, realized the irony behind his higher quality wheelchair. He told me that in 2006, Maria Shriver, who was married to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California at the time, came briefly to the shelter to donate fifteen wheelchairs. He told me “It was nice of her to donate the chairs,” but he disliked Schwarzenegger’s politics, especially concerning immigration.[12] “No he didn’t come,” he said. “We wouldn’t accept him if he did.”

Image 3: Photo of a make-shift wheelchair at Albergue Jesus El Buen Pastor in Tapachula, Chiapas – Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

The lesson from the U.S.-Mexico border is that the militarization of enforcement does not stop unauthorized border flows (Andreas 2000). When security escalates, smugglers become more sophisticated, violent, and demand higher fees, migrants pursue more dangerous routes, and officials increase bribes (ibid.). In turn, the border policing apparatus expands to combat it in a spiral of mutual escalation (ibid.). In 2012, the U.S. budget for immigration enforcement was $18 billion, larger than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined, despite evidence that such escalation may be counterproductive (Preston 2013). A similar border security approach is exported to Mexico, without enough consideration of judicial and policing reform, corruption, causes of migration, and a lack of transparency and accountability in policing institutions (Isacson et al. 2014). In this context, further feeding the current security and migration infrastructure has led to an escalation in human rights abuses. For example, human rights activists point to concerning implications for migrant rights as Grupo Beta, whose purpose is to aid migrants, has now been enlisted to help Mexican authorities conduct migrant raids (Stanton 2014).

In 2014, The Merida Initiative,[13]a security agreement established between the U.S. and Mexico in 2008 to combat drug trafficking and transnational crime, directed increased funds and attention to  “creating a 21st century border” and securing Mexico’s borders (Isacson et al.: 24). As of February 2014, The Mérida Initiative allocated $112 million in technology for border security including training, inspection equipment, and infrastructure, including additional small amounts for Navy/Marine training and facilities from the Defense Department’s counter-narcotics budget (ibid.). Most of this funding has gone to the northern border, but the southern border is now also becoming a priority (ibid.). Yet militarizing security forces in Mexico and Guatemala through U.S.-backed initiatives like Merida and Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI[14]) has not only failed to stem the drug war, but Mexico’s war on the cartels has also left 80,000 dead, 27,000 disappeared, and thousands displaced and since 2006 (MAWG 2013: 3; Abrego 2014). Such approaches are worrisome in regions where the military continues to be associated with human rights abuses and impunity. The United States cut off funding to Guatemala’s military in 1990 due to human rights abuses. Despite this, conditions have loosened and these restrictions do not apply to Defense Department funds, from which $27.5 million was given to Guatemalan security forces for counter-narcotics control form 2008-2012 (Isacson et al. 2014: 29; MAWG 2013). As David Bacon (2014) warns, “giving millions of dollars to some of the most violent and rightwing militaries in the Western hemisphere…is a step back towards the military intervention policy that set the wave of migration into motion to begin with.”

Mexico’s current approaches to tackling border issues, such as the Southern Border Program, do not contain sufficient measures to protect migrants or prosecute corrupt officials. While the program stresses migrant protection as a key component, Jorge Urbano, Director of the Program on Migration at the Iberoamerica University, expressed doubts that “if there is no qualified human capital…professionally trained to do a job that requires expertise in the subject of human rights, the measure…will result in little more than merely good intentions” (Langner 2014, translation mine). The program also does not address the concerns of migrants in transit (Langner 2014).[15] Rubén Figueroa, Coordinator of the Mesoamerican Migrant Movement in the Southern Region, asserts that:

the federal government has applied the Southern Border Plan as a police action to detain and deport the largest number of migrants…within this plan there are no provisions to prevent crimes…In the last decade more than 70,000 migrants have disappeared in Mexico and there are no mechanisms to denounce these disappearances when family members are in Central America[16] (Blanco 2014, translation mine).

Tasking Mexico’s migration institutions and enforcement agents with bolstering border security, regularizing migration, and protecting migrant rights raises additional concerns as critics doubt the ability of Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) to implement immigration laws and respect human rights. In 2013, the INM ranked 8^th in the number of human rights abuses reported to Mexico’s National Human Rights Ombudsman (Isacson et al.: 32). The federal police and military ranked even higher in terms of abuses. According to Casa del Migrante in Saltillo in 2013, the federal police received the most denunciations for migrant abuses, even ahead of the Zetas cartel and maras gangs (Ureste 2014a). It is evident that strengthening security does little to make people feel secure. One merchant complained to Mexican journalist Manu Ureste, “as there are more checkpoints, there is more corruption” (Ureste 2014b, translation mine). As soldier demanded money to look through her bags, the merchant laughed when asked if the additional checkpoints made people feel more secure (ibid.). Instead, she saw the checkpoints as an opportunity for officials to distribute money amongst themselves (ibid).

To further understand Mexico’s approach to Central American migrants, it is important to note that Mexico accepts very few refugees–last year only 208 Central Americans (Kahn 2014). Many migrants are deported before they can pursue claims or they are detained indefinitely in INM’s poor facilities while filing (Isacson et al. 2014: 33). Once detained, migrants have a miniscule chance of advocating for an asylum case (IAHCR 2013). At one Mexican detention facility I visited in 2007, the women told me the men were denied water. Visits with their husbands in a different cell depended on the discretion of individual agents. One woman said the only reason the immigration delegate in charge came to check on them that day was because I was present. “Normally,” she said, “they yell at us and insult us.” Most detainees did not know how long they would remain in INM facilities or when they would be sent home. Mexico has recently made some efforts to decriminalize migration in 2008, as well as to enable migrants to seek justice for abuses regardless of status under the General Population Act in 2010 (IAHCR 2013). Nonetheless, detention remains the norm and protections have been insufficient to stem abuses. A recent Washington Office on Latin America report cautions:

Given the widespread and well-documented involvement of Mexican authorities with human smugglers and organized crime, increased immigration enforcement in Mexico is likely to accomplish little, and will only contribute to the further enrichment of corrupt officials and criminals, and to the victimization of innocent migrants (Meyer and Boggs 2014).

We need to become attuned to the reasons why people migrate and why they go where they do; this forces us to look in the mirror at foreign intervention, devastating trade policies, and inconsistent and insufficient immigration and refugee policies.[17] Pushing the crisis elsewhere through increasingly militarized means not only does not work, but it also leaves death and violence in its wake. Moreover, just as the crisis imagery obscures the fact that such problems have long been in the making, it also makes the issues seem to disappear once media and policy attention dissipate. Instead, Joseph Nevins (2002: 171) points to how the political-economic context and political elites shape our perceptions of crisis even when actual conditions may remain similar.

