In a research paper, I am currently preparing, I determined that there were decisions made by some opinion-making circles in the West that blame Egypt and Egyptians occasionally, then look for justifications for those claims later.
The presidency of Egypt is the most condemned, followed by the Armed Forces, the police, media, intelligence, judiciary, and then the parliament.
Yet, the presidency is almost always blamed. If a court ruling acquitted a defendant, Western media would claim the ruling was politicized and came by pressure or orders from the presidency, the government, or intelligence.
At the same time, if some defendant is found guilty, it will be claimed to be a presidential or government decision form behind the scene. When the Court of Cassation acquits this same person later, the accusation is ready to be made again, that this was driven by orders issued from a security agency. Egypt is wrong in any case, from the point of view of those.
We have an example showing the gap in the different assessments of the Egyptian Administration. The Egyptian-American activist Aya Hegazy returned to the US after three years of pre-detention during the trial having been accused of human trafficking. On Sunday, an Egyptian court acquitted Aya Hegazy and seven others of the charges of trafficking.
The case was publicly known as the Belady Foundation. All eight defendants were accused of human trafficking, abduction of children, sexual abuse, and forcing the children to partake in political demonstrations.
Her lawyer affirmed several times that Hegazy was only doing charity, rescuing street children. Hegazy is a good example of someone who does a good thing in a wrong way.
Hundreds of organizations work in the same field with the same goal but were never accused of breaking law of the land. Indeed, she tried to provide a service to Egypt and Egyptians, but in line with her own standards and rules, without considering the formal laws and procedures in a country that has been suffering from infringement upon its sovereignty for years.
She wants to help street children. Egypt has witnessed dozens of organizations that used similar slogans but later found to have caused more damage than good.
The court issued its verdict based on the information it had. The previous US administration had asked the Egyptian authorities to release Aya Hegazy.
A statement issued by the White House, in September 2016, demanded Egypt to drop all charges against Hegazy and to release her. But the Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the statement and hinted that some American officials insist on disregarding the principle of the rule of law.
But talks about the case remained in the hallways of the Egyptian judiciary, insisting the case must be processed carefully so that Hegazy does not suffer injustice, given her good intentions. When she was acquitted, the court was as courageous as it was when it decided to detain her before.
But what concerns me more is that Hegazy and her colleagues must understand that Egypt lives in exceptional circumstances. She had to make sure the procedures she took to found and run a civil society organization were correct because Egypt suffered a lot from those who claimed to have good intentions but did bad.
Hegazy’s innocence shows the size of the dilemma faced by Egypt: government and people. The whole area is in the moving sands, in which the ideas of a state is gone or under sever attack.
Many countries in the region turned to tribes under different flags, carrying weapons on the ruins of their people. Egypt has chosen a difficult path: keeping the state institutions, even if these institutions suffer from corruption, inefficiency or lack of accountability.
But it is important that the state institutions remain intact and subject to structural reforms. In the period after the January 25 revolution and throughout the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptians used to say: if one were to be stopped for inspection, may it be the police or the army, rather than terrorists or loggers.
Egyptians want a strong state with active institutions. Any assessment of the situation in Egypt without accounting for the current circumstances and fears is an evaluation away from reality.
