The nomination of a controversial Egyptian activist for a prestigious human rights prize is raising concern that the definition of a democrat and standards of democratic conduct are being diluted or compromised.

Several human rights groups nominated Mona Saif for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, even though she ’tweets for terror‘, according to the Geneva-based UN Watch. 

Several Egyptian rights advocates expressed opposition to the nomination, including Amr Bakly, of the Cairo Liberal Forum, who tweeted: ”The Martin Ennals Award is not for terrorist supporters” and Maikel Nabil, a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience.”

Saif’s activism reportedly demonstrates a pattern and practice of inciting violence against civilians and endorsing terrorism, including support for blowing up pipelines exporting Egyptian gas to Israel and endorsing Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigade attacks on civilians.

The presentation of rights and democracy awards “to people who do not embrace democratic values suggests that the very notion of ‘pro-democratic’ is being defined down,” said Eric Trager, an Egypt expert and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

“Most disturbingly, pro-democratic and human rights organizations, which should be at the forefront of advancing democratic ideals, are the ones overlooking these awardees’ blatantly violent views and thus contributing to this defining down,” Trager said.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. The Human Rights Crisis in Syria.

9:30 a.m. Speaker/s: Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.; U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford; Maria McFarland, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch; Suzanne Nossel, executive director, Amnesty International USA; Andrew Tabler, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Radwan Ziadeh, visiting scholar, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University

Venue: B-318 Rayburn House Office Building, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC.

Info: Hans Hogrefe (McGovern), 202-225-3599, tlhrc@mail.house.gov

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi.

11 a.m. – Speaker/s: Peter Popham, foreign correspondent and feature writer for The Independent.

Venue: Woodrow Wilson Center , One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Sixth Floor, Washington, D.C.

Info: 202-691-4000

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Palestine: Economic Challenges and Political Implications.

12:15 p.m. Speaker/s: Robert Danin, senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Oussama Kanaan, International Monetary Fund representative to West Bank and Gaza; Firas Raad, acting head of mission ,Office of the Quartet Representative Tony Blair; and Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at Carnegie Endowment.

Venue: CEIP, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. Info: Jessica Boulet, 202-939-2212; Register here.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Constitution Making in the Two Sudans.

1:30 p.m. -Speaker/s: Jason Gluck, senior rule of law advisor at the Rule of Law Center at USIP; Nureldin Satti, secretary general at the Sudan National Library; Veronica Eragu, Jennings Randolph senior fellow at USIP; and Jon Temin, director ,Sudan Program, United States Institute of Peace (USIP).

Venue: USIP, 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Info: Allison Sturma, 202-429-4725, asturma@usip.org; http://www.usip.org  RSVP required.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Ukraine’s Drift Away from Europe and the Western Response.

Panel 1: 1:30 p.m. Ukrainian Domestic and Foreign Policy under President Yanukovych, featuring Edward Chow, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Nadia Diuk, vice president for programs, Africa, Central Europe and Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean, National Endowment for Democracy; Steven Pifer, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe; and Fiona Hill, director, Brookings Center on the United States and Europe.

Panel 2: 3:15 p.m. U.S. and EU Policy Toward Ukraine, featuring Daniel Russell, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs; Pirkka Tapiola ,Strategic Planning Division at the European External Action Service; and Steven Pifer, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Center on the United States and Europe.

Venue: Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Info: 202-797-6105, events@brookings.edu

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Informal Institutions in Hybrid Regimes: The Case of Ukraine.

4 p.m. Speaker/s: Yuriy Matsiyevsky, associate professor at the Ostroh Academy National University at Ukraine.

Venue: George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Washington, D.C. Info: 202-994-8025; RSVP here.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Belarus-EU Relations: Short on Carrots, Short on Sticks.

Speaker/s: Matthew Rojansky, deputy director, Russia and Eurasia program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Venue: 5 p.m. – Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Rome Building, 1619 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. Info: Felisa Neuringer Klubes, 202-663-5626, fklubes@jhu.edu

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East.

5:30 p.m. Speakers: author Marc Lynch, non-resident senior fellow, Center for a New American Security, and Hisham Melhem, Washington bureau chief of Al-Arabiya. Venue: The W Hotel, 515 15th Street NW, Washington, D.C. Info: 202-457-9427, info@cnas.org  Register here.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012. Recent Developments in Israel and the Middle East.

6:15 p.m. Speaker: Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel.

Venue: Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Rome Building, 1619 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Info: Felisa Neuringer Klubes, 202-663-5626, fklubes@jhu.edu; http://www.sais-jhu.edu RSVP required.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012. Global Perceptions of Media Freedom.

10 a.m. Broadcasting Board of Governors and Gallup present Michael Meehan, member of BBG; Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup; Bruce Sherman, director of strategy and development, BBG; Cynthia English, research consultant, Gallup.

