Aida Seif El-Dawla is an Egyptian psychiatrist, human rights defender and co-founder of the El Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture. Born in 1954 into a politically active family, she began her political activism and her struggle against injustice and human rights violations during her university studies in the 1970s. She was among the founders of the Women’s Studies Center in 1984, and has defended, and still defends, women’s rights, opposing female genital mutilation and violence against women.
In 1993, she co-founded the El Nadeem Center for the psychological treatment and rehabilitation of victims of violence, which provides psychological, medical and legal support to torture victims and their families and to women subjected to violence. She took part in the 25 January 2011 revolution and contributed to documenting police violations against protesters and torture victims over several years.
Seif El-Dawla has faced judicial harassment: a travel ban was issued against her in November 2016 before being recently lifted, and she was summoned by the Azbakeya Prosecution in March 2020 for questioning in Case No. 2075 of 2020, Azbakeya Misdemeanours. This summons was the second issued to her by the same prosecution, the first being in 2019, when the nature of the charges against her was not disclosed. The authorities also decided to close the El Nadeem Center in February 2017, and four years later, in January 2021, the court ruled to annul the closure decision.
Zawia3 interviewed Aida Seif El-Dawla, and here is the text of the interview…
– To begin, tell us about Aida Seif El-Dawla and how her ideas and ideology took shape.
I grew up in a political home on the idea of confronting injustice; my father was a lawyer who defended the oppressed, and I experienced issues of prison and injustice up close because a number of my relatives were political detainees. When I entered university, some of my colleagues in the student movement were beaten, dragged and arrested.
The movement I joined in 1984 developed into the New Woman Research Center, but I had to leave it in 2000 because I was busy working at the El Nadeem Center. In general, I see that there are attempts and women’s groups whose social role has emerged, for example in supporting the cause of the women workers at the Samanoud Weaving factory.
The idea began before 1993, coinciding with the strike of workers at the Iron and Steel factory, when a group of them were arrested along with a number of members of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, and some of them were tortured to the point of permanent disability, as happened with the late Hisham Mubarak, who lost the hearing in one ear. We were a group of doctor friends who tried to obtain official medical reports on their condition, but as soon as it was known that the cause of the injury was torture, the reports would be refused.
We had a preconceived idea that detainees who are tortured come out as heroes, solid as rock, but we were surprised by the reality of their feelings: anger, humiliation and going over what had happened at the hands of their torturers. So we decided to set up a psychological clinic to treat survivors of violence and torture and to issue forensic psychiatric reports, without working in the human rights field, since we were already doing that voluntary role within the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. We had thought of making the clinic part of the organisation, but we backed away from the idea because those who come to a psychological clinic have all the rights of patients and no one but their therapists may see their files; the organisation’s staff have no right to see them, and so the organisation refused. So we set up the clinic in a small apartment, and in 1993 only one political torture victim came to us, a woman named “Amal”, whose case became famous in the newspapers; she was tortured because she was the wife of a political activist. No other political activists who had been tortured came to our clinic until 2000.
– Give us examples of some of the cases you documented at El Nadeem.
Over seven years, cases of victims who had been tortured came to us at El Nadeem: tortured to force them to give up a plot of land or an apartment, or as punishment for speaking rudely to someone with more power than them, as happened with the cook of the then health minister. The minister’s wife, a university professor, asked him to do something, but he refused and told her it was not his job, so she reported him to the police station, where he was subjected to horrific torture.
There was another case of a citizen who was stopped and searched in the metro, and when he wanted to take back his personal belongings, including a pack of cigarettes that a police officer wanted to take, he was held in a room at the metro station and suspended for three days.
The common feature of all the victims who came to the center during the first seven years was that they were ordinary citizens with no connections to get them released from police hands. We discovered that anywhere there are police, people can be tortured, not only in police stations and security headquarters but also in the metro, at university and in the street, and that this was effectively the state’s way of dealing with its citizens. We wanted people to know about it, but we faced great difficulty finding a newspaper that would agree to write about it, and we found only one opposition newspaper that agreed to publish.
Unfortunately, medicine in Egypt is a condescending profession, and few doctors listen carefully to a patient’s complaint without saying: “Which of us is the doctor?!” But we learned from the victims who came to our clinic that they are not the sick ones; society is sick, and the torturers responsible for torturing them and the political system unable to protect them are the sick ones. We learned that the victims alone have the right to decide what they want to do, because they may still feel threatened. Some just want someone to listen to them without disbelieving them, while others want people to know their story, especially those who were defamed, and we help them publish their testimonies. Some want to obtain their rights, so we brought in lawyers to provide them with legal support. Our concept of rehabilitation expanded to include doing everything possible for victims to regain their dignity and sense of self, so they can live the way they want.
– Do you see a separation between the two sides?
In my opinion, there is no contradiction between political and human rights work; human rights work is political work par excellence, monitoring human rights violations in general or in a specialised way, and each complements the other. We talk about torture and demand the trial of the officers involved in it, and we used to demand the dismissal of the interior minister… all political demands. But human rights work may contradict party work, and it should not be devoted to a particular candidate or party. I believe this accusation, that rights defenders failed in their political work and so turned to human rights work, was originally levelled by the Interior Ministry.
