Middle East Focus-Arabia Deserta: Uncivil Society: Moderate New Middle East Gets More Repressive..........

Arabia Deserta

Uncivil Society: Moderate New Middle East Gets More Repressive..........

“The alarm in the Egyptian NGO community revolves around a bill drafted by the Ministry of Social Solidarity that could become law within months should the government decide to send it to parliament. The NGO coalition warns that the government is rushing a bill which would "limit the activities of human rights organizations or shut them down completely by criminalizing all forms of unregistered civic organization... [with] ramifications for some of the most important political reform movements (such as the National Association for Change, Kifaya, April 6th Youth and others)." It warns that the bill would establish "unprecedented control over civil society worse than the crackdown that followed the July 1952 revolution which nationalized political, partisan, syndicate and civic action." The coalition does not exaggerate. The bill, whose text has been published in the independent press (Arabic), could decimate independent NGOs and marshall registered ones under the same restrictive state-controlled bureaucracy that political parties and trade unions have suffered………”
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