Venue: The Gallup Building, 901 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. Info: Lauren Kannry, 202-715-3050, lauren_kannry@gallup.com Register here.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012. The Next Decade: Seizing Opportunities from a Transforming Africa.

11 a.m. Speaker/s: Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman; Tara Sonenshine, executive vice president, United States Institute of Peace; and Raymond Gilpin, director ,Center for Sustainable Economies at USIP.

Venue: USIP, 2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Info: Allison Sturma, 202-429-4725, asturma@usip.org; http://www.usip.org RSVP at http://transformingafrica.eventbrite.com

Wednesday, March 28, 2012. Human Rights and Development.

12:15 p.m. Speaker: World Bank Senior Economist Varun Gauri

Venue: The University of Maryland  International Development Council, Van Munching Hall, Room 1203, College Park, MD. Info: Neil Tickner, 301-405-4622, ntickner@umd.edu

Wednesday, March 28, 2012. Egypt’s Transition: Military Rule, Human Rights Challenges, and U.S. Policy Options.

12:30 p.m. – Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the Atlantic Council’s Hariri Center for the Middle East panel, featuring Maikel Nabil, Egyptian activist and blogger; Shana Marshall, research fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University; Michele Dunne, director ,Hariri Middle East Center of the Atlantic Council; and Stephen McInerney, executive director of POMED

Venue: Stimson Center, 1111 19th Street NW, Suite 1200, Washington, D.C.

Info: Anna Newby, 202-828-9660 ext. 23, anna.newby@pomed.org Note: Register here.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012. The Arab Spring: A Regional Perspective.

6 p.m.  Speaker: former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister of Kuwait Mohammed Sabah Al-Salim Al-Sabah.

Venue: George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, 1957 E Street NW, Lindner Family Commons, Room 602, Washington, D.C.

Info: 202-994-8025 RSVP here.

Thursday, March 29, 2012. Constitution-Making, Electoral Design, and the Arab Spring.

12 noon. Speakers: Andrew Reynolds, associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; John Carey, professor in social sciences at Dartmouth College; and Donald Horowitz, professor of law and political science at Duke University.

Venue: National Endowment for Democracy, 1025 F Street NW, Suite 800, Washington, D.C.

Info: 202-378-9700, info@ned.org;

Thursday, March 29, 2012. The Current Situation in Belarus: Historical Perspectives and Recent Developments.

4 p.m. – Speaker: former Belarus President Stanislaw Shushkevich.

Venue: George Washington University Elliott School, 1957 E Street NW, Voesar Conference Room, Suite 412, Washington, D.C. Info: 202-994-8025 RSVP

Friday, March 30, 2012. U.S. Policy toward Iran: Prospects for Success – and Failure.

9 a.m. – Speakers: Michael Adler, Woodrow Wilson Center; Jamie Fly, Foreign Policy Initiative; Matthew Kroenig of Georgetown University; Nuno Monteiro, Yale University; Alireza Nader , RAND Corporation; Joshua Rovner , U.S. Naval War College; Barbara Slavin, Atlantic Council; and Justin Logan , Cato Institute.

Venue: Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Avenue NW, F.A. Hayek Auditorium, Washington, D.C.

Info: 202-789-5200; http://www.cato.org

The Obama administration today told Congress it will waive conditional democracy criteria to give up to $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt’s military despite the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy NGOs and backsliding on democratic governance.

U.S officials and lawmakers said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has determined that it was in the U.S. national interest to allow $1.3 billion in military assistance to flow, Associated Press reports. She also certified that Egypt is meeting its obligations to the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which frees up an additional $200 million in economic aid.

The decisions “reflect our overarching goal: to maintain our strategic partnership with an Egypt made stronger and more stable by a successful transition to democracy,” said a senior State Department official.

The decision was made public by the office of Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate subcommittee on foreign aid, who expressed his unease about the move.

The State Department should “release no more taxpayer funds than is demonstrably necessary, withholding the rest in the (U.S.) Treasury pending further progress in the transition to democracy” in Egypt, Leahy said.

He has previously insisted on “no blank checks” for Egypt’s military.

Invoking the waiver will “damage U.S. credibility at a critical moment,” Egypt analyst Michelle Dunne warned in a policy brief published today.

“The Egyptian military should be defending fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, not harassing and arresting those who are working for democracy,” Leahy said. “They should end trials of civilians in military courts and fully repeal the Emergency Law, and our policy should not equivocate on these key reforms.”