– Which is more opposed to the authorities… human rights and development organisations or political parties?
This is a difficult question to answer, although I see that all roads are blocked. Despite this, labour strikes and student demonstrations take place, and there are those who pay a high price, perhaps a whole lifetime in prison.
In my estimation, political parties have decided to do the minimum of political work, or less than the minimum, so that they can survive, give the impression that there is political life, or be able to enter Parliament. There is no single human rights community in Egypt; rather, there are human rights organisations whose positions may be unified but whose strategies are not.
– Do you think the organisations concerned with defending human rights in Egypt are working efficiently?
When there was still a unified position in Egyptian human rights circles, we set out seven points that do not need laws, procedures or parliamentary sessions, but need political will, without which there will be no political breakthrough, most notably the release of those in pretrial detention and of sick and elderly detainees.
This only needs a political decision. There are victims such as Anas El-Beltagy, who is paying the price for being the son of Dr Mohamed El-Beltagy, and Ola El-Qaradawi and her husband, who paid the price for her being the daughter of Youssef El-Qaradawi; even after she was released from prison, her husband is still in pretrial detention. There is activist Marwa Arafa, who was imprisoned five years ago when her daughter was still an infant, not to mention those imprisoned by court rulings, such as Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Ahmed Douma, Mohamed El-Baqer, Mohamed El-Kassas and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh.
– Do you agree with describing the political parties currently on the scene as cardboard parties?
It is natural for any political party to aim to reach power, and this is an accusation all politicians in Egypt deny about themselves.
Parties are supposed to seek seats in Parliament and work to change policies, influence the authorities and reach power. I do not understand: do they found parties to work as advisers to the state, for example?
– How do you assess the internal disputes on the political scene, such as the fragmentation of the Civil Movement parties?
The Civil Movement was formed from a group of political parties that chose each other, and it was supposed that, as a political movement, it would have a public. What happened is that the movement met before the national dialogue to set conditions guaranteeing the seriousness of this dialogue, but the only one who adhered to them was Ahmed Tantawy, whom the Civil Movement cast out and who is now in prison.
– To what extent do you believe in the seriousness and usefulness of the Presidential Pardon Committee and the national dialogue?
I believe that had the political parties held firm and insisted on the conditions they set to guarantee the seriousness of the national dialogue, things would have been different, because the state did not respond to those conditions, which represent the minimum.
What is happening now is the farce of pretrial detention and of participating in the national dialogue to stop pretrial detention, and the scale of political blackmail all parties practise on this issue, whether the authorities, the political parties or those who prepared the national dialogue. While they were preparing a session to discuss pretrial detention, the Cabinet was discussing a draft law on pretrial detention, and then an MP came out to announce that they in Parliament had not seen the draft law. This is a farce that represents an insult to every group of people who are supposed to practise political work, and the reaction is not proportionate to the size of the insult.
– Some talk has emerged in political circles that some of the young icons of the January revolution have finally submitted to the authorities. What is your opinion?
I do not agree with the notion of January icons; millions took part in the revolution, and its martyrs are its true icons, and perhaps Dr Mohamed ElBaradei can be considered one of its icons.
I am not inclined to the idea of the political elite choosing its own icons, because this is unfair to others whose role and sacrifices are forgotten.
The authorities use everything they can, but they cannot use a political figure unless he agrees to it, and talk of using political activists is general talk. If we are talking, for example, about Mahmoud Badr and others like him, the answer will be yes. The authorities have indeed succeeded in dividing ranks by spreading rumours and smearing reputations, and the one to blame is the one who follows “the liar to his doorstep” for the thousandth time.
– What is your comment on the lifting of asset freezes and travel bans?
Yes, for me, the travel ban that had been imposed on me in Case No. 173 of 2011, known as the foreign funding case, has been lifted. There are still human rights defenders whose assets are frozen or who are banned from travelling abroad, including three colleagues from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights whose assets are frozen: Mohamed Basheer, Karim Ennarah and Gasser Abdel-Razek, in addition to Nasser Amin and his wife Hoda Abdel Wahab, who have been banned from travel.
– And how do you see the new NGO law?
I see the new NGO law as a nationalisation of organisations in general, not only human rights organisations, as it prevents them from choosing their board of directors and setting their programme and statutes, prevents them from obtaining any support from a domestic or foreign source, and makes the Ministry of Social Affairs an unwelcome member of any general assembly meeting of the organisation, which means it is not independent.
There is no crime that can be committed inside an association that is not already provided for in criminal law, so why do the authorities insist on an NGO law? It is not true that all countries have an NGO law; in many countries it is enough to register the organisation’s name.
– Do you think there has been a relative improvement in prisoners’ rights in Egypt in recent years or not?
Since I began human rights work at the El Nadeem Center, and before that as a volunteer at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Egypt has not seen the injustice, violence and ruthlessness towards opponents that it has seen since 2013. In my whole life, the situation has never been worse than it is now for human rights, and even for the trees.
