Interviews with Saad Eddin Ibrahim

By and large, various United Nation agencies have not been as helpful as we Democrats and human right activists would have liked them to be. And we have learned that there is a pattern now– the United Nations where the African countries and the Arab countries, the Muslim, Islamic Congress countries—non-aligned movement countries.

They can marshal together 160 votes for anything. And the most autocratic of the regimes of these countries happen to be, unfortunately, Arab, African, Muslim countries. And, therefore, they have easily deflected or frozen or paralyzed all the agencies of the UN that could have helped human rights and the democracy movements in their respective countries.

The only exception to that that I at least can testify to was a human rights commission. Especially under the leadership of– Mary Robinson. When she was a human rights commission– she spoke on my behalf. She came and visited me in prison that really created– at the time I had– a broken leg in prison and I was in cast.

And the prison wardens could not believe here´s the former president of Ireland going down on her knees to write on my cast some encouraging solidarity words. That made the headlines in the Egyptian media at that time. And has quite a profound effect. It embarrassed the government of Egypt. It embarrassed the– so, yes, acts like that occasionally have if not a direct, concrete, legal– effect, at least have a moral impact on both the prisoner, the convicted– human rights victim as well as on the government and the public opinion.

So, that is one role that I could single out. Except to many of the UN agencies which have been rendered impotent because of this coalition of the autocrats around the world: the Mugabes, the Mubaraks, the– whatever name. They all help each other and they all, you know, give instructions to their– ambassadors at the UN to always vote in a certain way as to undermine any fight for freedom.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim is professor of sociology and one of Egypt’s leading voices for democracy and human rights.

Ibrahim was born in 1938 in Mansura, Egypt. He studied at Cairo University, and later in the United States at the University of Washington. He was initially targeted by the Egyptian government after suggesting on a radio show that President Mubarak would attempt to hand power illegitimately to his son Gamal. Ibrahim was charged with “defaming” Egypt abroad and accepting funds from the United States for election monitoring without permission and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Many foreign governments, including the United States, called for his release. Although Egypt’s highest court eventually threw out his sentence and ordered him released, the ordeal severely damaged Ibrahim’s health. Under threat of re-arrest, Ibrahim left Egypt in 2008 to live in the United States.

Ibrahim is the author or editor of more than 35 books in Arabic and English and has published more than 100 scholarly articles.