The power of the U.S. to control the border has become a normalized response to larger economic, political, and global anxieties (Nevins (2002: 37). Laying bare the social, historical, and political processes by which border policing has become a normalized mode of nation-building can help us question the implications of extending such exercises of power beyond and within national borders (Nevins 2002; Nevins 2014). As witnessed by the suspicions of illegality surrounding the Mexican bus’ journey, the U.S. has extended its border surveillance practices to Mexico, effectively undermining its sovereignty. Mexico and the U.S. have also instituted internal borders like the checkpoints depicted along the bus trip while the U.S. has implemented various practices of governance (e.g. E-Verify, Secure Communities, workplace policing, and the denial of driver’s licenses in various states) that increasingly delimit and criminalize the movement and existence of immigrants, creating what Nuñez and Heyman (2007) term, “entrapment processes” (also see Nevins 2014).

The restriction of rights based on national borders, coupled with the presumption that border policing can effectively guarantee these rights, relies on an assumption that threats to a nation come from outside of its borders and that such threats should therefore be combatted at the border. The normalization of this logic has made the granting and withholding of basic rights conditioned on national borders appear beyond reproach.[18] Such national frames of concern further contribute to the exploitation and abuse of migrants in transit as well as in the U.S., as their rights are either outright devalued or all too easily suspended in the name of security.

Image 4: Mural of the difficult northward journey, which depicts an imposing border with a narrow entryway between the United States and Mexico at the Casa del Migrante in Tecún Umán, Guatemala. - Photo Credit: Rebecca B. Galemba

The post Mexico’s Border (In)Security appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

In fact these organizations’ omissions help us understand precisely what is illiberal about them. Probing the Egyptian experience of Copts and Shi’tes as well as the nexus created between the human rights complex based in Washington DC, local civil society organizations, the media and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCRIF), it is found that Copts and Shi’tes have their voices muted. This discursive lacuna is created despite what these community leaders have been fighting against, largely because of the role of ‘activists’, some from those communities, who continue to play by the ‘human rights agenda’ to advance their own gains and ostracize their communities further. This pits those community leaders against a niche of activists who utilize the ‘human rights agenda’ to continue to gain access to Western media and reformulate identity based on a Rights Based Approach (RBA), that internationalizes such conflict and identity formulations.

Again the phrase ‘human rights agenda’ has positive connotations that espouse equality and inclusion but in fact is nothing more than a mechanism of exclusion that is apologetic to US power. In fact, as will be shown, some community members and ‘activists’ have had their voices hidden for their decision to speak out against the interests of those who define and dictate what the ‘human rights agenda’ is—in this case US policy towards the transition in Egypt. This is a clear demonstration of how the ‘human rights agenda’ is exclusionary. This paper first surveys the discursive field and episteme in which the appropriation of RBA’s, individualism and liberal discourse creates the ‘Coptic cause’ by looking at how Egyptian and Coptic actors appropriate these analytics. Secondly, it moves on to show how these discourses are used at the international level in controlling, serializing and influencing power relations in Egypt.  This paper ends by asking if those who attempt to modify and alter the discourse from within and ‘recapture’ Western notions of human rights, ‘activism’ and advocacy, can escape the subjectivity of Western discourse and accrue gains. Can Western discourse on human rights be recaptured to augment RBAs so that they are not exclusionary? This paper shows how Western RBAs pick up such issues in order to further US hegemony under the guise of said ‘liberalism’.

‘Activism’

As was the case for most segments of society, Copts participated in the lead-up to the June 30^th 2013 protests as well as the protests themselves that overthrew Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. Though this was the focus of most Western analysts and think tanks, focusing on Copts’ ‘activism’ against the MB and former President Morsi, few questioned or problematized said ‘gaze’ of Copts and their ‘activism’.[4] Indeed a minor grammatical change denotes a different Cartesian power plane; Coptic ‘activism’ is not synonymous with Copts’ ‘activism’. However by conflating the two Western analysts would have us believe that ‘Coptic’ ‘activism is unitary, uniform and representative of the majority of Copts under the rubric of human rights. The problematic gaze of ‘activism’ and ‘social movements’ creates a binary by bringing ‘activists’ and human rights organizations that do ‘advocacy’ to the frontline of the debate. This occurs by making them the authority on Copts and Shi’tes. Thus they speak, debate and designate what these ‘issues’ are. These activists and ‘rights’ based agendas serve as effective mechanisms in perpetuating the ‘Coptic question’ and ‘Shi’te issue’ and the discussion of their ‘integration’ in society, most often in the form of quotas. This is as opposed to the sidelining of the ‘Coptic question’[5] during instances of mass societal participation in protests, which usually happens by claiming that protests are harmonious and filled with people from all walks of life, thus collectivizing subjectivity and sidelining any grievances that other segments of society may have. Viewing Coptic ‘activism’ as synonymous with protests encourages the idea of campaigning for rights and the consolidation of democracy.

Similarly, on January 25^th 2011, throughout the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes of 2011 and in other instances of mass protest, there is emphasis on ‘equal participation’ by all segments of society to highlight that Egyptian society does not suffer from problems that affect Copts distinctly. Usually these protests are called for, organized and include activist participation.

In this regard ‘activism’ is an escape valve for delaying much needed discussion surrounding the issue of Copts, Shi’tes inter alia. This happens either in chorus with other protests in which this is used as an indicator of harmonious coexistence, or independently when showcasing the need to fight for ‘rights’ based issues. Thus the binary is two-fold: either there is a complete denial of the problem during instances of mass protests and a simultaneous celebration of the harmony among protestors from all walks of life; or an alternative reactionary discourse that perpetuates the ‘Coptic question’ or the ‘Shi’te issue’ by talking about the need for ‘integration’, ‘citizenship’, and ‘equality’. The latter is often conceived through mechanisms such as an electoral quota or quotas in state bureaucracy. This pluralism hides more than it integrates; it displays all identities merely within the categorization of ‘protestor’ or ‘activist’ as an unmediated and un-negotiated fixation that negates any grievances. This is how the sidelining of the ‘Coptic question’ occurs. Statements such as “Copts protected Muslims as they prayed in Tahrir Square”,[6] an incident that became the object of fixation by Western media, become mantras that espouse and delineate boundaries of power along an axis of ‘activism’ solely. By increasing this ‘gaze’ a host of other issues are omitted.

