(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release: Egypt: Harassment of Academics (New York, August 3, 2000) — In a letter released today, Human Rights Watch’s Academic Freedom Committee condemned Egypt’s ongoing closure of a leading democratization think tank. The Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies is internationally renowned for the study […]
(HRW/IFEX) – The following is a Human Rights Watch press release:
Egypt: Harassment of Academics
(New York, August 3, 2000) — In a letter released today, Human Rights Watch’s Academic Freedom Committee condemned Egypt’s ongoing closure of a leading democratization think tank. The Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies is internationally renowned for the study of applied social sciences in Egypt and the Arab world and for the publication of Civil Society, a monthly newsletter, which is an important source of information and analysis for scholars. Several of the Center’s researchers, including Prof. Saad El-Din Ibrahim, have been detained since the beginning of July. The Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee is a group of prominent academics and scholars.
“Egypt should immediately reopen the Center,” said Hanny Megally, the executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “This type of harassment is intended to deter other academics from pursuing research and will hurt the free exchange of ideas crucial to a healthy society in advance of an important electoral period.”
Although authorities have failed to specify any exact charges against them, several researchers from the Center have remained in custody for over a month. The Academic Freedom Committee urged Egypt’s Prime Minister, Dr. Atef Ebeid, “to state its commitment to protecting and promoting academic freedom in Egypt by either immediately reopening the Ibn Khaldun Center and releasing its staff and associates, or by promptly affording them the opportunity to defend themselves against formal charges in a court of law.”
The Committee expressed its concern that the Center’s closure indicates increasingly strict limits on academic freedom in Egypt in anticipation of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Further, the researchers’ detention comes on the heels of another recent incident in which the Egyptian government imposed administrative sanctions on thirty-six school teachers who attended workshops on civil education.
The full text of the Academic Freedom Committee’s letter to Dr. Ebeid can be found at http://xmail.hrw.org/news/July-2000/eg080300.htm
