Egypt ‘to copyright antiquities’

this is SIMPLY AMAZING!!!!

FROM THE BBC:  Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids.

Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the BBC the law would apply in all countries.

The money was needed to maintain thousands of pharaonic sites, he said.

Correspondents say the law will deal a blow to themed resorts across the world where large-scale copies of Egyptian artefacts are a crowd-puller.

Mr Hawass said the law would apply to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt.

“Commercial use” of ancient monuments like the pyramids or the sphinx would also be controlled, he said.”Even if it is for private use, they must have permission from the Egyptian government,” he added.

But he said the law would not stop local and international artists reproducing monuments as long as they were not exact replicas.

The Luxor hotel in the US city of Las Vegas would also not be affected because it was not an exact copy of a pyramid and its interior was completely different, Mr Hawass told AFP news agency.

But he said claims by the hotel that it was “the only pyramid-shaped building in the world” could no longer be made.

The announcement came two days after an Egyptian newspaper called on the hotel to pay a share of its profits to the central Egyptian city of Luxor, which administers the ancient Valley of the Kings burial site.

Christmas in Egypt

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate the holiday today.  Here’s a short, light piece I posted on Washingtonpost.com today regarding the question of whether non-Christian countries are encorporating Christmas traditions into mainstream culture.  Naturally, I focused on Egypt. 

by Vivian Salama

PostGlobal, WashingtonPost.com

            The first year I lived in Egypt, Ramadan fell in November.  Journalists are often invited to company iftars (the meal to break fast) as a way of networking and exchanging in the holiday spirit.   You can imagine my surprise when, at one of these iftars, Santa Claus marched in to spread …Ramadan cheer(!?) 
            While this is an absolutely comical (and unusual) incident, Christmas is by no means a laughing matter in the Arab world’s most populous nation.   Of the 75 million people crammed mostly along the banks of the Nile River, approximately 15 percent are Christians – mostly Coptic Orthodox.  Along the streets of Cairo, holiday lights and decorations commemorate Christmas and the Muslim majority goes out of its way to share in the holiday spirit just as many Christians do during the month-long celebration of Ramadan.   Unlike the West, where the consumer craze has obliterated all logic, and “celebrations” (read: shopping season) start in October, Coptic Christmas is not synonymous for parties, eggnog and mistletoe.   Rather, it is the end of a 40-day fast where families often flock to midnight mass and eat various traditional dishes.  In fact, traditions such as the Christmas tree and Father Christmas ( “Baba Noel”) have only recently been incorporated into the culture.  

            That said, Christmas 2003 was one to remember in Egypt as President Hosni Mubarak – for the first time – marked it as a national holiday.   The usually congested streets of Cairo are now ghost towns on the Eastern Orthodox Christmas (January 7) as Christians and Muslims alike stay home from school and work.   While Egypt still maintains the practice of listing religion on national identification cards, Christians are very much a part of mainstream society and incidents of marginalization have been isolated.  Many Christians in Egypt hold public offices.   Even Egypt’s richest man, Naguib Sawiris, CEO of Orascom Telecom is a Copt and is responsible for building a number of churches in Egypt’s upper class resort towns.  Most Christians welcomed the move to declare Christmas a national holiday, particularly given domestic fears by Christians and moderate Muslims that the country may be headed in the same direction of some of the more conservative, less secular Arab states.   
            While Christmas may not be the best example, Western customs have seeped into Egyptian culture in other ways.   Valentine’s Day is an absolute obsession in this ancient nation where young lovers shower each other with material sentiments since physical sentiments (at least pre-marital) are frowned upon.   However Egypt still maintains some of its ancient traditions as well.  The day after Easter Sunday is a national holiday commemorating Sham el Naseem, a celebration which dates back to Pharonic times commemorating the start of Spring.  Ancient Egyptians used to offer salted fish and onions, as well as a young woman, to the Gods of the Nile River.  Today, no woman is sacrificed, but families do maintain the tradition of eating salted fish and onions, and several production companies even reenact the Pharonic offerings to commemorate this ancient festival.  

