NGO workers appeared startled Thursday that Egypt’s military council, the largest recipient of U.S. aid, is willing to clash with its U.S. allies over American pro-democracy organizations working in the country.
“This is a very serious escalation, and it shows all NGOs are very vulnerable,” said Heba Morayef, an Egypt researcher for Human Rights Watch in Cairo.
(Anonymous/AP) - Sam Lahood, left, watches as his father Ray is sworn in as Transportation Secretary at the Transportation Department in Washington. Egypt has banned the son of Transportation Secretary LaHood and at least five other Americans from leaving the country, officials said Thursday.
In private, State Department officials have also told Egypt that its actions are jeopardizing U.S. aid to Egypt’s military, said Charles Dunne, the director of Middle East and North Africa programming for Freedom House. U.S. military aid to Egypt totals more than $1.3 billion a year.
Dunne said that so far he is unaware of any travel bans on Freedom House employees in Cairo, all of whom are Egyptian.
Despite the State Department’s intervention, the Egyptian government has given no sign of backing off its investigation of the American groups. Judging by recent questions directed to NGO members by Egyptian interrogators, it instead seems to be preparing to charge the groups with not registering their organizations and with providing foreign funding, the groups’ leaders say.
Both IRI and NDI applied for registration to work in Egypt during former president Hosni Mubarak’s rule but were told that the paperwork would probably never go through. To suppress dissent, Mubarak kept a tight lid on the work of civil society organizations. After Egypt’s uprising a year ago, Mastic said, the U.S. government encouraged IRI to begin democracy-building programs, and the issue has become a major point of friction between the United States and Egypt’s military rulers.
IRI and NDI renewed their registration applications recently at the request of the Egyptian government.
“It’s gotten more serious,” Sam LaHood said Thursday, referring to the travel ban. According to IRI’s leaders in Washington, four of the group’s Cairo employees have been barred from traveling, including LaHood, two other Americans and a European.
“The reality is, this is bigger than me or IRI,” LaHood said. “There are 300 NGOs being investigated by the Egyptian government, and only a handful of them are American.”
Leslie Campbell, NDI’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said that the organization was verbally notified Thursday of a travel ban on six employees — three Americans, two Serbians and a Bosnian — after it heard about LaHood being turned away at the airport and requested information.
“It’s very worrying,” Campbell said, adding that the organization took it as a sign that the six could be charged in the investigation into foreign funding. “We have done our best to be transparent with the Egyptian government.”
Authorities stormed 17 offices in all last month, including some operated by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation and at least two Egyptian nongovernmental organizations: the Arab Center for Independence of Justice and Legal Professions and the Budgetary and Human Rights Observatory.
NDI and IRI are democracy-building groups backed by the U.S. government that operate globally. Both have been monitoring Egypt’s ongoing, multi-phase parliamentary elections. Freedom House advocates for democracy, political freedoms and human rights.
By investigating the groups, Egypt’s embattled military chiefs appear to be trying to prove that foreign organizations have been funding and orchestrating recent waves of anti-government protests, in which scores have been killed and hundreds wounded.
A year after the citizen revolt that pushed Mubarak from power, many Egyptians have resumed demonstrating, saying that the caretaker military government has adopted many repressive Mubarak-era tactics. They are calling for a faster transition to civilian government and for immediate reforms to protect individual rights and freedoms.
The U.S. Congress has adopted a resolution that will not allow military aid to Egypt to continue without a certification that the government is carrying out a democratic transition. Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for human rights, labor and democracy, said in Cairo on Thursday that one of the key benchmarks Congress is looking at is freedom of association.
“We are greatly concerned that organizations like IRI, NDI and Freedom House ought to be able to operate,” he told a news conference.
White House officials would not comment on the travel ban and also declined to say whether the administration is making any new efforts to secure Sam LaHood’s safe departure from Egypt. Ray LaHood also would not comment “due to the sensitivity of the situation,” a Department of Transportation spokesman said.
The transportation secretary is due to appear Friday in Tampa for an event on economic development and infrastructure policy tied to Obama’s State of the Union address.
Staff writers William Wan, Ed O’Keefe and Ashley Halsey III in Washington contributed to this report.
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