– How do you see the conditions of political prisoners in Egyptian prisons?
Some prisoners die in prison because an insulin dose is not available. I do not know how lawyer Hoda Abdel Moneim can be held in solitary confinement while she suffers from failure of her left kidney, or how Aisha Khairat El-Shater is not transferred to hospital for treatment even though she suffers from aplastic anaemia.
Prisoners are tortured to such a degree that it has become a routine part of their relationship with the authorities, to the point that some of them come to El Nadeem and, when we ask whether they were tortured, they deny it, then reveal to us during the session that they were slapped in the face, kicked, held in prolonged solitary confinement and deprived of medicine and visits.
All of these are methods of torture; torture does not begin with electric shocks, but includes any psychological, physical or sexual treatment that violates human dignity while the person is at the mercy of another.
We saw citizens killed in the streets, and I have not lived through anything worse than what we are living now, and I wish to die before I see anything worse. This is a regime that began its political life with a massacre in the street: about 1,000 people were killed in Rabaa Square in Nasr City, in addition to those killed in El-Nahda in Giza and in various governorates of Egypt. The regime’s media and figures convinced citizens that these were the villains and that it had to happen, which is not true. Some thought it would stop at that massacre, but the days proved that the regime has no ceiling.
Where is the skill of a political system that kills or imprisons those who disagree with it politically? The right situation is to have open political and parliamentary life and a free media, and for political conflict to take place through words and programmes.
– How do you see the pretrial detention amendments and the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Law in Egypt?
I read an excellent paper prepared by the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms on the details of the new draft Criminal Procedure Law, and I see it as “a farce”: it sets the period of pretrial detention even though there is already a law setting its duration that is not respected, and setting the period is meaningless as long as the recycling of cases continues.
The strangest thing in this bill is that it gives the prosecution the right to deprive the defendant of the right to have a lawyer with him, or for the lawyer to see the case papers, if it sees fit!
They are telling us frankly that when they arrest someone, they will do whatever they want with him, because there is no judicial system with only a judge, a prosecution and a defendant without a lawyer, not to mention that the defendant no longer meets the judge face to face but via video conference, with whatever power or internet cuts may occur.
– And what is your comment on the release of 151 pretrial detainees following recommendations of the national dialogue?
I do not think they were released following recommendations of the national dialogue, because arrests have not stopped, nor has the recycling of cases; perhaps they were released through negotiations.
I believe pretrial detention will end when there is political will to release those in pretrial detention, for whom there is no fear of flight, which is out of the question because of travel bans, nor fear of tampering with evidence, which does not apply to most of them because no evidence was seized from them and they face the same charges, such as joining a terrorist organisation, without knowing what it is… There are those who are wasting people’s lives by putting them in prison.
– To what extent are the mental and physical health of political detainees held for several years or sentenced to long terms affected by poor detention conditions?
There is no fixed rule for this, but deprivation of freedom, movement and communication with the outside world leads to feelings of depression, isolation, alienation, anger and apathy, and the effect of isolation increases if it is accompanied by torture or the loss of a loved one outside prison, and it may reach suicide attempts.
After leaving prison following a long period, a person finds that they have been dismissed from work or university, that conditions have changed and prices are extremely high, and some citizens are afraid even to talk to them or greet them because of their intense fear of injustice, so they suffer alienation, along with family problems because they have gone through trauma and prison experiences and left friends behind in prison, which makes them feel imprisoned, with half their mind and feelings still in prison, while their families want them to play their role and shoulder the responsibilities and burdens they carried before their imprisonment.
What we do at El Nadeem to rehabilitate them differs according to the case and what it wants: some come once because they want someone to listen to and believe them, some need several sessions, and some need medical intervention because of the health damage they suffered in prison, which affects their ability to sleep and eat.
– Do you think the current regime managed the Gaza war file well, or was it lax to the point of allowing the Israeli occupation to breach the Philadelphi Corridor?
The regime is complicit in what is happening in Gaza, because it has not withdrawn the Egyptian ambassador from Tel Aviv or summoned the Israeli occupation’s ambassador to rebuke him, and we hear from time to time of continued trade relations between Egypt and the occupation, while at the same time the authorities say they are unable to open the Rafah crossing. These are all things I could not have imagined ten years ago that we would live through.
I do not understand how a group of young people who raise a banner in sympathy with Gaza end up in prison!
– Your assessment of the role of political parties, especially the opposition, on the Gaza war file… did they act as a pressure factor on the regime or did they resort to a truce?
I do not know. Does the position of the authorities in Egypt on the war in Gaza and other matters, such as selling areas of the country and Ibrahim El-Organi receiving an Emirati delegation in Sinai while no Egyptian citizen can enter it without prior security permission, not push political parties to ask who exactly rules Egypt? What is our position on the Palestinian cause? What is our position on the Israeli occupation?
Not to mention the rising poverty rate, the crazy rise in prices and the crazy borrowing, and the country now being run for the benefit of a handful of people, while for the rest it does not matter whether they find food, drink, education and treatment.
I believe that had political parties led the demonstrations in support of Gaza, things would have been different.
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