Valentine’s Day in Cairo

Egypt Shi’ite Activists Released

The Egyptian Ministry of Interior released Egyptian Shi’ite activist Mohamed El-Derini yesterday after two months in administrative detention under the Emergency Law, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) and the Hisham Mubarak Law Center (HMLC) said today.
 
Derini, who heads the Supreme Council for the Care of the Prophet’s Family, was detained on 1 October and charged with “promoting extreme Shi’ite beliefs with the intent of causing contempt of the Islamic religion” and with “spreading false rumors and inciting propaganda that could promote terror amongst people, disturb public security and the rule of law and undermine the trust in security agencies through claiming that prisoners and detainees died as a result of torture in prisons.” He was interrogated by the State Security Prosecutor’s Office about his adherence to Shi’ite Muslim beliefs and about media interviews in which he criticized the torture of Islamist detainees in Egypt.   
 
Lawyers from the EIPR and HMLC had filed an appeal against Derini’s detention before the State Security Emergency Court, which ordered his release on 13 November. Under the Emergency Law, the Ministry of Interior has a window of 15 days to appeal the release order. The Ministry of Interior did not appeal the release order, and Derini was transferred to the offices of the State Security Intelligence Service in Lazoghly where he spent two days in unlawful incommunicado detention before being released last night.
 
The second defendant in the same case, Ahmed Mohamed Sobh, also secured a release order from the State Security Emergency Court on 10 November but was only freed by the Interior Ministry on 25 November, after two weeks of unlawful detention.
 
The EIPR and HMLC urge the Public Prosecutor to immediately drop all charges against Derini and Sobh and to conduct an investigation into their arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention. The two organizations also call on the government to end the practice of detaining people for the peaceful exercise of their right to freedom of belief and expression.

Egyptian blogger who posted images of police brutality booted from YouTube

Wow. This is really too bad — a blow to all cyber-dissidents around the world.

Check out my article on the political implications of Arab and Iranian bloggers: Arab and Iranian Bloggers: Emerging Threat to the Official Line

CAIRO (CNN) — An award-winning Egyptian human rights activist who posts
videos about police abuse  said he had his account suspended by YouTube because of complaints that the videos contain “inappropriate material.”

 

 

 

Wael Abbas, an anti-torture watchdog, told CNN on Wednesday that there have been 100 videos posted on his account containing images of torture, police brutality, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, and election irregularities. Material he has posted is no longer available on the popular video-sharing Web site.
      He said YouTube sent him an e-mail saying they suspended it. “They didn’t ask me to remove it. They said ‘your account isn’t working,’ ” he said.
      When asked about the account, a YouTube spokesperson said, “We take these matters very seriously, but we don’t comment on individual videos.”
      YouTube regulations state that “graphic or gratuitous violence” is not allowed and violations of the terms of use could result in the ending of an account and deleting all of the videos in it.
      “YouTube prohibits inappropriate content on the site, and our community effectively polices the site for inappropriate material,” the spokesperson said. “Users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate and once it is flagged it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system within minutes if it violates our Community Guidelines or Terms of Use. We also disable the accounts of repeat offenders.”
      Abbas admitted that some of the videos were in fact “graphic,” but said it is important to convey strong imagery to underscore the issue of abuse and make an “impact on public opinion.” 
      He likened the importance of such graphic imagery to the photos and videos that emerged in 2004 and illustrated the brutality in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, stoking international outrage.
      “We managed to direct the attention of the people to something that was taboo, something that was never discussed before — which is police brutality and torture inside police stations,” said Abbas, referring to his videos.
      The 33-year-old Abbas also operates one of Egypt’s best known blogs, misrdigital.com, and the popularity exists in large part to the frequent postings about police abuse. 
      He has gotten international notice recently, with the International Center for Journalists recently awarding a Knight International Journalism Award to Abbas for his work.  In one prominent incident, Abbas posted a video on his blog of a police officer binding and sodomizing an Egyptian bus driver who intervened in a dispute between police and another driver. 
      The video was one of the factors that led the conviction of two police officers, who were sentenced to three years each in connection with the incident. “It’s the first time Egyptian people saw something like that,” Abbas said, referring to beatings and torture. “It was a shock to the Egyptian people.”
      The blogger, who said he’s in a “state of shock” because he lost videos he’s uploaded for years, said he might resort to campaigning against YouTube. “We thought that YouTube was our ally,” Abbas said. “It helped show the truth in countries like Burma … With what they did now, it doesn’t seem like that anymore,” Abbas said.
      Abbas said he has also had a problem with Yahoo! because it shut down two
of his e-mail accounts, accusing him of being a spammer.

