Egypt - As NGO trial wraps up, fears for civil society’s future.

Egypt - As NGO trial wraps up, fears for civil society’s future.(EI). Sherif Mansour was safely ensconced in Washington, DC last year when the Egyptian government brought charges against him and 42 others in what has become dubbed “the NGO trial.” Yet he forfeited the comfort of distance and boarded a plane back to Egypt this summer to stand in the defendants’ cage because he felt that the stakes were higher than a possible prison term.

“I wanted to make sure that the trial did not further indict people in the NGO community,” Mansour says through an expanding cigarette smoke haze. “It’s not fair to Egyptian civil society to have to deal with the consequences of the case.”

Closing arguments in the NGO trial are scheduled for Saturday, and a verdict is expected sometime in December. But the December 2011 raid against foreign NGOs and the subsequent trial have already created an atmosphere in which large parts of civil society are more wary, even as Egypt needs them to be bold. “When legitimate international groups are subject to an armed raid, a travel ban and felony charges for teaching democracy, it makes this country a bad investment for foreign funding to finance civil society operations,” says Becker. “You have civil society ... walking on eggshells in this country right now. Despite the change in government, you still have NGOs that are being harassed,” he adds, citing examples from earlier this year in which organizations working on seemingly innocuous causes, such as helping orphans, had funds blocked by the government.
Zaree agrees that the trial is making donors reluctant to fund civil society activities, and further asserts that the new NGO law being considered by Morsy’s government could seal the lid over civil society, claiming that provisions in the draft bill circulating within the Cabinet allow the government to control the funding, internal management and board composition of NGOs.
“They want to convert NGOs from being independent entities to arms of the government,” he says. Despite this, however, many NGOS have continued to access funding from donors abroad, and most foreign NGOs continue to operate, albeit warily in some cases. Mansour, for his part, takes a broader view and considers how a guilty verdict would diminish Egypt’s democratic transition and human rights protections, particular for women and religious minorities, in light of an increasingly symbiotic relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the military. “It’s going to mean that civil society is not going to be engaged in our society for a very long time, and it’s going to threaten a lot of key elements in a society that’s being run by a religious authority and a military government,” he says.
His expression darkens. “Without [civil society] groups, we are putting our transition on the Iranian track.”
In an interview on November 1, U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson rightly said that “the American NGOs functioning in Egypt were carrying out their work in complete transparency and goodwill in an effort to support and develop Egyptian civil society.” If the government of Egypt criminalizes such activity, Americans will have learned a good deal about its intentions.Read the full story here.