“The decision to waive the conditions, partially or in full, on military aid sends the wrong message to the Egyptian government — that U.S. taxpayers will subsidize the Egyptian military while it continues to oversee the crackdown on civil society and to commit human rights abuses,” said David Kramer, president of Freedom House. “A resumption of military aid at this point also sends the wrong message to the Egyptian people — that we care only about American NGO workers, not about the aspirations of the Egyptian people to build democracy.”

“We’ve got to have a measure of accountability. But I think the idea of cutting off aid doesn’t make sense,” Senate Foreign Relations Middle East Subcommittee Chairman Bob Casey (D-PA) told The Cable. “We just have to figure out a better way to make the aid conditional based on those measures of accountability, and I think we can achieve that. I think, in this case, it’s a mistake to take an either/or approach.”

Egypt’s Transition: Military Rule, Human Rights Challenges, and U.S. Policy Choices

The Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) and the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East are pleased to co-host a panel discussion about Egypt’s ongoing transition and U.S. policy options. Under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), thousands of civilians have been tried in military courts, bloggers and activists have been imprisoned for criticizing state policies, detainees have been tortured, tensions between Muslim and Christian communities have risen, and non-governmental organizations have been harassed and prosecuted. Tensions between Egypt’s military and the U.S. have also been exacerbated recently by attacks on international and Egyptian civil society organizations.  There will be a new Egyptian president elected in May and the military will formally relinquish control, but the U.S. must decide now whether to continue aid to the military. 

What are the military interests that have shaped the first year of Egypt’s transition from authoritarianism?  How will they change once Egypt has an elected president and new cabinet and the military formally returns to the barracks?  What are the U.S. interests that guide the longstanding relationship with the Egyptian military?  And how should the U.S. look at the relationship with Egypt once there is a new civilian government?

We are particularly excited to welcome Egyptian blogger and activist Maikel Nabil to the panel. Maikel has been outspoken about human rights violations committed under the SCAF’s rule and about corruption inside the military, and he founded the ‘No Compulsory Military Service’ movement in 2009. After being arrested in March 2011 and undergoing a form of hunger strike for over 5 months, Maikel was finally pardoned and released in January 2012.

Please join a panel discussion with: Maikel Nabil, Egyptian Activist and Blogger: Shana Marshall, Research Fellow, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University; Michele Dunne, Director, Hariri Middle East Center, Atlantic Council. Moderator: Stephen McInerney, Executive Director, POMED.  

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, Stimson Center, 1111 19th St NW, #1200, Washington, DC. 12:30-2:00pm A light lunch will be available at noon.

Click here to RSVP for the event. POMED has also published a new policy brief on the future of the U.S.-Egypt relationship, which is available here. Please contact Anna Newby at anna.newby@pomed.org with any questions, or call (202) 828-9660, ext 23.

Dunne, a former Middle East specialist in the White House and Department of State, is a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. POMED is a NED grantee.

Known variously as Egypt’s Sharansky and post-Mubarak Egypt’s first prisoner of conscience, Maikel Nabil Sanad (right) recently served 10 months in prison for blogging about the military’s human rights violations. His detention sends the same message as the authorities’ prosecution of pro-democracy NGOs, he says: the US should invest in Egypt’s democrats instead of unreliable, autocratic military allies.

Last November, three months into my 130-day hunger strike in Egyptian prison, I was called into the office of a senior general in the military court. I was led there in handcuffs and my coarse blue prison uniform.

As I sat, the general leaned back in his big chair, stared directly into my eyes and smiled. “Last week, I met with some American generals in the Pentagon,” he said. His message was clear: America was on his side, while a liberal democratic activist like me was in prison.

Last March, Egypt’s post-revolutionary interim military government sentenced me to three years in prison for “insulting the military”—meaning blogging about its violations of Egyptians’ human rights.

Activists around the world fought for my freedom. It was because of this global pressure that I was released two months ago. But the military has made sure I know that I can be returned to prison at any time on a whim………..

Few Egyptian revolutionaries believed that the toppling of Hosni Mubarak would lead to such a militarized nightmare. We rose against Mubarak to build a free and democratic country. We wanted the dignity of all citizens respected. Instead, we were killed, injured and arbitrarily detained by the military regime…………….

During my imprisonment, I was thrilled to read the letters from Sen. Mark Kirk and Rep. Frank Wolf to Egypt’s interim leader, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, and me. But as I languished in prison, I wondered how effective these statements were.

In December, the military repeated this outrage and accused 19 American civil-society workers of crimes, prohibiting them from leaving Egypt. The military chiefs eventually allowed the Americans to leave Egypt, though they still haven’t dropped the case.

The fall of the Mubarak regime should have taught the world that there is nothing stable about a military dictatorship constantly violating human rights. The only hope for lasting peace and security, for Egypt and America, are the democratic activists still fighting for their rights.

The full version of this article appeared in U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal.