Gaza Crisis; Mubarak-Olmert Meeting; Annapolis At Last

This is a rather moving interactive feature by Steven Erlanger, the New York Times correspondent in Israel, on the devastating economic crisis in Gaza.  I recommend it if you have a few minutes:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/11/18/weekinreview/20771118_GAZA_FEATURE.html

I did a story several years ago on the lack of foreign investment in Gaza.  Click here to read it. Also, just as my skepticism took on a new form, the invitations have been sent out and a date set for the Annapolis (Maryland) Palestinian-Israeli summit.  (Alas, I did not receive an invitation – it must be lost in the mail.  To find out who did, click here)  Ehud Olmert was in Egypt with President Hosni Mubarak and the two men (both of whose countries are the first and second highest recipients of US dollars, respectively) gave the thumbs-up to the conference. 

Here’s the story from the New  York Times:

Wanted: Participants for Mideast Talks

By HELENE COOPER and ISABEL KERSHNER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 — The Bush administration finally acknowledged publicly on Tuesday that it had issued formal invitations to 40 countries and organizations that it hopes will attend a heavily anticipated Middle East peace conference scheduled for next week in Annapolis, Md. But the long, drawn-out route that State Department officials followed before making the acknowledgment reflected the high-stakes gamble that the administration is taking, as well as the unsettled nature of the outcome. Even late Tuesday afternoon, administration officials were still in negotiations with their Arab counterparts over whether Saudi Arabia and Syria would send their foreign ministers to the conference, or make do with lower-level envoys.

President Bush telephoned King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to enlist his support for the conference, and in particular to try to get an agreement from him that the Saud family would be represented at the conference by Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, administration officials said.

The presence of Prince Saud is seen as critical to assure a certain level of Arab commitment to the peace process. But the Saudi royal family has been unwilling to give the Annapolis conference a high-level endorsement without assurances that the negotiations will be substantive, with real concessions from Israel, including a freeze on settlements that would lead to Israeli withdrawal from land that it seized in 1967.

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, would say only that Mr. Bush and King Abdullah had “shared their views of the process that is under way between the Israelis, Palestinians and the international community.”

C. David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, said in a news conference on Tuesday evening that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent an invitation to both Prince Saud and the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem. Mr. Welch said the decision to attend was up to the individual countries, but added, “I’m hopeful and expectant of a positive response.”

An Arab official with knowledge of the negotiations said it was likely that Prince Saud would attend the Annapolis conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing diplomatic protocol.

Mr. Welch said “we won’t turn off the microphone” if Mr. Moallem, who rarely interacts with administration officials because of administration policy toward Syria, attends the conference and wishes to speak there. Israeli officials had asked that Syria be invited, and several State Department officials have said privately that it would be a mistake to exclude Syria from the meeting.

If Saudi officials sit down with the Israelis, it will be a rare event at public Israeli-Palestinian talks. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the United States, attended a peace conference in Madrid in the fall of 1991, but as an observer, not a formal participant.

Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel, although Saudi officials have also urged the Bush administration to push hard to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli peace issue. There have been some unconfirmed reports of other contacts between Israeli and Saudi officials, including some earlier this year.