This form of ‘activism’ and ‘solidarity’, as the Western media propagates, falls into the hands of a few individuals. Ihab Ramzy, Mamdouh Ramzy (no relation) and Ramy Kamal join the chorus of those who make a niche for themselves in ‘Coptic activism’. In continually calling for side issues such as a quota for Copts in legislative elections they show their previous ties: Ihab Ramzy was elected in Minya on the list of the Party of Freedom, a former NDP party (the party of the former regime of Hosni Mubarak) while Mamdouh Ramzy, the former MP responsible for the statement that “the Shoura council [the upper Legislative chamber] has been wronged for the past 30 years”[7] was in fact the MB appointee to the Shoura Council who had to endure the theatrical performance in condemning the attack on the Coptic Cathedral under Morsi’s tenure. After that statement, Mamdouh gave himself the title of ‘special papal advisor’. Ihab Ramzy has given himself the same title. The Coptic Pope then issued a statement[8] saying he has no advisors and nobody speaks in his name or the Church’s and went on to reprimand Ihab privately for continuing to host conferences such as the Sonesta conference,[9] which called for an electoral quota for Copts. Ihab has continually been sidelined after the Pope’s reforms, which have brought to the Church new lay voices to Episcopal hierarchy.  Ramy Kamal joins the cohort of both Ramzys in breaking away from the Maspero Youth Union (MYU), the original organization that was born out of the ‘Maspero Massacre’ by Military Police. He went on to found the ‘Maspero Youth Foundation for Development and Human Rights’ and is quoted by Western think tanks[10] under another purported capacity as organizer of the ‘Free Copts’ movement and debates issues of ‘Coptic activism’ for a Western audience in a manner that is detached from reality on the ground. Ramy’s activism spree joins other ‘activists’ who seem to be bent on muting and overshadowing the MYU. During November 2013 some decided to commemorate the Maspero Massacre at a time when the original Maspero Organization, MYU, decided to cancel that year’s proceedings. This was done to avoid associating with newfound MB disdain for the Armed Forces, and instead be content with a Church service in Muqattam, Cairo. However ‘activists’ decided to protest in a show of irony that left MYU’s proceedings underreported and not covered.[11] That is why the quota, a non-issue amongst most Copts (who seem to have settled this in 1923),[12] has encapsulated DC think tanks that continue to make generic one size fit all approaches to “appoint Coptic elites,”[13] arguably what Mubarak used to do. In fact Ihab Ramzy has made the same demand with respect to the Egyptian bureaucracy[14] because it is beneficial to him and a small oligarchy of pro-Mubarak elites. Proponents of ‘activism’ seem to romanticize modernist citizenship empowerment approaches that are both ahistorical and narrow.

Church reform: swimming against the tide of activism

Western analysis that laments the need for civil society is imposed based off the academic transition paradigm. This very analysis dislodges organic change happening on the ground, which goes unreported by virtue of this ‘gaze’ and cooptation of Western media and its nexus with think tanks. Earlier in June the Coptic Orthodox Pope, Tawadrus II, approved the Church councils law. These laws in effect decentralize churches by having a council made up of laymen that rule it at each church, with a papal representative making up 1/3 of it while the remaining 2/3 are elected.  This creates a local electorate for each church. A standard 50%+1 is required to reach decisions. Yet Western think tanks and media seem fixated on the fact that the state’s authoritarianism permeates into the Church and that it similarly needs a ‘revolution’, ‘activism’ and ‘(Coptic) civil society’.[15] It is deeply ironic that a post-Westephalian notion of direct democracy was missed by these very Western academics.

This is at a time when the previous laymen’s council has been frozen off pending new elections for it. The Pope has also struck down the first hurdle for inter-Catholic and Orthodox marriage while continuing on ecumenicalism at the national level in Egypt. This fundamental shift in lay-clerical relations has left figures such as Mamdouh, Ihab and other former Coptic figures that enjoy(ed) the status of elites in a precarious position. This is in contrast to earlier rigid attitudes by the previous Pope Shenouda III towards horizontal and vertical power structures within the different confessions and inside the Coptic Orthodox Church. These two examples of reform break such power structures and make it difficult for the previous elites to wield a monopoly on Church-civil society relations within the classic ‘state-civil society’ paradigm, it is thus ignored and unreported.

In some of Egypt’s new parties Copts have risen to the ranks of Vice President (VP); examples include the Social Democrat’s Ihab el Kharat, Fredy Bayady and several others. This is a different structure that manages to contest previous power economies that conventional old powers such as Ihab and Mamdouh Ramzy fail to make gains inside of, especially post 2011 in Egypt. This is to be added to other new forms of participatory gains. Minister of Environment Laila Iskandar’s new Zabaleen initiative[16] is an example of how the Coptic community has made participatory gains that fall outside first wave approaches of equality and legislation. The Zabaleen initiative is a small unannounced and unknown victory because it falls outside the scope of classic ‘citizenship’ empowerment, subsequently outside the Western media and think tanks’ gaze. The initiative involves Egypt’s previously outlawed ‘Zabaleen’ Coptic community[17], a garbage collecting and recycling community in the area of Manshiyet Nasser, a poor-middle income informal housing area, that has felt the brunt of the previous government’s neoliberal authoritarianism.[18] The government continually clamped down on the community and its informal housing, specifically by granting garbage collecting contracts to foreign multinationals; euphemism for neoliberal concessions. Not only did this not solve the problem but it outlawed the collection of garbage by this community, despite it having achieved higher rates of recycling than the new multinational and keeping its profit margin within Egypt and not abroad. At one point the government clamped down on them after the spread of the H1N1 virus, colloquially named ‘swine flu’, because most families had a side business of pig farming. This was despite the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring that there was no risk of transmission of the virus through pigs. It represented a clear signal of the government’s continued neoliberal clampdown. The new Minister of Environment, however, has reinstated the Zabaleen community and for the first time given them a government legal umbrella in cooperation with the ministry. Iskander’s NGO, which she started before her ministerial post, not only advocated for the participatory inclusion of this community, but also helped in teaching them new recycling techniques. This reversal and termination of garbage collecting contracts to foreign multinationals is a direct omission made by virtue of the ‘human rights gaze’ towards Egypt.

