A call for the public opinion and the Judges Club

Bring justice to the farmers

An absent justice and a clear favouritism

In the case of Meet Shahala poor peasants

Cairo, July 20, 2005

Seven Egyptian NGOs argued today the public opinion and the Judges club, to reveal the human rights violations that a large group of farmers in the village of Meet Shahala, Markaz Al shohada, Mounofya, faced by former feudal family headed by a judge in cooperation with the police. What happened in Meet Shahala raises the doubts that the General Court acted in a kind of clear favouritism against the farmers.

 Yesterday, July 19, 2005 the criminal court in Markaz Al shohada witnessed an appeal against a prison sentence for five farmers who supposed to be witnesses in the case of Aziz Al Fiki violations against the farmers of the village. But the witnesses turned to be victimisers and the real criminals of the family became victims.

Aziz Al Fiki family that headed by a judge "Ahmed Aziz Al Fiki" used some of the gangs to seize a crop store rented by some farmers. The gangs used weapons to terrify the farmers who captured some of the gang members and brought them to police. But the judge (Ahmed Aziz) disappeared from the Markaz and he presented a complain against the farmers. At the beginning the court decided to present the former feudal family members and the gang to the court, but in a big surprise the case turned to be against the farmers themselves, without doing any investigations or bringing the judge to be questioned.

The lawyers and the human rights activists in some NGOs, and the Freedoms Committee in the Lawyers Union who expressed solidarity with the farmers notice that there is a clear favouritism committed by the General Court in favour of the family of Aziz Al Fiki. All those activists were not able to answer the farmer's questions of where justice is, and how they turned to be guilty instead of being victims of Al Fiki family? Where is Ahmed Aziz Al Fiki who was leading the attack against them from his black car? And how the court wasted the evident presented by the farmers (the weapons) and who used those weapons? How one of the gang members Saeed El Sayed Abdel Maksoud ,who was captured by the farmers, turned to be a victim?

The farmers were in their lands, and the family attacked them by guns, so how the court considered the attackers as being in a self defence situation?

 The signed below organisations were not able to answer those questions been rose by the farmers. We were not able to explain the change in the Court attitude when the judges discovered that the main guilty in the case is a judge.

The signed below organisations found that the only way to comfort the farmers and to bring back ecurity to them is to bring the issue to the public opinion and the club of the judges. They may reveal the favouritism against the poor farmers in this case and they may support in bringing the absent justice. 

The signed organisations who witnessed the incident:

Nadeem Center for Psychological Therapy and Rehabilitation of the Victims of Violence

The Arabic Human Rights Information Network

Land Center for Human Rights

Egyptian Association against Torture

Hisham Mubarak Law Center

Women for Democracy Committee

Egyptian Group for resisting Globalization (Ageg)