The conference, which will begin with a preliminary meeting in Washington on Nov. 26 and move to Annapolis on Nov. 27, is supposed to initiate final-status peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians to settle the long-running, seemingly intractable issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.

“This is the holy grail of diplomacy,” a senior administration official said. “We’re trying to rally the Arab world for support of this process, and they are master fence-sitters.”

Mr. Bush is expected to begin the Annapolis conference with a substantive speech, and part of the American effort to woo Arab leaders includes assurances to them that he will lay out an ambitious agenda that will pin all sides to firm negotiations on the status of Jerusalem, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the contours of a Palestinian state.

“This is the point where the rubber meets the road,” said Martin Indyk, the former United States ambassador to Israel. “The United States really wants for Arab states to turn up, to bless the process.”

Until Tuesday evening, State Department officials would not officially confirm even the date of the conference.

“My hope and desire is that we can talk to you, in the not-too-distant future, about not only the list of invitees, but the date as well as the agenda for the Annapolis conference,” Sean D. McCormack, the department spokesman, said at a briefing early in the day, in language that was opaque even by diplomatic standards. “I anticipate there’s going to be a day that all the participants are going to be at Annapolis, and there are probably going to be events the day before and the day after.”

Appearing with the Israeli prime minister in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday gave his full endorsement to the scheduled gathering, and raised hopes among Israeli officials of wider Arab participation at the meeting.

“Obviously we would hope that Egypt’s position will be representative of a larger Arab position,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman.

At a joint news conference at Sharm el Sheik, an Egyptian Red Sea resort, both leaders billed the Annapolis meeting as a springboard for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a final settlement of the conflict.

Israeli officials described Tuesday’s summit meeting as “covering bases” ahead of a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Thursday. Israel sees Arab support for the budding Israel-Palestinian peace process as crucial, to give added legitimacy to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.

Detained Muslim Brotherhood Members Face New Escalations

Received this from a young member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood today.  This is an example of the way security forces are cracking down on various opposition groups – the Muslim Brotherhood especially as they pose the biggest political threat to the Mubarak regime.

 State Security Apparatus escalated its assault on detained Muslim Brotherhood members when officers woke them up at 2am a couple of days ago for “inspections purposes.”
The detainees, praised by a civilian court as “well known, reputable and respectable businessmen,  engineers, doctors, accountants and professionals” we dealt with in a humiliating manner, as inspection dogs were used to walk them out of their cells, and they were kept all together in one cell, standing up and facing the wall while their cells were being inspected.
Inspection lasted for 5 hours, as the officers only left at 7am. This five hours inspections was fruitless, as nothing “illegal” was found with any of the detainees, whose belongings were scattered in their cells.
Officers presented no justification for this “night raid” of Tura and Burj Al Arab Prisons, the only place in Egypt where political opponents used to sleep not awaiting a “3am knock on the door” by State Security Apparatus coming to arrest them.
Forty Brotherhood leaders, including Deputy Chief Khayrat El Shater, are currently standing before a military tribunal. Forty one sessions have been held so far, while all international and local observers, journalists and human rights activists have been denied access.
In the last few sessions, the defense team discredited the financial report on the detainees’ assets, both in terms of content and legality. Reports of this coming out of the court room through lawyers and detainees’ families seems to have provoked State Security Officers, who retaliated by the night inspections.
Health conditions of the detainees have been deteriorating over the past months, due to the lack of sufficient health care. At least seven defendants were unable to attend a few sessions due to health problems, while AbdelRahman Seoudi, one of the defendants, suffered a heart attack in the last session.
These intimidations, accompanied by intense and long court sessions, have a negative effect on the detainees’ health. Court sessions take place at least three times a week in the Haikstep military base’s desert outside Cairo, with each session lasting for 7-8 hours, and the defendants spending at least two more hours in transportation between the military base and prison.
They try to use the few hours they have left resting and reviewing the case documents to prepare for the next sessions. They hardly have time to meet with lawyers, so they have to do a lot of homework themselves, while leaves only a few hours of rest. Now, the regime is intimidating them in these few hours, which would have a negative effect on their health.
The case of the Muslim Brotherhood members standing before a military tribunal is “politically motivated, and all the charges are groundless and fabricated with no substantial evidence whatsoever,” as a civilian court put it. MB leaders who were detained from their houses in night raids starting 14th December last year, and lasting for 3 weeks, were acquitted four times by civilian courts, and a fifth court found the president’s decision to transfer them to a military tribunal to be “unconstitutional,” yet they were never released.   
Now it seems that all that is not enough injustice for the respectable detainees, so the regime is trying to humiliate them. It will never succeed in doing so, because the Egyptian people, as well as democracy and human rights activists all over the world, will continue to look up with full respect to the sacrifices of men who have sincerely served their country and their cause. The only worry is that these escalations would have a drastic effect on the detainees’ health.
 