Shi’te ‘activism’

The Shi’ite community in Egypt faces the same problems stated above: the issue of ‘universality’ and the host of interventions it invites as well as the problematic gaze of ‘activism’. Those who highlight Shi’ite suffering as synonymous with their ability to publicly celebrate Ashoura do so as part of a ‘human rights agenda’ of ‘religious freedom,’ yet no one has bothered to ask how Shi’tes want to celebrate or practice their rituals and whether it is far from the ‘religious freedom’ mantra espoused by Western civil society, a mantra also espoused and internalized by local civil society in Egypt. The fact that we know far less about Shi’tes in Egypt than other groups is likely due to the fact that they are only focused on around the time of Ashoura, as well as because of the Western gaze towards their ‘activism’ (defined as their right to publicly celebrate Ashoura). It is no surprise that community leaders have said that there are no official plans to go the Al Hussein mosque and that the media in fact has created problems for them, thus making it a more difficult time than it usually is. Continued fascination by individual decisions to go and commemorate Ashoura in Al Hussein has received vast media coverage because of the purported title ascribed to those quoted in the stories as ‘activists’.[19] The binary ‘activism’ creates is readily observed here with major Shi’te communities denying any intention of commemorating Ashoura as these activists would have the media to believe. While Shi’tes do call on the authorities to allow them to practice more openly, the media portrayal of ‘Shi’ite activists’ going to clash with the Salafis and police forces are only false and counterproductive. Any observer of the Shi’te community knows that they celebrate quietly, predominantly in rural Egypt and the urban Delta such as in Mansoura at many smaller shrines, which, while sometimes closed around Ashoura, tend to be open most of the time. In that regard the fascination with ‘Shi’ite activism’ hides more than it tells us about a community that for obvious reasons will remain unwelcoming to current approaches. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) should not approach the Shi’ite community with a ‘universal’ rights based agenda that would seek to make them a sui generis community, while they specifically highlight that their festivities and rituals are not recognizably different from mainstream Sunni Muslims. There are no visible self-mutilating rituals as practiced in the Gulf and Iran, Shi’te community leaders have constantly said that Egyptian Shi’tes are no different than Egyptian Sunnis, particularly in the call for prayer, adhan, and their rituals.[20]

The constitution as a false panacea

The core issue around the Constitution that I will focus on is the decision to ignore the Church’s push for an amendment of article 3,[21] despite it being unclear what they would stand to gain from it. The Church virtually pushed for this amendment alone, but an acute focus over the Shoura Council, affirmative action and the question of a quota dominated instead. This comes from the influence of media, civil society and think tanks. The source of this focus and its reason will be elaborated on later. Such ‘activism’ seems oblivious to the political economy map of power relations outlined previously. There is also the underestimation of the removal of article 219, an article that defined Islamic jurisprudence and equated it with legislation. According to some jurisprudence, this would have institutionalized and formalized the designation of non-mainstream Islamists as second tier citizens and turn Egypt into a theocracy. The Church knows only too well, as witness to the article 2 debacle with the late President Anwar al-Sadat,[22] that the problem of discrimination, despite some new think tank reports,[23] lies not in what is inked on a piece of paper called a constitution, but beyond that.

Here it could be useful to draw on feminist movements as an example. Many postcolonial feminists have critiqued the problematic approaches and assumptions inherent in first wave feminism and its liberal, individualistic theories and praxis. This is usually in the form of pro-activism policies, lobbying for legislative reform as a panacea and ignoring societal stigmas. This same process can be seen with regards to ‘activist’ groups and movements in Egypt; most are enamored with legislation as a panacea. Let us also not forget the near silence on part of many key players who have ignored the Church’s purposefully leaked internal memo expressing deep frustration towards the sluggish pace towards removal of article 219 and stonewalling on article 3 inter alia. It is telling that only Ahmed Harrara, one activist amongst the many groups, picked up on this leaked memo in an interview with TV talk show host Mahmoud Saad.[24]

Lastly, no one has bothered to look at the process of discussion internally for the Church and in the constituent assembly rather than at the outcome. While most constituent assembly members know this is a temporary constitution, media reports have either sought to overemphasize the Church’s stance on voting to keep the Shoura but ignore the battle for article 3, or emphasize the military tribunals article. While all state institutions and Salafis seem to be supporting such a restrictive article, which allows the trial of civilians in military tribunals (under cases that involve civil-military disputes), it hardly seems to make sense to expect the Church to take on yet another frontal battle. Victims of violence against Copts seem to be unable to garner justice either in civil or military tribunals. This is hardly an issue likely to be resolved by civilian judiciary or a constitution. Anyone familiar with the episodic violence against Copts in the 80’s will know that all too well. It is precisely because it falls out of the Western ‘gaze’ of human rights that it becomes unknown; context is a luxury for some which Copts have not been afforded because of omissions made by virtue of the ‘human rights agenda’. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) issued a report that attested to this shortcoming, an increasingly sidelined nuance missing amid the loud activist-driven ‘No to Military Trials’ campaign:

The judiciary, particularly sitting judges, does not often hear cases of sectarian violence, and it is extremely rare for such crimes to be referred to trial. On the other hand, the Public Prosecutor’s role in dealing with the violence is shameful: although Egyptian law gives that office the prerogatives of investigating judges authorized to conduct immediate, independent investigations to identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice using evidence of their crimes to protect society from lawbreakers, the Public Prosecutor’s Office tends to aid the security establishment in imposing “reconciliation” procedures, even when these are against the law—for example, accepting reconciliation in felonies, which is not permitted by Egyptian law. At other times the Public Prosecutor conducts investigations for show that lack all evidence, which means that either the perpetrators are not identified or they are acquitted if they are referred to trial. As such, impunity is the norm.[25]

Therefore the ‘No to Military Trials’ campaign also has a problematic gaze that seeks to universalize its cause and victims, citing that Copts too suffer from military trials, such as the case with Maspero. This clearly shows they can even politicize mourning for their own civil society ends. The ‘No to Military Trials’ initiative, while important, assumes that all victims are treated equally and unjustly before a military court, but what about those who are treated unjustly before civilian judiciary as reported by EIPR?  In this case, the ends are making the civilian judiciary the domain of ‘reform’ approaches as if it functions for the most part equally for Copts, Shi’tes and other heterodox societal segments that fall outside the modern conceptualization of the ‘citizen’.

Forward

Perhaps the most immediate and tentative conclusion of the process now is that such a ‘transition’ paradigm, or ‘transitional justice’ seems bankrupt and unable to express current realities past a Western focus.[26] This divides issues into two factions, those that need ‘reform’ and deserve institutional focus and those that by association encourage ‘activism’. The latter are issues that are classified as ‘low-level’ politics that are not prioritized in a transition paradigm and should work themselves out after democracy has been ‘consolidated’. However this consolidation negates how in a ‘transition’ such questions are open ended and ongoing power struggles. This firmly excludes participatory approaches to addressing the discourse that binds and controls Copts and Shi’tes. It also ignores how it formulates Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) subjectivity as a project of modernity that is equally blind to such issues. Particularly notable is the spectrum of CSOs that fail to understand or comprehend that the Church is between a rock and a hard place, and that in fact, it has been between a rock and a hard place for almost the entire modern history of Egypt and will continue to be. Nominal allies such as civil society, with the examples of Ihab and Mamdouh Ramzy whose efforts accentuate the plight of Copts rather than ‘empower’ them, adhere to modernist discourse that propose ‘citizenship’, ‘empowerment’, and ‘activism’; buzz words not only on social media but for all those who undertake low-level CSO work or ‘democracy’ promotion (a similar ruse for intervention). In fact this continues to be the talk and focus of the US State Department.