One of Egypt’s leading dissident bloggers today issued a defiant message from behind bars to the country’s ‘militarist’ rulers.

“Prison never changed an idea,” said Maikel Nabil Sanad (left), who was last week given a two-year jail sentence by a military court in Cairo. The blogger, widely known as in post-Mubarak Egypt’s first prisoner of conscience or Egypt’s Sharansky, refuses to pay outstanding legal fees, rejects the legitimacy of the court, and vows to continue his hunger strike until death, if necessary.

His sentence “insults the spirit” of Egypt’s Jasmine revolution, saidReporters Without Borders.

RTWT

Photo credit: The New Yorker

Egypt may have completed the second round of its first democratic elections, but the sentencing of a dissident blogger is a disturbing sign of authoritarian resilience, say rights groups.

Maikel Nabil Sanad (above), widely known as the first prisoner of conscience in post-Mubarak Egypt, had his sentence reduced by a military tribunal from three years to two on Wednesday, but the Obama administration today joined rights advocates in criticizing the verdict.

“We are very concerned about reports that the military court has again sentenced [Nabil] to prison for criticizing the Egyptian Armed Forces,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. “Civilians ought to be tried in civilian courts.”

“We continue to urge the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to reconsider this verdict and we call on the government to protect the universal rights of all Egyptian citizens, including the right to free expression,” she said.

Nabil has been on hunger strike since August to protest his detention for criticizing the ruling military on Facebook and in his blog. He was charged with “insulting the military establishment” in a prosecution that human rights and democracy advocates portray as evidence that the Supreme Council of Armed Forces is perpetuating “Mubarakism without Mubarak.”

“This perpetuation of Mubarak’s oppressive policies with his detractors means more deterioration for public freedoms, despite the success of the Egyptian uprising,” said a statement from the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information signed by eight human rights groups.

The military may have been prepared to release Nabil’s “as a face-saving measure” if he apologized, said Heba Morayef, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. “But because of his principle — he didn’t recognize the legitimacy of military trials — it has turned into a battle of wills.”

Democracy and rights advocates fear that the relative success of Egypt’s elections creates a misleading picture of a transitional process in which democratic procedures detract attention from illiberal, anti-democratic practices.

“Nabil is a civilian and he should not be tried by a military court,” said Human Rights First’s Quinn O’Keefe. “The SCAF continues to arrest, intimidate, and convict activists through hasty military trials. The international community would be remiss to focus solely on Egypt’s elections and not the ongoing human rights abuses.”

Resentment over the military’s “inept foot-stampings are captured in graffiti of the new martyrs that is stenciled all over downtown Cairo,” (see slide show) The New Yorker reports, including:  

Mina Daniel, a Christian activist who camped in Tahrir in February, and was one of twenty-seven people shot and killed by soldiers outside the Maspiro building on October 9th; Mikhail Nabil (above), an outspoken blogger who has been in military prison for more than three months, on a hunger strike for almost two. And Alaa Abd Al Fattah, a shaggy-haired young demonstrator from a family of activists (his sister Mona Seif started the “No to Military Trials” campaign in April), detained in military prison for fifteen days pending an absurd investigation into supposed sectarian incitement during the events at Maspiro.

Jailed blogger Maikel Nabil was arrested by the Egyptian military on March 28 for “denouncing human rights violations and the military’s close relationship with the government” on his blog, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Earlier this month, dozens of activists called for his release at a protest outside the Journalists Syndicate, demanding an end to the trials of civilians in military courts.

Nabil was one of the first bloggers to be imprisoned by the Egyptian military since the fall of Mubarak. Arab human rights advocates, Reporters Without Borders and other organizations supporting freedom of expression around the world have called on the government to free him without delay.

Jailed Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad (right) is in critical condition after going on a hunger strike on August 23, the World Movement for Democracy reports. Sanad was arrested by the Egyptian military on March 28 for “denouncing human rights violations and the military’s close relationship with the government” on his blog, according to Reporters Without Borders.

The pro-democracy advocate has stopped drinking water and refused his medication for a heart condition to protest “his continued imprisonment, his alleged mistreatment at the hands of the military prison guards, and the delay in dealing with his appeal,” his brother Mark told the Committee to Protect Journalists. His brother is also being harassed by police.

Earlier this month, dozens of activists called for his release at a protest outside the Journalists Syndicate, demanding an end to the trials of civilians in military courts.

Sanad was one of the first bloggers to be imprisoned by the Egyptian military since the fall of Mubarak. Arab human rights advocates, Reporters Without Borders and other organizations supporting freedom of expression around the world have called on the government to free him without delay.

Civil society groups accuse the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces of continuing former president Hosni Mubarak’s strategy of promoting political tensions while adopting a purely “cosmetic” approach  to reform.