NEWS: Limited number of visitors for Tutankhamun’s tomb

Hey folks,

I was just informed by Zahi Hawass at the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt that approximately 400 people PER DAY will be allowed to view the exposed King Tut in his Tomb at the Valley of the Kings.  (see here for original story). 

The 400 visitors will be divided into two groups: 200 in the morning and 200 in the afternoon.  The visits will begin in December.  Just a note, the tomb will close everyday between noon to 1pm.

Hawass announced that beginning May 1, 2008, the tomb will be closed for preservation and restoration as it has never been restored since its discovery by Howard Carter in 1922.

So if you’re in the Luxor area, definitely try to stop by for this rare experience.    

                 photo of Hawass looking over the face of Tutankhamun mummy.

I’ve written a number of stories on Egyptian archaeology including a profile on Zahi Hawass himself.  Click here if you’d like to read it.

Egypt Eases Mubarak Son’s Ascent

When I was covering the Egyptian elections in 2005, Gamal Mubarak was certainly on the frontlines of his father’s campaign.  He would generally arrive before the President at campaign events to iron out any kinks.  On one occassion, I asked Gamal to speak to me on record – before I knew it, two members of Hosni Mubarak’s campaign (whom I knew well) were dragging me away, telling me it is “inappropriate” to talk to the son.  It saddened me as we had worked so closely throughout the campaign and Gamal, if anything, gave me the impression that he is quite approachable.  In the end, it seemed that the trend of leaders far removed from their constituency will be an on-going trend in Egypt.  If you’re interested in reading my detailed account on covering the Mubarak campaign, click here. 

Meantime, check out the story below written by my pal Nadia Abou el-Magd.

By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD – 16 hours ago

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Egypt’s ruling party appointed President Hosni Mubarak’s son to an important new committee Saturday in a move seen as further paving the way for the younger Mubarak to succeed his father.

Gamal Mubarak has risen dramatically in the ranks of the party since the National Democratic Party’s last convention in 2002 and is now number two in the party and head of the powerful policy making committee.

Three years ago, there were angry protests against his succession. Recently, demonstrations have waned, but talk of succession picked up over the summer following rumors that Mubarak was ill.

Traditionally, the presidential candidate had to be head of the party’s political bureau. But in the spring, the constitution was changed to require only that the candidate be chosen from the members of a new structure called the Supreme Committee.

Saturday’s measure, passed during the opening day of the party’s general convention, elected Gamal to that committee, which has 50 members. The move is seen as a more discreet way of setting him up as a presidential candidate than appointing him to the party’s political bureau.

Analysts say the move provides the with constitutional cover to elevate Mubarak to power, a subtle way to counter the growing challenge by the opposition.

Both father and son have denied the succession rumors. But many doubt those denials and point to a recent crackdown against the media as intimidation of potential critics of the transition.

Mubarak and his ruling party struck back — sending a prominent independent newspaper chief to trial over articles he ran questioning Mubarak’s health. The move was the latest in a string of trials of journalists that appears aimed at intimidating those who could oppose a transfer of power to Gamal.