Take Hillary Clinton’s inaugural 2011 ‘religious freedom report’ speech, given not surprisingly at a think tank—the same think tank whose previous ‘gaze’ and recommendations were criticized: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.[27] Clinton remarked:

Now meanwhile, Egypt is grappling with these challenges as it navigates its unprecedented democratic transition. And during my recent visit, I met with members of the new government, including President Morsi, and representatives from Egypt’s Christian communities. Religious freedom was very present behind closed doors and out in the streets. President Morsi has said clearly and repeatedly, in public and private, that he intends to be the president of all the Egyptian people. He has pledged to appoint an inclusive government and put women and Christians in high leadership positions. The Egyptian people and the international community are looking to him to follow through on those commitments. Another important aspect of Egypt’s transition is whether citizens themselves respect each other’s differences. Now we saw that capacity vividly in Tahrir Square, when Christians formed a circle around Muslims in prayer, and Muslims clasped hands to protect Christians celebrating a mass. I think that spirit of unity and fellowship was a very moving part of how Egyptians and all the rest of us responded to what happened in those days in that square. And if, in the years ahead, if Egyptians continue to protect that precious recognition of what every single Egyptian can contribute to the future of their country, where people of different faiths will be standing together in fellowship, then they can bring hope and healing to many communities in Egypt who need that message.

In this regard Hillary Clinton’s comments affirm the vanguard role attributed to activism: during moments of mass protest the ‘harmonious’ exhibition of national unity, or to be more blunt the lack of violence, is used as a marker of citizenship that hides the otherwise unwanted realities; participatory gains, class mobility or critique of the ‘universality of rights’ and citizenship in general. Such critique would arguably criticize the foundations upon which most Western states are built and would infringe on high-level politics and US interests; it would be unwarranted for the US to embarrass Egypt over such an issue. But this is key, its performativity and claim to be moved by such an issue, such as the ‘universality of religious freedom’ is false. This exhibition of liberalism is also used hypothetically-“in the years ahead”- meaning that the US will monitor, advocate and recommend the practices. Thus a transition paradigm[28] is quintessential to serializing, locating and identifying key performance indictors, ones that have not been locally ascribed or agreed upon. Indeed it is quite telling that the US failed to pick up on the incidence of the police attack on the Egyptian cathedral. Clearly that does not fit the narrative in which “Tahrir Square’s…unity” is espoused. Hillary Clinton continues:

As we look to the future – not only in Egypt, not only in the newly free and democratically seeking states of North Africa and the Middle East, but far beyond – we will continue to advocate strongly for religious freedom. This is a bedrock priority of our foreign policy, one that we carry out in a number of ways [emphasis added]. Earlier today, the United States did release our annual International Religious Freedom Report. This is the fourth time I’ve had the honor of presenting it. It comprehensively catalogues the official and societal restrictions people around the world face as they try to practice their faith, and it designates Countries of Particular Concern that have engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom. This report sends a signal to the worst offenders that the world is watching, but it also provides information to help us and others target our advocacy, to make sure we reach the people who most need our help. In the Obama Administration, we’ve elevated religious freedom as a diplomatic priority. Together with governments, international organizations, and civil society, we have worked to shape and implement United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18.[29]

The discursive performance here of the widening of a religious freedom agenda that encompasses the Middle East without mentioning Israel; is a spatial designation of power. These remarks should make us pause for a number of reasons. Religious freedom is taken as the bedrock of US foreign policy. This assumes a liberal universality to it which it endows the ‘free’ world with the duty to help others while evoking universal declarations such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In doing so the US gains a foothold, not just universally, but exceptionally in the Middle East as Clinton remarked. It is only here we understand the crucial role that civil society plays to affirm not so much a ‘rights based’ agenda as much as a US agenda. But is this really the bedrock of US foreign policy? Or is part of an exclusive gaze in the Middle East? Does Saudi Arabia fall in the same category equally? Take Paul Sedra’s important words when discussing the nexus of US foreign policy and the plight of Copts with respect to DC based think tanks:

What I find disturbing is the alacrity with which particular US political forces have taken up the cause of anti-Christian persecution, notably over the past decade, just as the “war on terror” has gained so much momentum. And perhaps unsurprisingly given these political links, “persecution experts” have, much like their counterparts in the ‘terrorism expert’ industry, tended to find their way to particular think-tanks in Washington.[30]

The discursive performativity being exercised here is reminiscent of NSC-68 during the Cold War where the communist “threat” was hailed in such a way that religious freedom was designated to be the bedrock of US foreign policy. NSC-68 paved the way for intervention and rollback of communist regimes, and this new policy arguably does the same. Sedra continues commenting on the nexus of the human rights complex in Washington, DC:

…Arguably the leader in this regard is the Hudson Institute, which houses the Center for Religious Freedom under the directorship of Nina Shea. According to the Hudson Institute’s website, the center “promotes religious freedom as a component of U.S. foreign policy by working with a worldwide network of religious freedom experts to provide defenses against religious persecution and oppression.” Despite the emphasis in this description on a ‘worldwide network,’ a quick scan of op-eds by Center staff reveals that the geographic scope of their concern is substantially narrower: The vast majority of the articles concern the Muslim world, and among them, Egypt features most prominently.[31]

In this regard the Muslim world is the equivalent of the ‘free world’ during the Cold War that “needs” protecting and guidance. In the Cold War the free world needed protection, contemporarily the Muslim world needs a partner for its ‘democratic transition’. In this regard think tanks have their work equally distributed between those who white-wash ‘Islam’ as democratic and call for engaging Muslim leaders under the guise of ‘democratic support’, such as Mohamed Morsi, much to safeguard US interests, and by association legitimate him as Hillary Clinton did as a proponent of “minority rights”.[32] It is because Hilary Clinton has uttered it that it has been taken to be the truth. Meanwhile, other think tanks such as the Hudson Institute work on ‘minorities’ and turn their ‘cause’ into a pressure card. Thus ‘causes’ become intervention mechanisms much the same as “minority rights” can be. This gives the US the cozy place of arbitrator. A function of pluralism and ‘advocacy’ is that it creates the performativity of ‘choice,’ meaning that when the US goes to Egypt it has a host of ‘issues’ to select from. This becomes one of them and is activated to their liking. Sedra continues:

… Why would American conservatives take a particular interest in sectarian tensions in Egypt? As is well known, in recent decades, evangelical Christians in the United States have moved increasingly rightward in political orientation. At first glance, it would appear that Christian conservatives are moved by the plight of fellow Christians like the Copts. In practice, however, these Christian conservatives are moved to a still greater extent by Israeli protestations of insecurity. Given their track record of unstinting support for Israel, and relative disregard for the plight of Palestinian Christians, the focus on Egypt’s Copts emerges as a function of ‘Realpolitik’ rather than ideals.[33]

Realpolitik indeed. That is the very part of deconstructing the nexus of ‘activism’, ‘advocacy’, ‘social movements’ and the nexus with think tanks and foreign policy. All come together to hide and mask apologia to politics of a lower-level, but one that is crucial nonetheless to US presence in the region. More recently the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCRIF), a “bipartisan” and “independent” body tasked with fighting for the “values of our [US] nation”,[34] held a joint subcommittee hearing on human rights abuses in Egypt. Coptic Bishop Angaleos, USCRIF Vice Chair Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, and Samuel Tadros of the Hudson Institute (the same one in question in Sedra’s article), as well as a host of other ‘experts’ testified. These ‘experts’ are also part of the illiberality that Said spoke of: they are orientalist ‘experts’ of the same kind that create knowledge apologetic to US power. However before continuing it is important to analyze the US State Department statement on the passing of the 2012 constitution:

The future of Egypt’s democracy depends on forging a broader consensus behind its new democratic rules and institutions. Many Egyptians have voiced deep concerns about the substance of the constitution and the constitutional process. President Morsi, as the democratically elected leader of Egypt, has a special responsibility to move forward in a way that recognizes the urgent need to bridge divisions, build trust, and broaden support for the political process. We have called for genuine consultation and compromise across Egypt’s political divides. We hope those Egyptians disappointed by the result will seek more and deeper engagement. We look to those who welcome the result to engage in good faith. And we hope all sides will re-commit themselves to condemn and prevent violence. Only Egyptians can decide their country’s future. The United States remains committed to helping them realize the aspirations that drove their revolution and complete a successful democratic transition. Egypt needs a strong, inclusive government to meet its many challenges.[35]

This omits and fails to mention how the constituent assembly was dominated by the MB and its allies, required no 67% threshold to pass an article (if there was no 67% approval the first time then during the second vote all that was required was 57%) and how Morsi passed a constitutional declaration that immunized the assembly against court rulings that dissolved it. It also negates to mention the violence against protesters in the enthusing battle after the constitutional declaration, a process that was far from democratic particularly when you see that the MB strongman Khairat al Shater, Deputy General Guide, claimed that “80% of protesters [were]…Copts”.[36]

Compared with Zuhdi’s recent testimony, the 2012 State Department statement on the constitution is almost identical, pro-status quo and seeks to highlight the positive aspects of the 2013 constitution while saving face for the State Department’s statement on the 2012 constitution. In that sense the USCRIF is a discursive self-correcting tool for the US, and perhaps only in that light can it be called a ‘bedrock of US foreign policy’ in so as much as it maintains its ‘gaze’ on the region and remedies previous US foreign policy hiccups. But what is most interesting is how Zuhdi posits the plight of Copts, Baha’is, Shi’tes, Sufis and even Jehovah’s witnesses, as well as Jews in Egypt. This pluralism serves to discursively create a foothold and make the issue universal, despite clear messages from perhaps all those segments of society that they do not wish to identify themselves with the US. The statement by Shi’te leaders discussed previously is perhaps the most indicative. As for Jews, a similar statement has been made to that effect in which Magda Haroun, the head of the Jewish community in Egypt said “I don’t want anything from France or any country…Eastern Jews are not like Western Jews and their rituals are different”, thus trumping any semblance of universalism.[37] But its mention by Zuhdi means it exists, and as such it is an issue that can be activated; creating the foundational discourse of ‘religious freedom’. His testimony is ahistoricized and hides the colonial legacy of Jehovah’s witnesses and their arrival to Egypt by way of American missionaries.[38] Zuhdi concluded it by saying “[F]or the sake of stability and security, and because of Egypt’s international human rights commitments, the United States government should urge Egypt to choose this pathway to democracy and freedom.”[39]

The link between security and the “pathway to democracy and freedom” reads directly out of the neo-neo IR debate between neo-realism and neo-liberalism. This is correlated with Samuel Tadros’ testimony of the Hudson Institute, clearly more informed: “[O]n the national level, the scarce Coptic representation that existed in the government further declined.”[40] A clear correlation with Ihab Ramzy’s demand and continuation of ‘activism’ based discourse and a human rights agenda that is top-down. Though Tadros has a more historicized approach one cannot shake off Sedra’s remarks and the use of an Egyptian native informant by the Hudson Institute in such a setting before the House Foreign Relations Committee. Again it is not so much a function of who advocates for what, rather than who advocates for whom and is used to prove legitimacy.

Finally Bishop Angaleos’ testimony sought to counter both testimonies. He started by talking about Copts’ historical standing since the 7th century and how ancient law still governs society, mentioned the attack on the Coptic Cathedral under Morsi, the impunity of the Maspero Massacre, the rights of Shi’ites and contextualized Morsi’s “democratic credentials”, or lack there of. Lastly Angaleos gave a different view to transitional justice than is conventionally found, arguing:

Finally, the model of reconciliation that is called for is one that must be built upon prior criminal acts being investigated and accordingly dealt with, and future ones being subject to a stringent rule of law; only then will Egypt be able to live true reconciliation and work towards a common future.[41]

He also affirmed that Copts “absolutely negated accusations of their reliance upon and loyalty to foreign powers or negatively-perceived domestic authorities.”[42] Neither  Zhudi nor Tadros mentioned this point; on the contrary, Angaleos sought to counter all claims that Copts need US assistance while Zhudi and Tadros created the conditions and rhetoric that makes US intervention welcome. It is however unfortunate that a member of the Coptic clergy continued to see salvation within a rights based agenda. Though this is an internal debate among the Coptic community, particularly the more nuanced ‘movements’ such as the MYU, few realize that those who hold the keys of defining what is and is not part of the rights agenda are not those affected by or those whose “rights” are being violated. Some however have offered to fight and contest that meaning. Angaelos’ testimony shows an attempt at recapturing that discursive space. It is however unlikely that a discursive battle can be one where a rights based subjectivity is maintained while changing the power economy that is so firmly entrenched with Western civil society, be it in the West or Cairo, the media, a transition paradigm and incumbents in both the US and Egypt. Angaelos’ plea is apparent:

More recently, an incident in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Minya evokes experiences of the persecution faced by Christians in the Dhimmi period centuries ago. In this incident, two men, Emad Damian and his cousin Medhat Damian, were killed by Islamists in the Assiut governorate for refusing to pay a jizya tax. In the current day and age, and in the context of the ongoing process of democratisation in Egypt, such an incident should be unthinkable, yet it is indicative of the reality lived by some Christians in certain parts of Egypt on a daily basis.[43]

Indeed the contradiction is readily made apparent, but can be drowned out on account of several other factors and “gains” towards democracy. A case in point is the US State Department Egypt Country Report on Human Rights Practices. The 2012 report lamented:

…progress in moving towards accountability for civilian security forces compared with the previous year. The ENP [Egyptian National Police] adopted a code of conduct in October 2011, and in July the government established the Civil Rights Defense Committee to examine issues relating to the use of force by security services during the 2011 revolution.[44]

Yet the report failed to mention that this was decorative “reform” designed to placate local CSOs who issued a report highlighting the failure of Morsi to refer anyone to trial through this committee, its vast shortcoming in makeup, its lack of agenda, and non-conclusive investigations it undertook.[45] Furthermore, the report wrongfully claims the constitutional declaration was cancelled amidst increasing ‘advocacy’ by the opposition; failing to ignore that its effects remained firmly in place. Morsi issued another constitutional declaration to annul the previous one, but it included an article that gave immunity to the previous constitutional declaration’s effects. Thus the main goal, to pass the constitution without judicial review, was accomplished by preventing the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) from convening to issue a ruling to disband the constituent assembly. Later the SCC would issue the ruling disbanding the constituent assembly, but after the draft constitution went to a referendum and was passed. The ineffectual reform seems to have achieved its primary goal of addressing a Western audience.

Conclusion

When it comes to the issue of Copts and the Shi’a this hard hitting axiom seems more relevant than ever: the more you know, the less you know. Looking forward, Coptic ‘activism’, and ‘activism’ in general is likely to remain dominated by demands unrepresentative of those on the ground, and continue to be blind to issues of Copts and Shi’tes except when they are attacked, particularly with regards to Shi’tes. Why do these ‘activists’, ‘social movements’, and NGOs continue to occupy this role that has been assigned to them by liberal rights based discourse? A tentative conclusion points towards the fundamentally Western makeup of the state as conceived in a neoliberal world. For most issues to be addressed, lobby groups become essential components of the state, and the more organizations there are the better, much à la pluralism. In this regard Steve Fish’s words about the misgrievances of liberalism and pluralism as smokescreens for liberal inoculation are on mark.[46] As an immediate remedy there should be grassroots based approaches of participatory development, such as the Zabaleen initiative that serves to tackle neoliberal agendas. Such initiatives, which are combated by rights based agendas, are a practical step towards fighting neoliberalism. With the events in Egypt so firmly grounded in a ‘transition’ paradigm, it is no surprise that Western notions of development translate economically to neoliberalism and politically to ‘activism’.

The post False Ideas About ‘Activism’ in Egypt and the Case of Egypt’s Copts: Outside the State and Within the Economy of Power appeared first on The Postcolonialist.

Carefully structured and well edited, God Loves Uganda is also timely. The film tackles the topical issue of gay rights in Uganda and amplifies long-standing critiques of conservative Christian organizations’ approaches to HIV prevention, which emphasize abstinence and monogamy over condom-use. The film has been praised on the festival circuit and a nationwide release is forthcoming.

While God Loves Uganda raises pertinent questions, it frequently offers reductive and shortsighted answers. By depicting Ugandans as easily led and oversimplifying the impact of colonial, neocolonial and neoliberal interventions on Ugandan society, Williams betrays an imperial gaze that echoes the perspectives he seeks to critique. A more discerning analysis is needed, if audiences are to understand longstanding debates over sexuality in Uganda.

The documentary position

God Loves Uganda posits that, following the despotic rule of Idi Amin (1971-1979), outside aid was needed to reconstruct an ailing nation. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, USAID-funded initiates, such as the establishment of the Uganda AIDS Commission (UAC) and a National AIDS Control Program (ACP), helped alleviate the AIDS pandemic. When President George W. Bush came to power, however, emphasis shifted from safe-sex education to pro-abstinence campaigns administered by conservative Christian organizations. Consequently, HIV infection rates spiked dramatically. Now, Evangelical groups exploit access to rural communities and senior politicians to promote homophobic views that, they hope, will be encoded into law. Violent physical attacks of openly or ostensibly lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* people are commonplace[1].

With this scene set, action shifts to Kansas City’s International House of Prayer (IHOP) where earnest young missionaries prepare to travel to Uganda. IHOP leader Lou Engle sees Uganda, where over half of the population is aged under fifteen, as ripe for saving from the kind of sexual immorality that besmirches the U.S.A. As schoolchildren file into an IHOP missionary school assembly hall, the Church’s pervasive influence is made clear.

The documentary profiles two other figures promoting conservative Evangelicalism in Uganda. Former student of the Philadelphia Biblical University and close friend of First Lady Janet Museveni, Pastor Martin Ssempa shows gay fetish porn in his “kick sodomy out of Uganda” campaign lectures. He also co-authored the 2004 AIDS policy document, “Abstinence and Being Faithful.”

MP David Bahati introduced the 2009 “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” to the Ugandan Parliament, recommending the death penalty for the so-called offence of “aggravated homosexuality.” According to Bahati, U.S. Evangelical society, The Fellowship (also known as The Family), inspired the Bill, which is still pending review.

As a counterweight to the fire and brimstone rhetoric of Ssempa, Bahati and Engle, Williams features two Anglican clergymen who voice compassion towards Uganda’s LGBT population. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, researcher at Political Research Associates (PRA) argues from his Boston home that Africa’s sexual minorities have become collateral damage in an exported “U.S. culture war.” Excommunicated Bishop Christopher Ssenyonjo, remains in Kampala offering spiritual guidance to an increasingly at-risk LGBT community, and preaching tolerance.

