Two great leaders, President Hosni Mubarak and President Barack Obama, met in Washington this week for friendly and fruitful talks in which they dealt with critical matters of interest to their two countries – Iran's nuclear programme, peace with Israel and the situation in Darfur.
With equal vehemence the two presidents said how upset they were about the deterioration in the human rights situation in Iran, the repression of demonstrators, election rigging, the torture of innocent people and other horrendous crimes perpetrated by the Iranian government, all of which the international community and the Egyptian government are making intensive efforts to expose and prevent.
In the end President Obama received assurances from his friend President Mubarak that democratic reform in Egypt is a long and complicated process, but it is continuing and hopefully will never come to a halt. Obama reiterated his admiration for President Mubarak's wisdom, moderation and courage. All of that is well-known, understandable and to be expected.
But I was thinking of something else: the journey from Washington to Cairo takes more than 10 hours, so how does President Mubarak spend that time? I suggest he watch some good videos, which I hope he likes. Not long feature films, but short documentaries in which the performers are not professional actors or even amateurs, but just ordinary Egyptians with nothing to distinguish them except that, like millions of other Egyptians, they face a bitter daily struggle to feed their children and provide them with a decent life. Here are the videos I suggest:
In the first video we see a young Egyptian from Port Said being horribly tortured in a police station. The young man appears in the first shot with the skin on his back and stomach flayed from a beating, lifted up and hung from the ceiling by his hands. The man starts to beg the police officers for mercy, saying: "Enough, Mohamed Bek! I'm going to die, Mohamed Bek." In the second shot the young man appears blindfolded, weeping and imploring the officer in a broken voice: "I beg you, Mohamed Bek. We're human beings, not animals."
Read Full Article »