Mubarak, who has led Egypt since 1981, was re-elected as the leader of the NDP during the opening session of Saturday’s convention.

The 79-year-old president said employment, investment and national security would top the agenda during his ruling party’s convention, but carefully avoided any talk of succession.

Even if party members avoid the sensitive succession topic, discussion of Egypt’s economy could prove controversial.

While the World Bank ranked Egypt as the world’s most improved economy for investors this year, and the country has seen an average growth rate of 7 percent over the last three years, the poor increasingly feel squeezed out. Their frustration could pose an even greater threat to stability than the government’s traditional political rivals such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

In recent months, government has been trying to rein in the largest spate of labor unrest the country has seen in decades. About a month ago, the government rushed to resolve a strike of 27,000 workers at a factory in the Nile Delta.

King Tut’s Mummy To Be Removed from its Sarcophagus

News from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (see below)

Tomorrow (11/4/07) the face of King Tutankhamun will be revealed as Zahi Hawass secretary, General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).  He will remove the mummy of king Tutankhamun from its sarcophagus, now at his tomb in the Valley of the Kings to a plexi-glass showcase equipped with state-of-the art equipment to control humidity and heat.

Hawass announced that such a removal came within the framework of the SCA’s project to protect and preserve royal mummies. Every day more than 5000 visitors enter the tomb which increase the rate of humidity and heat inside the tomb which on its turn threaten the mummy which is in a bad condition. Three years ago when Hawass, the last one who saw the mummy, examined the mummy using a CT-scan.  He realized then that it was in very badly preserved and divided into 18 solid pieces.

In 1925, Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered King Tut’s tomb, removed the mummy out of its sarcophagus using hard and pointed instruments to dismantle the golden mask out of the mummy’s face and remove more than 100 amulet bedded inside the mummy’s body.

Hawass asserts that the high rate of humidity and heat inside the tomb is threatening the mummy and may lead to its complete deterioration. Therefore, Hawass said, the removal of the mummy inside a well-equipped showcase, like those found in the mummies rooms in the Egyptian museum, will protect it for thousands of years to come.

He said that the mummy will be covered with a linen wrap and the mummy’s face will be displayed to the public who will see for the first time the real face of king Tutankhamun.

Some scholars believe that the mummy in its showcase must be transferred to the mummification museum in Luxor or the Egyptian museum in Cairo but the SCA experts see that the mummy is linked to the tomb and it should be displayed inside of it.

Khayer Bek and Um El-Soltan Shaban Monuments to be Inaugurated

This might interest some of you:

Egypt’s Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni and Prince Karim Aga Khan, the current Shi’a Imam, will inaugurate two Islamic complex of Khayer Bek and Um El-Soltan Shaban at Al-Darbul Ahmar area in Historic Cairo.  The two have been restored in collaboration with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The Minister and his guests will embark on a tour to inspect the restoration work.

Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) Dr. Zahi Hawass says that the restoration project came within the framework of the SCA’s collaboration with the Aga Khan foundation in protecting and restoring Islamic monuments in Egypt especially those in Cairo. Hawass explains that Khayer Bek Complex belong to a 16th century Mameluk prince Khayer Bek, Egypt’s first ruler under the Ottoman Empire in 1517.

This complex consist of a madrassa (school), Janim Al-Hamazaoui sabil (water fountain), Ibrahim Mustafazan house and house number 25. Louis Monreal head of Aga Khan International. the Um El-Soltan Shabaan complex consists of a school and a mosque. According to Hawass, it is a great example of a Mamluk architecture.  It is one of the most important Mameluk monument built by the Mameluk Sultan Shabaan in 1369 which he dedicated to his mother Khond Berka.

The inauguration is scheduled for tomorrow, Friday October 26, 2007.

In other related news, Egypt has won a seat on the 21-member UNESCO World Heritage Committee following the latest round of elections, held yesterday in Paris.