Preaching to the converted

The thesis set forth in God Loves Uganda is straightforward and coherent. It is also easily digestible for Western audiences appalled by the infamous “Kill the Gays Bill,” and keen to understand it roots. Conservative Evangelists have undoubtedly fuelled homophobia and backed dangerously counterproductive AIDS policies. Their influence on social opinion is overemphasized here, however, at the expense of nuanced analysis and an important history lesson.

Catholic and Protestant missionaries were proselytizing “sexual morality” in the region even prior to the existence of The British Protectorate of Uganda. After drawing borders and installing themselves as rulers, colonial administrators enforced public decency and anti-sodomy laws, explicitly aiming to correct the immoral sexuality of savage natives[2]. Much of this legislation remains in place, but the British colonial origins of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws are largely overlooked here. More pressingly, the film fails to explore how imperial impositions have evolved and been incorporated into modern Ugandan culture and society.

Over seventy percent of the country’s population considers themselves Catholic or Anglican. Both denominations doctrinally regard homosexuality and extra-marital sex as sinful. It is important to note that adherents see these religious institutions, regardless of their origins, as wholly Ugandan. Church of Uganda literature is explicit on this point[3]. The CoU is a powerful entity within and beyond national borders. In the global Anglican Communion, its bishops vocally oppose member churches ordaining homosexual priests or blessing same-sex marriages (Hassett 2007; Ward 2002).

Oppression of sexual freedoms is not new to Uganda. Sex and sexuality are however hotly debated topics, even among African Christian theologians. These scholars present diverse views on AIDS/HIV policies and, albeit to a lesser extent, homosexuality (van Klinken and Gunda 2012). African women theologians in particular are building on their critiques of patriarchy to tentatively contest homophobic attitudes[4].

Such culturally grounded perspectives would have added depth to God Loves Uganda. Williams instead opts for polemics. Consequently, his film reiterates a familiar, and frustratingly circular debate over the supposed “Africanness” of homosexuality: Ssempa claims depraved, Western homosexuals are recruiting and corrupting Ugandans; Kaoma dismisses Ssempa as brainwashed, claiming his homophobic views are “not Ugandan.” Yet, as Cameroonian activist John Nana notes (quoted in Gevisser 2013), the same accusation can be leveled at the U.S.-based Kaoma.

On both sides of the debate, activists evoke an imaginary, homogenous and essentialized  “Africanness” in their arguments. These constructions, popular across the continent, rely on competing but equally selective readings of history (Msibi 2011; Stychin 2001). Dispute over the alleged (un)Africanness of homosexuality—and likewise Christianity, conservatism or liberalism—stymie considered analysis of a complex and urgent issue.

Williams plans to tour the film across Africa, and “start the conversation.” The conversation is however already well underway. In the form of a tautological exchange, it will continue to go nowhere fast.

The bigger picture

Williams’s analysis of the post-Amin political era is similarly lightweight, placing responsibility for Uganda’s ongoing economic woes squarely at the despot’s feet. Yet in subsequent years, rampant corruption, sectarianism and ongoing civil war have contributed to consistently high levels of economic inequality and insecurity.

The cronyism and increasingly dictatorial behavior of incumbent Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (1986-present) have caused widespread suffering in Uganda (HRW 2012; Tangri and Mwenda 2013). Yet God Loves Uganda uncritically reiterates the position, popular in the West, that Museveni is praise-worthy for steering social and economic development during the 1980s and 1990s (Hogle et al. 2002). Neoliberal structural adjustment programs introduced by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and embraced by Museveni may have boosted Uganda’s GDP, but employment, real wages, and access to health services and education fell drastically into the 1990s.

By the 2000s, the Bush administration was hailing Museveni as a U.S. ally in the War on Terror and supporting his regime through financial and military aid. President Barak Obama has followed suit, overlooking evidence that the aid fuels political oppressions and human rights abuses (HRW 2012; Tangri and Mwenda 2005). Williams asserts that Evangelicals’ popularity is predicated on Ugandans’ poverty and desperation but does not assess the roots of their condition. He blames U.S. churches for driving crises in Uganda, but lets U.S. politicians off the hook.

Viewers only glimpse possible broader critiques. In one powerful sequence, a Pastor behooves his Kampalan congregation to fund God’s work. They duly oblige, emptying pockets into collection plates. In the next scene, maids serve fine food to the Pastor’s family, in a lavish, gated community home. For a tantalizing moment, Williams seems to imply that the demonization of homosexuals, a soft-target minority community, is financially and politically rewarding. Ugandan scholar Thabo Msibi (2011) argues this point explicitly, noting that hatred towards homosexuals shores up patriarchy and distracts attention from pervasive structural inequalities.

Analysis such as Msibi’s would usefully extend the film’s central critique of conservative Evangelicalism in general. A similar sequence could have been filmed in Missouri, drawing connections between impressionable youth on either side of the Atlantic. Disappointingly, scenes of junior missionaries are played for laughs while Williams elicits empathy for Ugandan congregations.

In this over-simplified context, Williams depicts Ugandans as easily duped and lacking in agency, and appears to concur with Engle’s view that this “lost” population is ripe for indoctrination. This condescending portrayal of Ugandan society is compounded by the questionable claim that Amin’s brutality conditioned the population to embrace impulsively violent behavior. To support this idea, we see two men, filmed from considerable distance, become embroiled in a vicious fight. The scene is devoid of context and the intended message is startlingly xenophobic: Ugandans are accustomed to hatred.

In these moments, God Loves Uganda sits in stark contrast to another documentary that it should ideally compliment. Call Me Kuchu (Zouhali-Worrall and Fairfax Wright 2012) follows Ugandan LGBT-rights activists as they assert their constitutional right to privacy in court. The film shows incendiary conservative preachers sermonizing, but it also highlights varied experiences and understandings of homosexuality and homophobia. Lawyers, journalists, judges, politicians, activists and their families, friends, and neighbors all speak on camera. They reveal multiple oppressions faced by Uganda’s LGBT population and imply that the battle against homophobia must be waged on a number of fronts and through carefully considered means. The conclusion and call to action offered in God Loves Uganda—stop U.S. Evangelical missionaries to end homophobia and AIDS—is comparably naïve.

God Loves Uganda is well-meaning, but frustratingly simplistic. It is a film about Uganda in which a select few Ugandans speak. Diverse perspectives from civil society are buried beneath the diametrically opposed views of clergymen and political leaders. Their claim that U.S. “culture wars” have been exported to Uganda is an attractive sound bite. Unfortunately God Loves Uganda cannot explain why such a war might be possible.

• God Loves Uganda
• Director: Rodger Ross Williams
• Length: 83 mins
• Release date: October 11, 2013

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